Photo Eric Kilby (CCBYSA2.0)

Church of Birds

An Eco-History of Myth and Religion

Early humans developed language by imitating birdsong, according to a 2013 linguistic study at MIT. When birds learn to sing, and humans learn to talk, an identical set of more than 50 genes are activated, according to a 2014 study at Duke. Birds and humans share a 75 percent ratio of cortex to brain size, the highest ratio in the animal kingdom, and have similar brain circuits that control vocalization and social behavior.i In The Parrot in the Mirror (Oxford University Press, 2022), behavioral ecologist Antone Martinho-Truswell concluded that human behavior is far closer to birds than other mammals.

Scholars believe the remarkable parallels between bird and human brains is an example of convergent evolution, when two species independently evolve similar traits, but new evidence suggests there’s more to the story. The fossil remains of every ancestor in the human family tree are found exclusively on the busiest bird migration routes and largest avian seasonal grounds around the world. If our ancestors followed migratory birds, their epic journeys could have fueled an evolutionary process that led to a greater capacity for communication, collaboration, and learning.

Evolution by imitation

Bird migration routes have remained fixed over vast expanses of time for several reasons, including topography, geography, and the various benefits inherent in volcanic regions. Migratory birds maximize flying efficiency by avoiding large bodies of water, following coastlines, and coasting on thermal updrafts from volcanism. Because migratory birds follow the sun north and south, the largest and most diverse avian seasonal grounds are in the far north and southernmost regions (see map).

Horizontal lines show areas where three or more global bird flyways overlap around the world, producing high populations and a wide diversity of migratory birds. Bird map courtesy of BirdLife International

Periods of global warming and cooling change how far birds travel north or south, but the location of the routes stay fixed over vast expanses of time, obeying the laws of flying efficiency.

Overlaying the human fossil record and tool-making sites on fixed bird migration routes yields astonishing results. There’s a near-exact correlation between human habitation and the busiest migration corridors and largest seasonal grounds around the world, yielding compelling clues about human evolution. It appears all human ancestors had the ecological awareness to understand that the highest populations and widest diversity of birds were leading indicators of flourishing ecosystems.

Between the homeland of chimpanzees in equatorial Africa and the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa is a corridor of three overlapping global flyways, a rare occurrence producing extremely high bird populations and a wide variety of nearly 1,000 species. The Cradle of Humankind is located on a massive wintering ground for migratory birds, where Australopithecus africanus lived between 2 and 3.2 million years ago, and Paranthropus robustus lived from 1.2 to 1.8 million years ago. Fossils of Homo erectus and Homo naledi were also discovered there.

From north to south, blue dots show where bipedal primates were found in Bavaria, Germany and the Cradle of Humankind on the East Atlantic Flyway. Bird map courtesy of BirdLife International

In Bavaria, Germany, the fossil remains of the bipedal Danuvius guggenmosi were discovered in 2015 on a massive avian seasonal ground fed by three bird routes, two of which link to equatorial Africa. A partial skeleton was estimated to be 11.6 million years old, making it the oldest bipedal primate on record, according to a November 2019 study in Nature.

Between 6 and 7 million years ago, the bipedal Sahelanthropus tchadensis lived northeast of Lake Chad on a seasonal ground for migratory birds linked to equatorial Africa by a route of the Mediterranean-Black Sea Flyway. In East Africa, the fossil remains of six more bipedal primates living between 1 and 6 million years ago were exclusively found where the routes of two global flyways overlap and/or near avian seasonal grounds (see Table I).

From north to south, blue dots show where bipedal primates were found in Bavaria, Germany, Chad, East Africa, and the Cradle of Humankind on the Mediterranean-Black Sea Flyway. Bird map courtesy of BirdLife International

From north to south, blue dots show where bipedal primates were found in East Africa and the Cradle of Humankind on the East Asia-East Africa Flyway. Bird map courtesy of BirdLife International

It appears that over a span of more than 11 million years, at least 10 ape-human hybrids developed bipedalism in conjunction with following the busiest bird migration corridors and living on avian seasonal grounds. While imitating the practice of migration, the hybrids may also have copied how birds walk and run—on two feet. The bipedal primates were between 3 and 5 feet tall, typically weighed under 100 pounds, and were physically defenseless but quite capable of making long-distance treks.

Following migratory birds offered at least three Darwinian advantages: 1) bird routes never stray far from fresh water and food resources, 2) birds give recognizable alarm calls when predators are near, and 3) the scattering behavior of birds is a recognizable warning of catastrophic storms hours before they arrive. Also, bird eggs would have been a reliable source of nutritious food.

Table I: Ten bipedal ape-human hybrids on bird migration corridors/seasonal grounds

Species Avian environment Location

Time period BP

Danuvius guggenmosi Seasonal ground; three routes from two flyways converge Bavaria, Germany 11.6m years
Sahelanthropus tchadensis On bird route near a seasonal ground Northeast Chad 6 – 7m years
Ardipithecus kadabba On bird route near a seasonal ground Middle Awash, Ethiopia 5.2 – 5.8m years
Orrorin tugenensis Routes of two flyways converge Tugen Hills, Kenya 5.7 – 6.1m years
Ardipithecus ramidus On bird route near a seasonal ground Middle Awash, Ethiopia 4.4m years
Australopithecus anamensis Routes of two flyways converge Kanapoi, Kenya 3.8 – 4.2m years
Australopithecus afarensis Seasonal ground; three routes from two flyways overlap Lake Turkana, Kenya 2.95 – 3.85m years
Australopithecus africanus Seasonal ground where three global flyways converge. Cradle of Humankind, S. Africa 2 – 3.6m years
Paranthropus robustus Seasonal ground where three global flyways converge. Cradle of Humankind, S. Africa 1.2 – 1.8m years
Paranthrapus boisei Seasonal ground where three routes and two flyways overlap Lake Turkana, Kenya 1.15 – 2.5m years

Seed-bearing birds diversified the landscape

In January 2016, a remarkable discovery published by The Royal Society of Biology in London showed that migratory birds play a key role in maintaining flourishing ecosystems. It seems birds carry enough seeds over hundreds of miles to be classified as “vectors of (seed) dispersal.” The study found that migratory birds substantially diversify the flora on their seasonal grounds, and along bird routes. The study made headlines and confirmed Charles Darwin’s suspicion that birds spread seeds around the world.

The study also confirmed the truth behind a widespread cross-cultural myth that describes birds bringing the seeds of vegetation to the soil at creation. The Kaonde of Zambia say honey birds brought seeds to the first humans. In Chinese legend, Shennong the Fire Emperor came upon a phoenix dropping “glistening golden grain” from its beak and creating a field of tender green shoots. The Hidatsa of North Dakota believed geese delivered corn, ducks brought beans and swans carried squash seeds. In the Caribbean, the Arawak say hummingbirds brought tobacco seeds from the sky. Similar myths about seed-bearing birds are found across ancient and indigenous cultures around the globe.

Plotting the fossil record of the entire Homo genus on bird migration maps shows the same near-exact correlation as the 10 bipedal primates. All human ancestors are found on the busiest migration corridors and largest seasonal grounds, where at least two global bird flyways converge.

If all human ancestors followed bird migration routes, the chances for the meager populations to meet were far higher, and their shared interest in birds could have laid the groundwork for healthy social bonds. Geneticists believe the widespread interbreeding among all subspecies of the genus Homo in the Near East, Europe, and Asia was responsible for the hardiness and ultimate success of Homo sapiens.

A fork in the road

But how did this penchant for following birds begin? If humans descended from chimpanzees, how and why did the original hybrids disperse out of equatorial Africa? Answering these questions is purely speculative but there are several intriguing factors that may have played a role.

For more than 25 million years, the primates of equatorial Africa lived on the largest seasonal ground for migratory birds in the world. Every year up to 1,000 different bird species arrive on seven routes from three global flyways, coming from all cardinal directions and as far away as eastern Siberia, attracted in part by the fact that the region enjoys 12 hours of sunlight year-round. Every year hundreds of millions of birds fill equatorial Africa with color and birdsong for six months before they suddenly fly away beyond the horizon to an unknown destination.

Primatologist Jane Goodall observed that dominant older chimpanzee males expelled troublesome adolescents from the groupii, leaving them to fend for themselves. With their lives in serious danger, desperate young chimps looking for a way to survive may have turned to one of the most familiar, successful, and populous creatures in their environment: migratory birds. It’s possible that groups of adolescent chimps decided to join the successful ‘tribe’ of birds and imitated their penchant for migration.

Aristotle wrote that humans are “the most imitative creatures in the world.” The human practice of imitation is currently at the heart of the emerging field of social cognitive neuroscience. A 2009 paper in The Royal Society of Biological Sciences found that imitation “powers cognitive and social development; promotes cooperation and well-being; and provides a channel of cultural inheritance.” Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, believes “Human beings are the premier imitators on the planet.”iii

Adolescent risk-taking

Adolescent chimps expelled from family groups may have been ready and willing to take big risks. Neurologists now believe both chimpanzee and human adolescents take more risks than any other age group because it’s a critical part of learning and brain development.

“Research has shown that (human) adolescents are more willing than adults to lean into uncertainty and explore situations in which there is a potential for a reward (in whatever form), but the outcome is not assured. This tolerance for ambiguous outcomes is essential to learning and development during adolescence,” according to “The Science Behind Adolescent Risk Taking and Exploration,” published by the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent.

A separate 2012 study found that “What distinguished adolescents was their willingness to accept ambiguous conditions—situations in which the likelihood of winning and losing is unknown.”iv It seems taking a risk with an unknown outcome results in a dopamine spike that wakes up other parts of the brain, improving attention and focus. “This is a kind of amplified learning that’s actively shaping the connections between neural systems … ” the study said. Simply put, the release of epinephrine and dopamine causes the senses to sharpen and the brain to work faster. Afterwards, the vivid memory of the experience becomes a learning tool.

A 2023 studyv found that adolescent chimps share some of the same risk-taking behavior found in human adolescents. “Adolescent chimpanzees are in some sense facing the same psychological tempest that human teens are,” said lead researcher Alexandra Rosati of the University of Michigan.

If adolescent chimps were expelled from their groups and decided to take a risky leap and join the ‘tribe’ of migratory birds, the pragmatic reality of following them likely required new levels of communication and collaboration. The practice of long-range migration could have resulted in a systematic, ongoing process of risk-taking and learning that may have spurred increases in brain size.

Rather than acting out of instinct as part of a group of other chimps in a relatively static home environment, the migrating primates were forced to understand their position in the greater natural world, to recognize where they fit in with shifting natural landscapes and unknown territory. Life was no longer a series of predictable events governed by pre-programmed behavior patterns. The need to learn and adapt on the fly may ultimately have led to greater self-awareness and higher states of consciousness.

Bipedal primates started to spread across Africa about 6-7 million years ago, at the same time that human DNA diverged from chimpanzees, including changes to the language gene (FOXP2)vi that led to a greater capacity for learning.vii

Finally, curiosity may have played a motivating role in chimps migrating out of equatorial Africa, and in subsequent human ancestors exploring the world. The impulse of curiosity drives certain animals to seek and digest information, including apes.viii A 2015 study in the journal Neuron linked curiosity in humans with learning and development.

“Curiosity is a basic element of our cognition, yet its biological function, mechanisms, and neural underpinning remain poorly understood,” wrote psychologist Celeste Kidd of UC Berkeley and neuroscientist Ben Hayden of the University of Minnesota. “It is nonetheless a motivator for learning, influential in decision-making, and crucial for healthy development.” Celeste and Kidd defined curiosity as an “internally motivated … form of information-seeking … ”

Perhaps it’s no accident that the dispersal of bipedal primates and the trekking of Homo erectus and later human ancestors reflects the plot of journey stories throughout human history. The genre of the journey story is defined by a protagonist and his or her friends who attain a higher level of wisdom by learning and growing amid unexpected challenges and setbacks as they travel through unexplored territory.

The divinity of birds

Another possible factor that may have motivated our distant ancestors to follow birds was their seemingly miraculous qualities.That birds could fly may have been enough for our distant ancestors to perceive them as godlike.

But perhaps the most miraculous aspect of birds was their apparent ability to predict the future. Flocks of birds scatter hours before the arrival of a hurricane, leaving the impression they knew a storm was coming. Across dozens of cultures around the world, birds were believed to have knowledge of the future. Today, scientists believe birds sense distant storms because they can perceive changes in barometric pressure and hear the low frequencies of distant thunder.

The use of feathers, talons and eggs as artifacts in rituals suggests birds were perceived as divine beings dating back at least 176,000 years to Homo neanderthalensis. Numerous recent studies across Europe concluded that Neanderthals intentionally removed feathers and talons from eagles and vultures and used them as symbolic artifacts in ritual practices. Forensic analysis of eight eagle talons found at a Neanderthal site at Krapina cave in Croatia revealed cut marks suggesting they were part of a necklace estimated to be 130,000 years old. The ritual use of feathers, talons and necklaces has continued among indigenous cultures to the present day.

Deep inside Bruniquel Cave in southern France is an oval ring 14 feet across and 20 feet long created 176,000 years ago by Neanderthals to hold symbolic rituals, including small fires, according to a study authored by 18 scientists in the May 2016 issue of Nature. The stones of the ring were made by heating and breaking stalagmites and stalactites. The approximate 2:3 ratio of the oval ring is common in bird’s eggs, including hens, ducks, turkeys and pheasants.

A five-hole flute made 42,000 years ago from the wing bone of a griffon vulture was found in Hohle Fels Cave in Bavaria, on the same avian seasonal ground where fossil remains of the bipedal Danuvius guggenmosi were discovered. Archaeologists believe the flute was made by modern humans recently arrived from Africa. Long associated with birdsong across cultures, the flute may have been played in the echoing cave in the context of a forgotten ritual.

Birds are often identified as divine ancestors: From Siberia to northern Japan, indigenous cultures identified whooper swans as the ancestral mother. The Iban of Borneo say two birds shaped earth into people and brought them to life with bird calls. The creation myth of the Osage of Kansas describes ancestral souls existing only in spirit until a redbird volunteered to make human children by changing its wings into arms and beaks into noses. The redbird concluded by giving humans the gift of language.

These and dozens more bird myths across cultures now appear to paint a compelling picture of human evolution, fueled in part by the imitation of birds.

i The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (Penguin Books, 2017)

ii “Social Rejection Exclusion and Shunning Among the Gombe Chimpanzees” by Jane Goodall, California Academy of Sciences, 1984.

iii “Beyond flattery: Why imitation could be humanity’s most distinctive feature,” in The Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 2017.

iv “Adolescents’ risk-taking behavior is driven by tolerance to ambiguity,” by Agnieszkal, Tymula et al, published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), October 1, 2012.

v “Distinct Developmental Trajectories for Risky and Impulsive Decision-Making in Chimpanzees,” in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, January 2023.

vi Differences between human and chimpanzee genomes and their implications in gene expression, protein functions and biochemical properties of the two species,in BMC Genomics, September 10, 2020.

vii “The evolution of human altriciality and brain development in comparative context,” in Nature Ecology & Evolution, December 4, 2023.

viii “The curious case of great ape curiosity and how it is shaped by sociality,” in Ethology: International Journal of Behavioural Biology, May 13, 2022.

Ben H. Gagnon is an award-winning journalist and author of Church of Birds: An Eco-History of Myth and Religion (Collective Ink, 2023).

Church of Birds

An Eco-History of Myth and Religion

Ben H. Gagnon is an award-winning journalist and author of Church of Birds: an eco-history of Myth and Religion (Collective Ink, 2023) and a novel of historical fiction, People of the Flow: A Journey into Ireland’s Ancient Past (Beacon Publishing Group, 2019).

See an interview with Ben about his book, Church of Birds, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3uHO9zw3Nc

One thought on “Migratory birds may have played a key role in human evolution”

  1. Henry says:

    Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 
    Gen 1:2  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 
    Gen 1:3  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 
    Gen 1:4  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 
    Gen 1:5  And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 
    Gen 1:6  And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 
    Gen 1:7  And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 
    Gen 1:8  And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. 
    Gen 1:9  And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 
    Gen 1:10  And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 
    Gen 1:11  And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 
    Gen 1:12  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 
    Gen 1:13  And the evening and the morning were the third day. 
    Gen 1:14  And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 
    Gen 1:15  And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 
    Gen 1:16  And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 
    Gen 1:17  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 
    Gen 1:18  And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 
    Gen 1:19  And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 
    Gen 1:20  And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 
    Gen 1:21  And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 
    Gen 1:22  And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 
    Gen 1:23  And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 
    Gen 1:24  And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 
    Gen 1:25  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 
    Gen 1:26  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 
    Gen 1:27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 
    Gen 1:28  And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 
    Gen 1:29  And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 
    Gen 1:30  And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 
    Gen 1:31  And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 

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