Old is the new new

Older articles, but still interesting.

This is an older post (like a week) on how the internet is changing how people listen to, watch, and more specifically tell stories. I was a bit disappointed he focused solely on YouTube essentially, but still worth reading.

This came out awhile ago as well; a couple of scientists have found new evidence to indicate that there were red-headed Neanderthals.

RIP Washoe

Washoe, "the first non-human to learn American Sign Language," passed away last night, October 30 2007, at the age of 42. A long life for chimpanzees, and an interesting one for sure.
I just recently read Roger Fouts's book Next of Kin, the primatologist who worked with Washoe from the time she was a year old, and it is amazing what Washoe and Fouts accomplished together. It is always also sad to discover someone so inspiring only to have them die shortly afterward, or to learn that they just died.
I hope Washoe's family is doing okay with the loss of their matriarch. This only inspires me more to make the drive out to Ellensburg and visit the rest of the chimpanzees before they all pass away. I'm fascinated to see how much of their play is verbal vs. signing vs. physical. Maybe for my birthday (they just closed for the season). Rest in Peace, Washoe.

Play Anthropology

Rafe and I attended a very interesting meeting this weekend, and I hope he will put his thoughts down on this experience as well.
It was essentially a pitch for a new business and the audience was supposed to provide feedback on the idea. The meeting, however, was a little different because it was focused on Play. Yes, the fine art and discipline of play.
Frank Forencich, the guy pitching the idea, has been making a living writing books and giving classes on his philosophy of how humans don't move enough and Americans need to start living like Exuberant Animals, and now wants to develop a camp/home base for his classes. All the people who had been invited to hear Frank's pitch for the Exuberant Animal Retreat (the current working name for his idea) - physical therapists, physicians, primatologists, traceurs, trainers, students, artists, yogis, outdoor trip leaders, and a budding anthropologist (me) - were all interested in how people play and how to get people to play more and incorporate it into their lives, and for some had made it their job. The best example of this was Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play (technically it's his "retirement" job, but it's not much of a retirement).
This idea, this concept, of studying how people play, why people play, what they get out of it, and the fact that all those things should be obvious to people and yet it's not, is a really intriguing idea to me. The idea of studying play for a living and helping to promote play has been distracting me since last Wednesday, and it's only getting worse. I only half-joked to Rafe that I should base my master's thesis on watching puppies play with each other.
It was so inspiring to talk to this group of people because it showed me that I could get paid to study play, or at least parts of play. A lot of work is with corporations or doing studies on education, which is fine with me. I would be more than happy to do a study that shows, once again, that kids learn better in school if they have recess, hence taking recess away is NOT going to help them do better on standardized tests! I don't know how that study would qualify as anthropology, since I'm not really looking at any culture per say, but it could fall under human behavior and processing the world; that's close enough. If anybody knows someone who's looking for a play anthropologist, let me know.
What really got me starting to think about this in a cohesive way, almost serendipitously, was an assigned essay on anthropologist Victor Witter Turner. While Turner was known mostly for his work on symbolism and study of religious ritual, his theories of liminality, structure and anti-structure, everyday ritual, and play in general really struck a chord with me. He's one of the first theorists I've come across who have even looked at play and ritual and pretend and considered it as important as I certainly think it is. I'm actually having a hard time with my paper and simply writing an overview of all of Turner's work and not just talking about his ideas on play and how according to Turner play, pretend, and cutting loose is an essential part of being human and functioning in society. I'm seriously considering a paper on that particular subject for one of the anthropological conferences coming up in the Spring.
So, even though I am still stressed and sleep-deprived, even though I feel ragged and worn, the whole experience of the past week has re-instilled a purpose in me. It has reminded me why I'm putting myself through hell to go to grad school, why I fell in love with Anthropology in the first place, and where I can be useful, where I want to put my energy into the world.
"Play" is a perfect category to describe everything I'm interested in: how do people learn, the behavior and ritual in sports, performance of all types (dancing, art, story-telling), identity, photography, people adapting to new environments and technologies, and of course looking at biology and culture combined. All of these have aspects of play, or just straight up are play. Turner's ideas can be applied to all of these cultural actions as well, and can be used to look at and dissect the meaning, the purpose, the reason why we do them.
The only sad thing is, because play is "just play" the subject probably won't be taken seriously by many. Even I have moments of feeling silly about wanting to study the seriousness of play. But it's not silly, it's vital, and knowing that there are other people out there who feel the same way - Rafe, Frank, Stuart, Deborah the primatologist, the traceurs, the yogis and physical trainers - gives me strength in going forward and going after something so passionately.
Thank you!

Interesting cultural media tid-bits

First, this article is an interesting follow-up to my previous mother/father post. This woman looks at why her toddler has bonded more to her husband than to herself, and specifically at the idea that culture tells her it should be the other way around. I know, it sounds like I'm making an "it's all culture" argument, but the author is merely looking at forms of bonding and what our culture says "should" happen.

Then, a recent This American Life broadcast looks at the topic of mapping. The first two acts are also REALLY impressive and interesting sociological and psychological studies; one mapping cultural behavior of a neighborhood, the other looking at modern electronics and how their constant humming and buzzing, each with its own melodic tone, affects our mood.

Malinowski: a forgotten proponent of biological anthropology?

I've been taking an anthropological theory class this quarter, and with all the instrumental and influential theorists we've looked at so far, I was amazed by one theorist' take on human society and wondered why I didn't hear about this stuff in the undergrad theory classes.
He is a strong proponent of the idea of man as an individual and biological creature, and promotes the idea that culture is a construct defined by his biological needs, and in turn man can only be shaped to a certain degree by his culture. This was a a somewhat left-field stance for his time, and it would be considered practically sacreligious to the same cultural anthropologists who swear by his methods (or at least the ones I'm being instructed by this quarter) The theorist: Bronislaw Malinowski.
I was assigned Malinowski as my theorist to present on for the class. He is well known as a landmark ethnographer, and for advocating participant research. He is also considered a leading founder, if not the founder, of functionalism and cultural determinism theories.
Functionalism is pretty much how it sounds: the idea that culture is a social system developed to fill in the biological needs of the individual (these days it refers more to social constructs that fill social needs).
Cultural determinism, however, has come to stand for the "nature" half of the, at least in my opinion, ridiculous argument of nature vs. nurture; the idea that culture solely defines who one is.
Malinowski, however, if you actually read his work, does not go to this extreme. He definitely believes that culture shapes a human, and if you take someone out of their culture they will flounder (Malinowski, 1943:649). But he did not believe that humans were empty jars that culture simply filled up.
“Culture, however, primitive and developed alike, is subject to the laws of physics since human bodies are first and foremost lumps of matter. Hence culture is also largely determined by the biological process within the human body and by the organic needs of man.” (Malinowski 1942:1293)
"We see, thus, that the actual concrete organization of human activities does not follow slavishly or exclusively the functional principles of type activities." (Malinowski, 1939:946-947).
I think this aspect of Malinowski's theories has been lost over time, and it is something which should be recognized. Yes, his main point in all of his papers and books and monographs and reviews was that culture shapes humans. Absolutely. But he also acknowledged that humans are humans and will act on their own accord with their own biological will, and even chided Durkheim for recording humans as automatons (Malinowski 1926:4), and Freud for thinking that humans are purely influenced by their culture (Malinowski, 1927:viii).
Hopefully this will make it into my official essay, but if not I at least felt it should get out there.
-B

B. Malinowski, Crime and Custom in Savage Society, Rowman & Littlefield, London (1926).
B. Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society, Routledge, London (1927).
B. Malinowski, "The Group and the Individual in Functional Analysis," The American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 44, No. 6 p. 938 (May, 1939).
Bronislaw Malinowski, "A New Instrument for the Interpretation of Law. Especially Primitive," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 51, No. 8, p. 1237 (Jun., 1942).
B. Malinowski, "The Pan-African Problem of Culture Contact," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, No. 6, p. 649 (1943).

Modern Views on Parenting

Granted I’ve learned you can’t taking anything too seriously in grocery store magazines (just look at how TIME handled parkour), but Newsweek came out today with two editorials that are actually quite good at analyzing how men and women’s roles in parenting have evolved over the course of a generation or two and what expectations are compared to real life, and I found myself agreeing with both perspectives.

A mom's perspective: When I read this my first thought was, “dear god, this is my future.”
A dad's perspective: The third paragraph summarizes his whole point.

Of course this is all totally a modern Western view. So many other groups would think the parents are making too big a deal of their own situations, and from all scemas. Too much energy spent on the kids, not enough energy, etc. However, being a modern Western woman who plans on having kids someday, I am personally pleased that my culture is still talking and thinking about this and things are moving in this direction. Not just for my own sanity, but for the well being of my future children. I found the statistic in the dad’s article about dads in the 60's only spending a couple hours a week with their kids really sad. Both dads and kids missed out on a lot of possible knowledge and skill sharing.

Anyway, interesting stuff.

Why complex Interplay(on human nature in brief)

When Beth and I decided to start this blog it was to create a forum to share some of the thoughts we had on human nature and news on the types of things that interested us. Beth and I both are fascinated by both Human nature and Nature in general one the things that makes Human nature so fascinating is the complex interplay of biological and cultural influences. Both of us are fascinated by this but we come have different perspectives due both to different educational backgrounds and just different personalities. Beth tends to see cultural influences were I see biological influence and vice versa but the important point we agree upon is that both influences are valid ways of looking at human behavior and what matter is determining the true origins of behavior not adhering strictly to one ideological bent be it cultural or biological determinism.

I find it important to defend the influence of biological factors in human behavior because I think far to many people dismiss them out of hand for no more reason then they find the idea political repugnant. They associate any argument for a biological base to human behavior with sexism and racism. The idea being that if we are in fact different one sex to another or one race to another it indicates that one group must be superior and another inferior. The tendency to reject valid data and valuable insights on human nature simply because they maybe political incorrect is both saddening and frustrating to me. I believe strongly in the equality of all human beings in the sense that we each deserve the same, rights, and opportunities. I call this philosophy egalitarianism. I believe that the case of true egalitarianism is threatened as much by well meaning rejections of a biological human nature as by racist or sexist assertions of genetic determinism.

To make an example take the issue of womens equality in the work place, with in the last 50 years we have seen a huge change in patterns of male and female employment within the western world. Women have left the traditional roles of mother and housewife for the corporate world to the point they have almost reached numerical equality with males in the work place. However this equality in numerical strength has not been equaled by equality in economic strength, women still earn lower wages for the same work, are less likely to be promoted and are much less likely to be attain executive positions. Now if you assume this is caused sole by cultural factors you approach to dealing with this will be different then if you seek also to understand if their are any biological factors at play. A cultural determinism perspective is likely to see the cause primarily as sexism and differences between men and women's cultural taught social norms. So if we can train or force people not to be sexist and train men and women to have the same social norms when it comes to work then we should be able to achieve equality in the workplace. However if there do exist underlying biological differences in men and womens behavior then this training may fail or even backfire. If for instance men or women are biological inclined to communicate a different way, then the two sexes may fail to understand and appreciate the contributions made by other sex through no other prejudice then ignorance. Since the institutions of the modern work place were predominately designed by men and the positions of power are primarily filled by men the fallout from this misunderstanding is most likely to fall on women. In this case trying to bridge the male female gap through affirmative action or trying to train people who are already not sexist to not be sexist may result in resentment and anger fueling sexism itself as some studies have in fact shown such policies to do.

It is easy to imagine the case of a seemingly enlightened male boss who would love to promote his female employees but failing to understand they way the communicate and express leadership simple misses the signs that they deserve promotion.

Studies have shown that men and women do tend to communicate and express leadership differently and most of these traits are cross cultural consistent indicating a biological component to their expression. I will not state absolutely such differences are biological or the reverse my point is simply that by choosing not to look at one set of data we limit our ability to approach a problem effectively.

I think it is absolutely vital to understand that the belief that people deserve the same rights is not dependent on the belief that people are all the same. To take an extreme example look at someone with genetic condition like downs syndrome its quite obvious that cultural influences aside their mental and physical capacities are not the same as people without that genetic condition. Can we not still recognize the same essential humanity and with it the grant them the same rights.

With that stated, I believe that the evidence for both biological and cultural influences on human behavior are in fact indisputable both from personal experience and from taking an interest in studies of human behavior. Studies in cognitive science, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology have indicated biological influence on behavioral differences between individuals and in between the sexes and possible in between various population groups.

On a more personal note I work with children and get the chance to observe their behavior regularly its astonishing to me that any who works with children could ignore the biological influences on behavior. The differences between boys and girls behavioral are extremely striking and very consistent and seem to be very independent of the behavioral expectations of their parents.

Lets look at just one trait one that has been extensively studied and shown a strong cross cultural consistent difference between boys and girls. Aggressive play. The boys in my gymnastics classes are constantly pushing, shoving, wrestling, punching, and kicking each other to my constant annoyance and despite my constant admonishments to save that type of play for a different context. A few of my more enthusiastic students have actually tackled me. This behavior does occur amongst the girls as well but at a several degree's of magnitude lower rate. Furthermore I reward my students regularly with rough and tumble games at the end of class, the boys almost invariable jump straight into these games with no hesitation and never seem to tire of them, were the girls often need some convincing to play(though the usual enjoy the games to) and are much more likely to grow board with the game and request a different game.

Of course one could postulate that the boys this difference is cultural conditioned, but just from anecdotal experience this does not make sense to me. If levels of aggressive play was primarily cultural determined one would expect that minimal variation within each sex, or that the child nurture environment would determine there interest in aggressive play. My observations unscientific as the maybe are not consistent with this prediction, their is good deal of individual variance in aggressive play and the most aggressive females overlap with least aggressive males, the reactions of the parents to this play seems to have very little effect on the childs likelihood to engage in it and from what I an observe of the parents behaviors this does not seem to be that predicative either.

However biological factors do seem likely to me to have an effect, the most agressive boys are usually the more muscular heavy boned and generally more masculine boys, the least aggressive boys are often slender and more androgynous, likewise for the girls the more muscular lean strongly featured girls tend to express this type of play more and the slender or softer girls tend to express it less. Of course this is also consistent with studies on the effects of testosterone in behavior from species to species. Female Hyenas are extremely agressive and physical dominant the are also slightly bigger then males and have genitalia that mimic those of the males of their species, they also have circulating testosterone levels that are the same as the males in their species. Testosterone has specific effects, you can see this studying comparing boys to boys, boys to girls, cross cultural and looking at other species. It simple makes no sense to think that this would be entirely cultural mediated.

Humans are subject to the same biochemical processes as other animals, the fact we have developed the most complex cultural complexes of any species yet does not mean that our biological nature simply disappeared at some point. For instance one cultural determinist perspective that has always baffled me is the idea that our sex drive is entirely cultural derived. If our biological nature was successful in getting us to bread going back to the dawn of sexual reproduction I don't see any reason why it would be evolutionarily abandoned when culture came along. Or even how such a process would happen. According to most cultural determinist human culture in it modern form is only 35,000-75,000 years old a mere eye blink of evolutionary time.

On the flip side it is also clear we are not biological automatons. While all human culture engage in sex, in acquiring and consuming food, raising children etc, the ways in which we go about this can be markedly different in a variety of ways and this is were we come to our cultural nature. Biology is entirely insufficient explanation for the differences in social mores concerning say sexual behavior between the USA and say the middle east.

Were human nature gets interesting to me is in those areas were the influence of culture and biology are inextricable linked were you can't easily point to a one or the other as the primary causal influence. Our behavior is so fascinating and my opinion so variable precisely because it is effected by such a wide range of influences, genetic, cultural and environmental. That is the particular interest of this web log.

Women's cultural role in physical exursion

A woman tried to invade a sumo ring in Japan today, which if she had succeeded according to custom would have made the ring unclean. In the article it says Japanese women were also once not allowed to climb mountains or enter mines. Maybe it's just because I had just read this blog about the Masai people (where women really get the short end of the stick), but it just makes me sad how women are considered unclean, tainted, not as good as men, in so many cultures, and how that is reflected in what chores are traditionally assigned to them in different cultures.
Most women were banned across the board from sports until recently, but it was expected of them to do back breaking labor in the fields, or with livestock, or simply building shelter for their families. They have to do all the hard, boring stuff, but men get to have all the fun activities. It is still an issue in some places to allow women to join the country's military (see my earlier post).
Yes, traditionally men go out and hunt for women and children. They go to war. They put their lives on the line for their families. But that shouldn't make women automatically second-class citizens, especially in a culture where food is provided primarily by agriculture and/or livestock (something both genders can do equally well), and war is no longer a common problem.
For the Masai this is not the case. Even though they are technically pastoralists, the men still go on cattle raids regularly and are gone from home a lot risking their lives. But in contrast, even though the Japanese (and the U.S.) have been in major wars in the past 60 years, they've moved beyond their traditional gender roles in so many other ways one would think they'd be able to move past restriction of women in certain arenas or activities as well, and especially using the "cleanliness" of a person's gender as the main criteria.
At the same time, I believe in upholding and preserving traditions and customs. It's also true Japan had very strict gender roles until much more recently that the U.S. or U.K., and really in the end the act of excluding women from the Sumo wrestling ring isn't a huge deal. It's just the overarching trend of looking at women as second-rate when it comes to physical abilities or activities that irks me.

networking

Interesting tidbit about how the internet is taking the place of gossiping - or rather forming strong social bonds - around the campfire.

Attachment and detachment

There have been a lot of studies in the news lately about how humans make connections, with humans and the outside world.
First is an interesting study about how there is a correlation between moms' mental states and what side of their bodies they hold their kids on. What was really interesting to me is according to the study the mom's dominant side (left-handed vs. right-handed), didn't matter.
Speaking of kids, another study showed that kids are able to think abstractly, or "use their imaginations" as the study put it, by age 2, which is earlier than originally thought.
Another study found that college age guys surveyed say they will choose romantic partners over career goals. This survey is actually horribly done, as author of the article points out, because it doesn't specify whether the college age dudes thought of "partner" as a hook-up or as a long-term partner. As also stated in the article, men usually work for prestige and career goals so they can have high status in society and have better luck with chicks; however, if they can skip all that and get a chick anyway, most would. Interestingly, most college-aged women surveyed chose career and education over romantic partner. Smart women.

And finally, though this has nothing to do with the subject at hand, scientists have found a so-called "skinny gene."
What worries me about this is that many people immediately are jumping on the idea that now all we have to do is turn on that gene and it will make everyone skinny, forgetting that gene therapy is still in its infancy (like pre-natal), this gene is everywhere in the body so we don't know what other affects it has (as some clever scientist states in the article), and would be really expensive to do.
All the effort seems a lot harder than just exercising regularly and eating more vegetables. Yes, I know this study proves that some people have to work a lot harder than others at staying slim, but I'm sticking by my guns when I say that the American diet is extremely unhealthy (note the study about an increase of cancer in Chinese women who have adopted a western diet), and if we all just ate more fruits and veggies and less Doritos and Coca-Cola we'd be a lot better off.

Mayan Manioc farmers

Archaeologists have finally found good, hard evidence that Mayan people farmed manioc as a way of sustaining their large communities: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-manioc21aug21,1,6721763.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

Hooray for remote sensing

British archaeologists have discovered an 8000-year-old settlement in the British Channel. The silt deposits have preserved wood and other organic matter: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20215343/
This discovery just reminds me how maritime archaeology really has great potential here in the Pacific Northwest, either looking at shipwrecks or even hunting for similar stone-age civilizations, and it's a shame it hasn't really taken off yet. I am aware of a lot of cutting edge remote sensing technology and technicians at my current job, and I almost want to develop a match-making service for the archaeologists and the remote sensing scientists. They could make beautiful imagery together! Just look at what they found outside of Angkor:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20252929/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070813-angkor-wat.html
Apparently the area covers over 1000 square kilometers, or 1000 square miles depending which article you read. The smaller estimate is like saying they found the ruins of the entire L.A. basin. And that's on land, where it's relatively easy to do sensing. What else is out there, people?
Another example of successful maritime archaeology and where remote sensing came in/could have come in handy: A city off the coast of ancient Alexandria was recently discovered: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070731-alexandria-city.html

There is also a load of anth and arch news I've missed out on, but I will try my best to give the top-of-the-hour news report:
There have been several tombs recently discovered all over the lower Americas:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070809-aztec-tomb.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070806-pyramid-tomb.html

In culture, plants known for having medicinal powers in Uganda are being destroyed by overuse by locals, and by a bid to cut down the rainforest and put in a sugar plantation: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070803-sex-tree.html.
U.S. men are experiencing a backlash of the "metrosexual" and are having operations done to look more manly and rugged: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20218432/site/newsweek/?gt1=10252
Researchers in the U.K. are finding a correlation between invading marauders from the north and a rise in demon possessions, and not just a thousand years ago: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070726-devil-england.html

On the evolutionary front, speaking of the U.K., England is more genetically homogenous today than it was 1000 years ago, according to Rus Hoelzel: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070808-england-dna.html.
An odd neanderthal skull is adding fuel to the cross-breeding fire: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070802-neanderthals.html
And, some scientists are saying that teeth found in Asia show that Europeans came from there instead of Africa: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070806-humans-asia.html
Plus, Rafe was supposed to write some commentary about the latest Leaky skull found, but in the meantime here's a quick article about it: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070813093132.htm.
Just as a personal comment, I find it hilarious that for the 15 years or so before I was in college there was nothing going on in the field of physical anthropology, and now it seems like they can't stop finding bones.

Women want girly men?

Lynda Boothroyd came out with a study that finds that women think more feminine-featured men make better dads: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20167786/.

While this is nothing new, the conclusion that she makes, that women don't like macho men at all, is a bit overstated. She even goes on to say that we shouldn't look at masculinity as an indicator of genetic fitness. The article doesn't state whether a certain question was asked of the study participants, but it is an important question: Just because these people in the study think the more feminine-looking man would make a better father, which type of man are they more likely to want to have sex with? One is not exclusive to the other. It is entirely likely that women would want to mate with a masculine man but have a feminine man help raise the kid, if they could get away with it. There are cultures where women mate with their husbands but their brothers help raise the kids, so these women don't need to worry about whether their husband will be a good dad, they just have to make sure he's got strong swimmers (so to speak), and a powerful position in society.

I think that she needed to go deeper than she did and not frame her conclusions with such a Western frame of mind.

Genetic structure correlates with suicide risk

Fascinating study out of switzerland, showing yet another possible genetic influence on behavior

"There is convergent evidence from adoption, family, geographical, immigrant, molecular genetic, twin and, most recently, surname studies of suicide for genetic contributions to suicide risk. Surnames carry information about genetic relatedness or distance and, in patrilineal surname systems, are a close substitute for Y-chromosome markers and haplotypes, since surname transmission is similar to the transmission of the nonrecombining part of the Y chromosome. This study investigated whether differences in regional suicide rates correspond to the genetic structure of the Austrian population. METHODS: Differences in district-level standardized suicide rates 1988-94 between the five major surname regions identified for Austria were analyzed. The surname regions used in the analysis reflect the contemporary population structure and closely follow the natural borders found in the topography of Austria, less so its administrative division into nine states. RESULTS: Surname region accounted for a significant (P < 0.001) and substantial (38%) portion of the variance in district-level suicide rates. Adjusting the suicide rates for a set of five social and economic indicators that are established ecological correlates of suicide prevalence (income, and rates of the divorced, unemployed, elderly and Roman Catholics) left the results essentially unchanged. CONCLUSIONS: Regional differences in suicide rates within Austria correspond to the genetic structure of the population. The present evidence adds to related findings from geographical and surname studies of suicide that suggest a role for genetic risk factors for suicidal behavior. Genetic differences between subpopulations may partially account for the geography of suicide. Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?tmpl=NoSidebarfile&db=PubMed&cmd=Retrieve&list_uids=17634893&dopt=Abstract

For the Orangutans, it's all a charade

Doctoral student Erica Cartmill found that Orangutans communicate with each other using gestures, and when their point isn't getting across, they'll adapt their gestures to try and better explain themselves:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleid=235E35E5-E7F2-99DF-30F52F9AB9A93BB3
Orangutans have been taught sign language before, but Cartmill showed that this is how Orangutans normally speak to each other, or at least to humans who have a tasty-looking banana. These Orangutans had not been taught sign language, and two separate case studies were done at different zoos, so this was really Orangutan improv.
My first thought upon reading this was, "this is is a great demonstration of ape intelligence and how they function together in ape culture."
My second thought was, "I would have loved to do this study if I wasn't so worried about getting my arm ripped off if I didn't give them the banana."