ANTHROPOLOGY OF HABITAT AND ARCHITECTURE
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Deals with global research into the evolution of habitat and architecture as evolution of culture.
Website: http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter
Members: 36
Latest Activity: Dec 18, 2012
WHY STUDY THE NESTBUILDING BEHAVIOR OF GREAT APES?
Our cultural conscience has a great handicap: it is always split up into sectors, smaller units. We think in terms of separated boxes. Material culture for instance is split up into different time frames. Disciplines focused on vital traditions like folklore studies, ethnology and cultural anthropology have a much wider spectrum of material culture than history and prehistory, because objects produced with ephemeral materials have disappeared, have lost their factual document character.
In the 60ies of the 19th century the study of an architect, Gottfried Semper with name and well known in Germany today had postulated that all 'tectonic art' had its origins in a primary group he called 'textiles'. His famous study 'The Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts' had two volumes published 1860/63. The first dealt with the 'textiles', the second volume with tectonic arts in other materials: ceramics, wood, stone iron/metals. It is important that the term textile was defined in relation to the wider etymology of the term, a considerable spectrum of ephemeral materials (tectum, grass-roof), text, texture, textiles, etc.). And basic for his approach was the observation gained with a great number of examples of tectonic arts in durable materials on which the decorations of their surfaces alluded to prototypes produced in similar ways but with ephemeral materials. There were fibrous plant materials interwoven or basketry style or using ropes and strings and the like. Though this work got quite famous, its influence on the theory of art remained limited. Mainly because Semper's system was vehemently attacked by conventional art historians like Fiedler, Riegl and others. It was considered 'deterministic', negating the subjective (1)
In the mean time however, sources have increased enormously. There are a lot of paleolithic sources, signs, constructs, huts and the like which clearly show that the materials used are ephemere in character. Similarly there are sources in Mesolithic times and particularly in Neolithic, finally in metal periods, an enormous quantity of life trees, in many cultures of the Ancient Near East. Further, the first types of "script" copied signs made with plant materials, evidently territorial signs scratched on clay tablets, very likely for taxing farmers around the early Sumerian cities. But also in Greek and Roman history as well as European Middle Ages sources of this ephemeral type are amply shown.
All these sources suggest the hypothesis that before there were refined monumental techniques of building in stone or producing larger amounts of objects in metals, important processes of cultural evolution had taken place in relation with objects produced with fibrous plant materials with techniques like basketry, weaving, mat forming, binding with ropes and the like. We have compiled a documentation which collected a great number of sources of this type according to time frames as well as of classes of objects characteristic for certain periods.-->http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/015gDocument.html
Now, if this documentation without doubt gives some justification to the hypothesis that fibro-constructive objects might have played an important role in prehistory, it becomes important to question primatology in this regard.
But primatology confronts us with a surprising situation. In 1929 the Yerkes (Yerkes, R. M. and A. W. The Great Apes) had produced an enormous work of sighting the whole literature on observations in the wild regarding nest building behavior of the Great Apes (Pongids, Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Orangutan (Bonobos not known yet). Though living in quite distant regions all three species were routined nest builders. They all built nests daily resp. nightly to pass the night in their self constructed nest. Two types were distinguished, tree nests and ground nests. This distinction is important, because both types are in environments which are different, playing an important role in regard to human evolution: arboreal space and terrestric space. Arboreal space with its vertically structured movements is the ancient domain of the great apes in general, whereas the terrestric space is an environment to which the Pongids are not really adapted, which they use for dislocation on the ground. But, on the other hand it is the spatial environment in which the evolution finds its exclusive adaption for humans.
This difference is already expressed by the two nest types. The tree nest is essentially atectonic, it is usually produced on 2 or 3 thick branches branching off from the trunk of a tree interwoven with secondary and third size type of branches and twigs to make a stable platform which is finally upholstered with twigs and leaves from the close environment. The ground nest is of a quite different character. Drastically said, it is a primary form of architecture. Plants like bamboo stalks obtaining their topological stability from their rooted "foundations" in the ground are bent in about 2-3 meters height and knotted together to form many stable triangles supporting a tower like structure which offers sufficient stability to allow the often heavy animal to climb up and to finish the platform forming the nest for sleep.
The Yerkes clearly understood this prototypical situation and described nest building as a definite alteration of natural conditions in favour of a new situation with a cultural potential. They called the behavior "constructivity" and saw it at the beginning of an evolutionary line important for the human condition.
Surprisingly this important insight has been cut off by recent primatology favoring a rather poor scientific construct as "ape culture", the "nut-cracking culture" and the "ant fishing culture" (MacGrew)! First, these two activities have been observed fairly rarely in specific conditions. They are not really a routined behavior. Second, both are a specific specifications of food intake which is an extremely specific aspect and can not really be called culture. Of course the fact that it is emphasized in this strange way is due to the historism alluding to modern man as a tool-maker, a concept which has its euphoria in prehistory with paleolithic finds of - fairly questionable - 'pebble tools' and the like.
On the other hand the nest building behavior as observed in the wild by many primatologists is a highly complex behavior which, apart from its constructive capacities involved - and the impacts on physical conditions like precision grip, arm rotation, focus of sight - has important social implications like 1) spatial organization in the nightly group (female with baby in the protected center of the arrangement), 2) the fact that nest building must be learned during about 4-5 years, the mothers being the "teachers". 3) Interesting is also the close relation between mother and child which is expressed in the form of the nest. 4) And very likely the group of nests which remains visible during some months in the natural environment forms an accumulation of signs indicating former nesting or nesting of another group, thus showing some indicator of the territorial system of the great apes.
In other words, the nest building behavior is a quite different thing than nut cracking or ant fishing. It is a behavior which is very complex and which shows many characteristics which can be related to aspects of human culture. Maybe one of the strongest points could be its potential impact on bipedic body posture which might have evolved with the formation of savannas around 8 million years ago in East Africa, favoring the dominance of the ground nest and bipedic posture while building, thus explaining fairly plausibly one of the most striking characteristics of the process of hominisation.
Under (2) you can find a detailed paper with the title 'Ape Architects' which was published in 1983 in German in an architectural journal in Vienna. It shows about 30 illustrations on the topic.
___________________________
(1) THE METABOLISM OF FORM IN ANTIQUE ARCHITECTURE. Critical Notes regarding Gottfried Semper's theoretical work, its evaluation by the history of art and the significance of his approaches for recent architectural anthropological research.
--> http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/4580SemperIntro.html
(2) APE ARCHITECTS - The 'Primordial Hut' of architectural theory and the nest building behaviour of the great apes
--> http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/00AA2_Apes_Nests0_TT.html
In the 60ies of the 19th century the study of an architect, Gottfried Semper with name and well known in Germany today had postulated that all 'tectonic art' had its origins in a primary group he called 'textiles'. His famous study 'The Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts' had two volumes published 1860/63. The first dealt with the 'textiles', the second volume with tectonic arts in other materials: ceramics, wood, stone iron/metals. It is important that the term textile was defined in relation to the wider etymology of the term, a considerable spectrum of ephemeral materials (tectum, grass-roof), text, texture, textiles, etc.). And basic for his approach was the observation gained with a great number of examples of tectonic arts in durable materials on which the decorations of their surfaces alluded to prototypes produced in similar ways but with ephemeral materials. There were fibrous plant materials interwoven or basketry style or using ropes and strings and the like. Though this work got quite famous, its influence on the theory of art remained limited. Mainly because Semper's system was vehemently attacked by conventional art historians like Fiedler, Riegl and others. It was considered 'deterministic', negating the subjective (1)
In the mean time however, sources have increased enormously. There are a lot of paleolithic sources, signs, constructs, huts and the like which clearly show that the materials used are ephemere in character. Similarly there are sources in Mesolithic times and particularly in Neolithic, finally in metal periods, an enormous quantity of life trees, in many cultures of the Ancient Near East. Further, the first types of "script" copied signs made with plant materials, evidently territorial signs scratched on clay tablets, very likely for taxing farmers around the early Sumerian cities. But also in Greek and Roman history as well as European Middle Ages sources of this ephemeral type are amply shown.
All these sources suggest the hypothesis that before there were refined monumental techniques of building in stone or producing larger amounts of objects in metals, important processes of cultural evolution had taken place in relation with objects produced with fibrous plant materials with techniques like basketry, weaving, mat forming, binding with ropes and the like. We have compiled a documentation which collected a great number of sources of this type according to time frames as well as of classes of objects characteristic for certain periods.-->http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/015gDocument.html
Now, if this documentation without doubt gives some justification to the hypothesis that fibro-constructive objects might have played an important role in prehistory, it becomes important to question primatology in this regard.
But primatology confronts us with a surprising situation. In 1929 the Yerkes (Yerkes, R. M. and A. W. The Great Apes) had produced an enormous work of sighting the whole literature on observations in the wild regarding nest building behavior of the Great Apes (Pongids, Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Orangutan (Bonobos not known yet). Though living in quite distant regions all three species were routined nest builders. They all built nests daily resp. nightly to pass the night in their self constructed nest. Two types were distinguished, tree nests and ground nests. This distinction is important, because both types are in environments which are different, playing an important role in regard to human evolution: arboreal space and terrestric space. Arboreal space with its vertically structured movements is the ancient domain of the great apes in general, whereas the terrestric space is an environment to which the Pongids are not really adapted, which they use for dislocation on the ground. But, on the other hand it is the spatial environment in which the evolution finds its exclusive adaption for humans.
This difference is already expressed by the two nest types. The tree nest is essentially atectonic, it is usually produced on 2 or 3 thick branches branching off from the trunk of a tree interwoven with secondary and third size type of branches and twigs to make a stable platform which is finally upholstered with twigs and leaves from the close environment. The ground nest is of a quite different character. Drastically said, it is a primary form of architecture. Plants like bamboo stalks obtaining their topological stability from their rooted "foundations" in the ground are bent in about 2-3 meters height and knotted together to form many stable triangles supporting a tower like structure which offers sufficient stability to allow the often heavy animal to climb up and to finish the platform forming the nest for sleep.
The Yerkes clearly understood this prototypical situation and described nest building as a definite alteration of natural conditions in favour of a new situation with a cultural potential. They called the behavior "constructivity" and saw it at the beginning of an evolutionary line important for the human condition.
Surprisingly this important insight has been cut off by recent primatology favoring a rather poor scientific construct as "ape culture", the "nut-cracking culture" and the "ant fishing culture" (MacGrew)! First, these two activities have been observed fairly rarely in specific conditions. They are not really a routined behavior. Second, both are a specific specifications of food intake which is an extremely specific aspect and can not really be called culture. Of course the fact that it is emphasized in this strange way is due to the historism alluding to modern man as a tool-maker, a concept which has its euphoria in prehistory with paleolithic finds of - fairly questionable - 'pebble tools' and the like.
On the other hand the nest building behavior as observed in the wild by many primatologists is a highly complex behavior which, apart from its constructive capacities involved - and the impacts on physical conditions like precision grip, arm rotation, focus of sight - has important social implications like 1) spatial organization in the nightly group (female with baby in the protected center of the arrangement), 2) the fact that nest building must be learned during about 4-5 years, the mothers being the "teachers". 3) Interesting is also the close relation between mother and child which is expressed in the form of the nest. 4) And very likely the group of nests which remains visible during some months in the natural environment forms an accumulation of signs indicating former nesting or nesting of another group, thus showing some indicator of the territorial system of the great apes.
In other words, the nest building behavior is a quite different thing than nut cracking or ant fishing. It is a behavior which is very complex and which shows many characteristics which can be related to aspects of human culture. Maybe one of the strongest points could be its potential impact on bipedic body posture which might have evolved with the formation of savannas around 8 million years ago in East Africa, favoring the dominance of the ground nest and bipedic posture while building, thus explaining fairly plausibly one of the most striking characteristics of the process of hominisation.
Under (2) you can find a detailed paper with the title 'Ape Architects' which was published in 1983 in German in an architectural journal in Vienna. It shows about 30 illustrations on the topic.
___________________________
(1) THE METABOLISM OF FORM IN ANTIQUE ARCHITECTURE. Critical Notes regarding Gottfried Semper's theoretical work, its evaluation by the history of art and the significance of his approaches for recent architectural anthropological research.
--> http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/4580SemperIntro.html
(2) APE ARCHITECTS - The 'Primordial Hut' of architectural theory and the nest building behaviour of the great apes
--> http://home.worldcom.ch/negenter/00AA2_Apes_Nests0_TT.html
Discussion Forum
architectural anthropological study on traditional built environment on dwellings 1 Reply
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ANTHROPOLOGY OF HABITAT AND ARCHITECTURE - 5 LINES OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION
Started by Nold Egenter Sep 15, 2009.
Comment Wall
Comment
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Comment by Michael McKenzie on July 16, 2009 at 8:11pm -
Traditional Architecture?
I would propose that virtually every aspect of Architecture meets the literal definition of 'traditional' because it's best defined in view of its behavior and its influence...in my view virtually unchanged as a traditional translator of social attitudes and values.
Regardless of the shapes, its physical forms continue to reflect established precedents and behavioral patterns, which in turn are still most often governed by forces beyond its control. Existing still at the whim of client and the mercy of money, Architecture seldom leads...He who pays the piper still calls the tune...and so constrained, it finds solace in studies of its heroes and history, scratching the itch of innovative vision in after hour's doodles; dreams tucked neatly in the bottom drawer...
The changing shapes of forms do not necessarily reflect the changing ideology of the practitioner...'modern' simply describes a different shape and element of form, and while it reflects some positive evolution of craft, for the most part, it continues a traditional posture and attitude...one born of an elite educated class whose dogma permeates its business model, wherein financial risk is borne by client and thereby most its true purpose to enable an empowered society, is lost...Artist chained to economic desires and necessities, its buildarts catering to monuments of Ego, shrines of religion, symbols of power, demonstrations of dynasty...more anthropological ornaments and artifacts that best illustrate the constants...like the stoic geological formations of the natural earth our change is ever present, but at a rates imperceptible to the naked eye of real social experience. The dramatic elements and shape of the forms we create, belie this truth...make us believe that such enlightened creations can only be delivered by an enlightened species in control of their own destiny. Architecture as a dominant 'shaper' of form is a partner to this deceptive portrayal...not by willful damage, (though it is perhaps a sin of omission) but in its traditional role as a craft dictated to by monetary systems it becomes a mirror of societal values... what else can it be?
No matter what we believe...it becomes increasingly obvious that we have to move a lot faster than our geological formations. Currently, our vast ice is moving more quickly than we are...Architecture is one crucial element we desperately need to break out of its traditional reactive role as service provider and become instead a proactive visionary leader of environmental and societal change.
Traditional Architecture can then be relegated to a definition everyone can understand as...'that old fashioned practice that got us here, but doesn't work anymore'
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Comment by Nold Egenter on July 16, 2009 at 9:28am -
Comment by oz 1:
"For Pierre Restany it was the society founded on the eternal that was obsessed with the values of permanence and materiality; today, instead, we share the understanding, matured from the 1960s onwards, that what is real is not eternal. ... The danger of contemporary culture is not the freshness of the image, its here and now, but rather its freezing, mummifying it in a form that remains immutable over time. The obstinate hope for perrenial monuments in the end testifies to a headstrong obtuseness that we have dragged behind us since the time of the Egyptians, and which consists of wanting, at all costs, to exorcise death and refuse the deeper meaning of life, which is precisely that of mutability."- Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi
Comment from Nold:
I am absolutely convinced that art based on aesthetics is an irrational system of cognition. But this does not mean that we have to be confused mixing up things into a never ending mess.
Pierre Restany favoured artists like Hundertwasser who - in my view - was exactly one who rejected modernism as something valid and consequently developed his own "exotic" expression. But many modernists considered him as some sort of an irrational clown. But if you really understand Hundertwasser - and I think Restany understood him - then it is evident that he was expressing his sense for the eternal in art and architecture.
Similarly Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle. They also belonged to Restany's circle. Evidently they broke out of the prison of abstraction getting back to the age old tradition of reality and irony....
They definitely do not belong to the poor novelty catchers and fashion designers like Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind or Zaha Hadid and others who show no understanding for the basic continuity of human traditions. They are in fact a pitiable product of the art historians' style-mania. Whatever extravagance, main point: it is absolutely new style!
I suggest that you have a look at some of my papers in our website and read them. You might discover that I am not "obsessed with the values of permanence and materiality" as you understand it: note that your following sentence sounds like a fossile of the industrial sectarianism of the 1920ies, Pessac and all tat, copying ocean steamer architecture etc. etc.. "...today, instead, we share the understanding, matured from the 1960s onwards, that what is real is not eternal. ... "
I am definitely convinced that - with recent globalisation - we are at a point of really new potentials. They allow us a view above the eurocentric prison walls erected by the art historians for the architects as their "theoretical prisoners". The architect as victim of the post-medieval Renaissance myth of the profaned world creator. Let us stop this nonsense!
Architects must start to realize that architecture is a global tradition! This insight requests a new and wider horizon, new anthropological methods of research, to gain concepts what architecture really is. If we do not realize this new point, architecture will destroy our cities and landscapes with an artificial "creative madness" which will have to be dynamited in increasingly shorter phases like this was the case in Pruitt-Igoe, and in Eastern Germany with the prefabricated "Platten-bauten".
Final question: how would medecine as the "art of healing" look like today, if from the 16th century and on human anatomy and sicknesses would have been researched by art-historians?
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Comment by Nold Egenter on July 16, 2009 at 5:57am
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Our cultural conscience, nold is currently a fragment of your imagination.
extreme toughness has replaced your OLD DEAD IDEAS ..I SUGGEST YOU STUDY THE hABITAT OF THE Military
Sorry, but this is double dutch for me.....
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Comment by oz on July 15, 2009 at 6:27am -
Our cultural conscience, nold is currently a fragment of your imagination.
extreme toughness has replaced your OLD DEAD IDEAS ..I SUGGEST YOU STUDY THE hABITAT OF THE Military
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Comment by oz on July 15, 2009 at 3:55am
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"For Pierre Restany it was the society founded on the eternal that was obsessed with the values of permanence and materiality; today, instead, we share the understanding, matured from the 1960s onwards, that what is real is not eternal. ... The danger of contemporary culture is not the freshness of the image, its here and now, but rather its freezing, mummifying it in a form that remains immutable over time. The obstinate hope for perrenial monuments in the end testifies to a headstrong obtuseness that we have dragged behind us since the time of the Egyptians, and which consists of wanting, at all costs, to exorcise death and refuse the deeper meaning of life, which is precisely that of mutability."- Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi
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Comment by Jan Begine on July 9, 2009 at 10:33am
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Hi Nold, thank you for inviting me. I'm a bit busy right now, but I have many thoughts and questions I want to share with the group. As soon as my schedule clears up a bit, I'll start posting them.
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Comment by Alicia Griffin on July 6, 2009 at 10:44pm -
Hi Nold,
I find it very interesting that you would request me to be a member of your group. As an artist/d'zigner I am always thinking of ways in which my "prototypes" can be considered for utilization in such imaginative and cognitive points of views. I spend most of my days in my studio creating unusual shapes. I believe if an "Architect" of human origin would consider my prototypes to actually be transformed perhaps habitats could be created for the primate species. I would love to be able to past on a few of these "prototypes" for future consideration to be produced in various materials, wood, stone, iron or metal. I am opened to such an endeavor. I have several models that could be built for a primates nest building" a main habitat. Perhaps "Ape Architects" have similiar ideas and share in my own, concepts. I am open to collaborating with Architects and other d'zigners. I am ready to go to the next level globally and to have my design prototypes sold and place in such natural habitats.
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Comment by ® irgeorgellanespecore on July 6, 2009 at 7:38am -
...that's nice! Thanks :-) :D
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Comment by Nold Egenter on July 6, 2009 at 7:31am
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I just read the blog: What is good architecture? Endless, often totally contradictive ideas! This gave me the push to start this group devoted to scientific study of habitat and architecture in a global and anthropological framework.
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