Making Waves Lecture Series: Professor Cat Hobaiter Storytelling Apes
As part of the Making Waves Lecture Series, the Development team invites you to the next event with Professor Cat Hobaiter, primatologist and Lecturer at the University of St Andrews.
In this talk, Professor Hobaiter explores the evolutionary mystery of human language. She has spent over 15 years working with wild African apes, with long-term field studies across Uganda and Guinea. Her research focuses on the evolution of communication and cognition in our closest living relatives. Decades of research with other species, from chimpanzees to crows, have shown that language is not needed to learn from each other, to organise where and when to forage, to learn cultural knowledge about tools and songs, to co-ordinate hunting, or navigate social politics.
Reflecting on her own experience living and working with a group of people with whom she shared almost no common language, Professor Hobaiter asks whether we've been looking in the wrong place.
Ten years ago, Anthropologist Polly Wiessner made the suggestion that fire was the fundamental driver of human social behaviour. While the day-to-day conversations of the forager people were about mundane practicalities and gossip, fireside conversations are different: and they are overwhelmingly used for telling stories.
At the end of the day – are we the storytelling ape?
This event will be held at Royal Over-Seas League, 6 Park Place, London, SW1A 1LR.