Dr. Nowell's Presentation

Dr. Nowell's Presentation:

      After Dr. Nowell's presentation yesterday I dug up a video on the topic we were discussing if anyone is interested: 

After an absolutely crazy couple of weeks, I finally have time to update my blog. I am definitely glad we have the two ‘freebies’ to use, because I have been up to my eyeballs in work applying for Masters degrees; I honestly did not realize it was going to be such a work and time intensive process!  

So, back to death and burial. I really enjoyed Dr. Nowell’s presentation on Paleolithic burials yesterday. I am very interested in evolution, and have taken Dr. Kurki’s class, so it was nice to have evolution and early Homo tied together with the content this class. The video I posted above was absolutely heartbreaking, especially at the two minute mark where the mother returns to check on the body and then falls on her back after moving a couple of paces away. The journal article that analyzes the event you can see in the footage is titled “Behavioral Response of a Chimpanzee Mother Toward her Dead Infant” by Cronin, Van Leeuwen, Mulenga and Bodamer and was published in the American Journal of Primatology in 2011. The authors explain that following the death of an infant, chimpanzee mothers usually maintain close physical contact for a period of time where they do not allow other conspecifics to investigate, but later allow fellow group members to examine or interact with the body. The film obviously features the latter portion of this ‘mourning’ process. Researchers are interested in examining this phenomenon because it provides interesting information about how chimpanzees learn about changes in social relationships, and it demonstrates the depth of maternal bonding with an infant because the offspring is not engaging in any reciprocal behaviors after death.