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TABLE 26: Alexander and Noonan's List of "Distinctively Human
Attributes"
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1. Consciousness
(self-awareness)
2. Foresight
(deliberate planning, hope, purpose, death-awareness)
3. Facility in the
development and use of tools (implying consciousness and
foresight)
4. Facility in the use
of language and symbols in communication (implying
consciousness
and
foresight)
5. Culture (a
cumulative body of traditionally transmitted learning-including
language
and tools, and
involving the use of consciousness and foresight)
6. Upright locomotion
usual (de, nc, u, s)
7. Frontal copulation
usual (de, c & nc, u, as)
8. Relative
hairlessness (de, nc, u, as)
9. Longer juvenile
life (d, nc, u, as)
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10. Greater infantile
helplessness (de, nc, u, as)
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11. Parental care
frequently extending into and even across the offspring's adult
life (d, c,
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u?, as)
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12. Unusually
extensive parental care for a group-living primate (de, c?,
nu?, as)
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13. Concealed
ovulation in females (sometimes described as continuous sexual
receptivity,
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continuous estrus,
"sham" estrus, or lack of estrus (d, nc, u, as)
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14. Greater prominence of female orgasm (d, nc?, u,
as)
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15. Unusually copious menstrual discharge (d, nc, u, as)
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16. Menopause (d, nc, u, as)
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17. Close association of close kin of both
sexes, sometimes throughout adulthood (de, c, u?,
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as)
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18. Extensive
extrafamilial nepotism (de, c, u?, as)
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19. Extensive
extrafamilial mating restrictions (de, c, u?, as)
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20. Socially imposed
monogamy (d, c, nu, as)
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21. Extreme
flexibility in rates of forming and dissolving coalitions (d, c, u,
as)
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22. Systems of laws
imposed by the many (or powerful) against the few (or weak) (d, c,
nu,
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as)
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23. Extensive,
organized, intergroup aggression; war (d, c, u?, as)
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24.
Group-against-group competition in play (d, c, u?,'as)
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25. Ancestor worship
(d, c, nu, as)
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26. Political and
other kinds of appointed, elected, or hereditarily succeeding
leaders (d, c,
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nu, as)
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27. The concepts of
gods and life-after-death (d, c, nu, as)
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28. Organized religion
(d, c, nu, as)
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29. Nationalism;
patriotism (d, c, nu, as)
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30. Polities of
thousands or millions of nuclear families (d, c, nu,s)
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Note:
Attributes 1-5 are those considered
distinctively human by most writers; however,
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Alexander and Noonan (1979) say that none of
these five are exclusively human
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characteristics.
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They code attributes
6-30 the following way:
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(d)=distinctive to humans
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(de)=distinctively
expressed
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(u) = universal among
humans
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(nu) = nonuniversal among
humans
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(c) =basically cultural in
origin
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(nc) = noncultural in origin
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(s)=attribute is
sexually symmetrical
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(as)=attribute is
sexually asymmetrical
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This table is a
modified version of material in Alexander and Noonan
(1979).
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1
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