Dating chimpanzees

摘要

To a casual observer, one chimpanzee can seem much the same as another. Yet there are four distinct subspecies of chimpanzee living across Africa today, each of which is made up of many discrete communities. Within these groups, specific behavioural characteristics are shared from one generation to the next, resulting in a patchwork of behaviours that bears the hallmarks of cultural transmission .Recent studies have shown how such transmission may occur, in both experimental and wild groups. But one crucial factor was missing: time. Now, writing in the Journal of Human Evolution, Langergraber et al. show that some modern chimpanzee communities have probably existed for hundreds or even thousands of years. By providing a chronological scaffold for chimpanzee behaviour, this research offers a rare opportunity to examine the tempo of chimpanzee cultural evolution.