Transition From Primate To Humans Summary

Report on the article Bridging the bonding gap:

The Transition from Primates to Humans

Introduction

The article “Bridging the bonding gap: The Transition from Primates to Humans” was published on May 28, 2012 by R.I.M. Dunbar. This article is about the research study performed on primate societies, their social interaction methods and how social relationships differ and evolve. Primates are known to set up social structures, some smaller than others, while others are temporary, and others are long-lasting. Dunbar’s research focuses on primates’ sociality, their evolution to humans and certain factors that lead to the evolution of these social settings. According to Dunbar’s findings, primates live in smaller groups compared to other ungulate animals like wildebeests. However, these groups are demographically stable, cohesive and highly structured unlike the unstructured groups of wildebeests (Dunbar 1837). The article also looks at the different reasons why primate societies would change and the effects of these changes on the individuals and the society of the primate at large. Dunbar sources information from different materials, having cited seventy-one

This graph was adapted based on Dobson’s “Socioecological correlates of facial mobility in nonhuman anthropoids” (Dunbar 1839). Similarly, Dunbar also used another graph that examines and compares the relationships of the group size to the brain size and neo cortex ratio among female primates. This graph was adapted based on the Lehmann & Dunbar’s “Network cohesion, group size and neocortex size in female-bonded Old World primates” (Dunbar 1841). Interestingly, just like the other previous social mobility index, this graph also shows how the time devoted in low-level social grooming is directly proportional to the size of the group (Dunbar