Claudio Tennie

Last updated
Claudio Tennie
Born1976 (age 48–49)
Germany
Education2004 - 2009 - University of Göttingen (PhD)

1999 - 2003 - University of Bielefeld (diploma)

1998 - 1999 - University of Edinburgh, UK

1996 - 1998 - Philipps Universität Marburg (pre-diploma)
OccupationsScientist, Research group leader
Years active2004-present
Employer(s)2017-present - University of Tübingen, Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology

2012 - 2017 - University of Birmingham, Faculty of Psychology, UK

2004 - 2012 - Max Plank for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

Contents

TitlePD, Dr. habil., Dr. rer. nat.
Awards2025 - DFG Cluster of Excellence ("HUMAN ORIGINS")

2017 - ERC Starting Grant ("STONECULT" project)

2015 - NERC Innovation Project Grant

2013 - ESRC Future Research Leader Grant

Claudio Tennie (born 1976) [1] is a German evolutionary anthropologist and primatologist, whose main interest is the origin of human cultural evolution. In 2009 Tennie and collegues proposed the Zone of Latent Solution (ZLS) theory, that proposed the main conditions for the evolution of human cumulative culture and seeks to explain differences observed between contemporary human and most animal cultures. [2] [3] As the main focus of Tennie's research is the evolution of special types of culture within the human lineage, his experimental and theoretical studies intersect multiple research fields, including biology, psychology, archaeology and philosophy, with special emphasis on behavioural biology [4] , comparative and developmental psychology, [5] [6] cognitive archaeology [7] of early stone tools [8] , and philosophy of science [9] .

Education and Career

Tennie studied biology at the University of Marburg (1996–1998), where he obtained his intermediate diplom [10] . He also attended biology, ethology and philosophy classes at the University of Edinburgh (1998–1999) and then completed his diplom thesis in behavioral biology and psychology at the University of Bielefeld (1999–2003) [10] . His diplom thesis topic was on the difference between imitation and emulation (types of social learning) in non-human great apes, which he tested at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Centre in Leipzig [10] . During his PhD, Tennie stayed at this Centre, where he was supervised by Michael Tomasello and Josep Call. Tennie defended his PhD thesis ("Human culture versus great ape traditions: Mechanisms of observational learning in human children and great apes") on 20.11.2009 [1] . In the same year he and his two PhD supervisors published the initial version of the ZLS theory which added animal behavioural principles to the cumulative culture theories by Tomasello [2] . In April 2024 Tennie successfully defended a rare triple habilitation in prehistory and early history, psychology, behavioural biology and comparative biocognition, at the University of Tuebingen [10]

After his first postdoctoral position (2009–2012) at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, [10] Tennie became a Birmingham Fellow and eventually a tenured facultee member with his Comparative Cognition Research Group at the University of Birmingham, UK (2012–2017). [11] In 2013 Tennie was appointed Adjunct Scientist at Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago, USA [12] . In the same year he was granted an ESRC Future Research Leader Grant. In 2017 he received a new permanent position as a group leader ("Tools and Culture among Early Hominins") at the University of Tuebingen, where he resides to this day [10] . Tennie was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2016 for his "STONECULT" project [13] [14] , which started in 2017 testing early stone tools for the first evidence of special types of cultural evolution in the archaeological record. Starting in 2026, Tennie and a team of other investigators will lead the "Human Origins" Cluster of Excellence (funded by the German Research Foundation DFG).

Zone of Latent Solutions

First published in 2009, Zone of Latent Solutions (ZLS) is defined as a zone of behaviors (solutions) that can be principally achieved in suitable circumstances by motivated, typically developed individuals of a given species without the need to copy the underlying "know-how" [2] . The exact ways in which these solutions are achieved biologically (e.g. trial and error learning or associations) are irrelevant to the ZLS account, because ZLS theory focuses on know how copying. Thus, as long as its know how, or related know how, need not be copied from others for the target behavior to come about (where it can come about with a non-zero likelihood, which can be low or high), a behavior is considered latent. Tennie and collegues stated in 2009 that contemporary apes have cultures, but that these types of cultures are sustained by social learning types other than know-how copying. As such, and following evolutionary logic, his prediction was that ape behavioral ranges should largely or completely be restricted to latent solutions, and with it, to their zones of latent solutions. These zones can grow and change, but doing so appears to require slow evolution of behavior mainly via biological routes. Supporting the ZLS theory of apes, Tennie and his group have repeatedly shown that motivated, but naive to the target know-how, captive apes can invent tool use behavior [15] [16] . Similarly, Tennie and colleagues showed that even when motivated, these apes did not copy know how beyond their individial ZLS reach under controlled test conditions [17] [18] .

According to ZLS theory humans have some basic latent solutions, too, [19] but in conrast to apes, humans can copy know how beyond their realistic individual reach [20] [17] . Tennie suggested that human-enculturated and human-trained apes may artificially gain the ability to copy know-how (from humans), which means that the experimental data derived from such individuals cannot stand in for performances of wild apes and species in general (artificiality of cognition and test conditions) [18] . Since early 2010s Tennie has refined and extended the ZLS theory and its predictions. For example, he later proposed a clarification that a ZLS-derived resulting solution is expected to have little to no path dependent detailed variability [2] in contrast to a solution that would require a multitude of successive transmission events ("cumulative culture") based on know how copying [21] .

Overall, the original hypothesis by Tennie, et al 2009 already proposed that the behaviors exhibited by great apes can be invented and sometimes are invented by culturally unconnected individuals independently, even if some of these independent inventions happen at low frequencies. According to Tennie, ape culture exists, but is limited to the (evolving) boundaries of their species' ZLS [2] . This proposal follows and was inspired by classical conclusions by Köhler on restricted patterns in chimpanzee social learning and by Vygotsky on special ways in which humans culturally grow [22] [23] . The very term zone of latent solutions is designed to act as the baseline extension of Vygotskys variously named zones of development [24]

While documented ape cultural practices appear to sometimes be geographically restricted and are often interpreted as unique to the given populations and, with it, humanlike in expression and underlying social learning demands. [25] , Tennie and colleagues suggest an alternative, parsimonious explanation [3] [26] [27] . They proposed socially mediated solution (re-)invention, which, according to them, depends on three main and interacting factors: "(i) the species' cognitive and learning skills, as well as biological predispositions (where these exist); (ii) the ecologies to which the population is and were exposed; and (iii) the social situation in terms of the age and rank and number of practitioners that are and were potentially observable, as well as the general 'sociability' of the species" [2] . Social learning of various types, though absent know-how copying, can then create and maintain ape cultures. In accordance with this view, Tennie and collegues were able to show that the vast majority of claims of locally unique solutions were erroneusly labelled. Instead, these behaviours appear independently elsewhere, i.e. were not locally unique; just as the ZLS theory predicts [27]

ZLS and human Evolution ("STONECULT" project)

In 2017 Tennie was awarded an ERC Starting Project "STONECULT" funding to research the timeline of cumulative cultural know how in the human lineage. Tennie proposed that time of the onset of this special type of cultural evolution in the human lineage can be tested based on a reanalysis of paleoanthropological and extant primate material artifacts and behaviours, supplemented by experiments and models. [13] . According to evolutionary theory, replication-based cultural evolution should lead to an increasing artifact variability over time, across species and across the landscape, in path-dependent manners [2] .

However, the earliest types of stone tools, such as Oldowan and early Acheulean stone tools, show a lack of such differentiated variation over (culturally relevant) time, species and space. Tennie and his colleagues interpret these stases in the light of the ZLS theory. These patterns are expected patterns if socially mediated re-innovation of know how were responsible, in the absence or near absence of know how copying [8] .

Similarly to the extant ape cultures, early stone tools would then have been cultural, but would have fully or partially lacked know-how copying; lacking one of the necessary factors that could have driven their cultural evolution in fast, diversifying and path-dependent ways. The STONECULT project's findings majorly supported this critical view as they showed that the earliest behavioral know-how required for the earliest stone tools does not require know-how copying [28] . The project showed that naive, captive orangutans can spontaneously perform such know how to make artefacts resembling the earliest stone tools [29] . An agent-based model also demonstrated that ape-like and early hominin-like cultural patterns do not require know-how copying [30] . Upon completion of "STONECULT" project, Tennie concluded that the emergence of special, replicatory types of cultural evolution of know-how in hominins should be attributed to a later time, i.e. to the last million years [8]

Selected works

References

  1. 1 2 "Dr. rer. nat. Claudio Tennie". Klartext (in German). Retrieved 2025-03-24.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tennie, Claudio; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael (2009-08-27). "Ratcheting up the ratchet: on the evolution of cumulative culture". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 364 (1528): 2405–2415. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0052. ISSN   1471-2970. PMC   2865079 . PMID   19620111.
  3. 1 2 Tennie, Claudio; Bandini, Elisa; van Schaik, Carel P.; Hopper, Lydia M. (2020). "The zone of latent solutions and its relevance to understanding ape cultures". Biology & Philosophy. 35 (5): 55. doi:10.1007/s10539-020-09769-9. ISSN   0169-3867. PMC   7548278 . PMID   33093737.
  4. ↑ Tennie, Claudio; Hedwig, Daniela; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael (June 2008). "An experimental study of nettle feeding in captive gorillas". American Journal of Primatology. 70 (6): 584–593. doi:10.1002/ajp.20532. ISSN   1098-2345. PMID   18330896.
  5. ↑ Tennie, Claudio; Greve, Kathrin; Gretscher, Heinz; Call, Josep (October 2010). "Two-year-old children copy more reliably and more often than nonhuman great apes in multiple observational learning tasks". Primates; Journal of Primatology. 51 (4): 337–351. doi:10.1007/s10329-010-0208-4. ISSN   1610-7365. PMID   20686814.
  6. ↑ Reindl, E.; Tennie, C.; Apperly, I. A.; Lugosi, Z.; Beck, S. R. (2022). "Young children spontaneously invent three different types of associative tool use behaviour". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 4 e5. doi:10.1017/ehs.2022.4. ISSN   2513-843X. PMC   10426097 . PMID   37588934.
  7. ↑ Tennie, Claudio; Braun, David R.; Premo, L. S.; McPherron, Shannon P. (2016), Haidle, Miriam N.; Conard, Nicholas J.; Bolus, Michael (eds.), "The Island Test for Cumulative Culture in the Paleolithic", The Nature of Culture: Based on an Interdisciplinary Symposium 'The Nature of Culture', Tübingen, Germany, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 121–133, doi:10.1007/978-94-017-7426-0_11, ISBN   978-94-017-7426-0 , retrieved 2025-03-24
  8. 1 2 3 Tennie, Claudio, Tehrani, Jamshid J.; Kendal, Jeremy; Kendal, Rachel (eds.), "The Earliest Tools and Cultures of Hominins", The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, Oxford University Press, p. 0, ISBN   978-0-19-886925-2 , retrieved 2025-03-24
  9. ↑ Tennie, Claudio; Planer, Ronald J. (2025-01-14). "All that glitters is not gold: The false-symbol problem in archaeology". The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 48 e18. doi:10.1017/S0140525X24000888. ISSN   1469-1825. PMID   39807725.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "PD Dr. Claudio Tennie | University of Tübingen". uni-tuebingen.de. Retrieved 2025-03-24.
  11. ↑ "Claudio Tennie, University of Birmingham (Archived with Wayback Machine)". February 4, 2015. Archived from the original on 4 February 2015.
  12. ↑ "Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes". Lincoln Park Zoo. Retrieved 2025-03-24.
  13. 1 2 "Do early stone tools indicate a hominin ability to accumulate culture? | STONECULT | Projekt | Fact Sheet | H2020". CORDIS | European Commission. doi:10.3030/714658 . Retrieved 2025-08-06.
  14. ↑ "FIT - Project". fit.uni-tuebingen.de. Retrieved 2025-10-25.
  15. ↑ Bandini, Elisa; Grossmann, Johannes; Funk, Martina; Albiach-Serrano, Anna; Tennie, Claudio (September 2021). "Naïve orangutans ( Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus ) individually acquire nut-cracking using hammer tools". American Journal of Primatology. 83 (9) e23304. doi:10.1002/ajp.23304. ISSN   0275-2565. PMID   34378813.
  16. ↑ Bandini, Elisa; Tennie, Claudio (July 2019). "Individual acquisition of "stick pounding" behavior by naïve chimpanzees". American Journal of Primatology. 81 (6) e22987. doi:10.1002/ajp.22987. ISSN   0275-2565. PMID   31087361.
  17. 1 2 Clay, Zanna; Tennie, Claudio (September 2018). "Is Overimitation a Uniquely Human Phenomenon? Insights From Human Children as Compared to Bonobos". Child Development. 89 (5): 1535–1544. doi:10.1111/cdev.12857. ISSN   0009-3920. PMID   28741660.
  18. 1 2 Tennie, Claudio; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael (2012-08-08). Ferrari, Pier Francesco (ed.). "Untrained Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Fail to Imitate Novel Actions". PLOS ONE. 7 (8) e41548. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...741548T. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041548 . ISSN   1932-6203. PMC   3414512 . PMID   22905102.
  19. ↑ Reindl, E.; Beck, S. R.; Apperly, I. A.; Tennie, C. (2016-02-24). "Young children spontaneously invent wild great apes' tool-use behaviours". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 283 (1825) 20152402. doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.2402. ISSN   0962-8452. PMC   4810823 . PMID   26911964.
  20. ↑ Reindl, E.; Apperly, I. A.; Beck, S. R.; Tennie, C. (2017-05-11). "Young children copy cumulative technological design in the absence of action information". Scientific Reports. 7 (1) 1788. Bibcode:2017NatSR...7.1788R. doi:10.1038/s41598-017-01715-2. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   5431834 . PMID   28496154.
  21. ↑ Tomasello, Michael (2001-03-01). "Cultural Transmission: A View from Chimpanzees and Human Infants". Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 32 (2): 135–146. doi:10.1177/0022022101032002002. ISSN   0022-0221.
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Kohler (1925). The Mentality Of Apes.
  23. ↑ Vygotsky, L. S. (1980-10-15). Cole, Michael; Jolm-Steiner, Vera; Scribner, Sylvia; Souberman, Ellen (eds.). Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvjf9vz4. ISBN   978-0-674-07668-6. JSTOR   j.ctvjf9vz4.
  24. ↑ Reindl, Eva; Bandini, Elisa; Tennie, Claudio (2018), Di Paolo, Laura Desirèe; Di Vincenzo, Fabio; De Petrillo, Francesca (eds.), "The Zone of Latent Solutions and Its Relation to the Classics: Vygotsky and Köhler", Evolution of Primate Social Cognition, vol. 5, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 231–248, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93776-2_15, ISBN   978-3-319-93775-5 , retrieved 2025-10-12
  25. ↑ Whiten, A.; Goodall, J.; McGrew, W. C.; Nishida, T.; Reynolds, V.; Sugiyama, Y.; Tutin, C. E. G.; Wrangham, R. W.; Boesch, C. (June 1999). "Cultures in chimpanzees". Nature. 399 (6737): 682–685. Bibcode:1999Natur.399..682W. doi:10.1038/21415. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   10385119.
  26. ↑ Motes-Rodrigo, Alba; Tennie, Claudio (October 2022). "Captive great apes tend to innovate simple tool behaviors quickly". American Journal of Primatology. 84 (10) e23311. doi:10.1002/ajp.23311. ISSN   1098-2345. PMID   34339543.
  27. 1 2 Motes-Rodrigo, Alba; Tennie, Claudio (August 2021). "The Method of Local Restriction: in search of potential great ape culture-dependent forms". Biological Reviews. 96 (4): 1441–1461. doi:10.1111/brv.12710. ISSN   1464-7931. PMID   33779036.
  28. ↑ Snyder, William D.; Reeves, Jonathan S.; Tennie, Claudio (2022-07-08). "Early knapping techniques do not necessitate cultural transmission". Science Advances. 8 (27) eabo2894. Bibcode:2022SciA....8O2894S. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo2894. ISSN   2375-2548. PMC   9258951 . PMID   35857472.
  29. ↑ Motes-Rodrigo, Alba; McPherron, Shannon P.; Archer, Will; Hernandez-Aguilar, R. Adriana; Tennie, Claudio (2022-02-16). Iovita, Radu (ed.). "Experimental investigation of orangutans' lithic percussive and sharp stone tool behaviours". PLOS ONE. 17 (2) e0263343. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1763343M. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263343 . ISSN   1932-6203. PMC   8849460 . PMID   35171926.
  30. ↑ Acerbi, Alberto; Snyder, William Daniel; Tennie, Claudio (2022-12-15). "The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance". Scientific Reports. 12 (1) 21680. Bibcode:2022NatSR..1221680A. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-25646-9. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   9755256 . PMID   36522390.
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