The Cultured Ape?

摘要

While attending a seminar held at a mountaintop inn near Rio de Janeiro one beautiful day in June 1996,1 inadvertently started a heated argument. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, which is based in New York City, had gathered fifteen primatologists, three historians and philosophers of science, two cultural anthropologists and an archaeologist to spend a week discussing how anthropological views of primate societies may be biased by the gender, race and various other characteristics of the scientist. The topic that day was culture, and I offered my perspective as a biological anthropologist with a decade of field experience studying African great apes. Chimpanzees, I began confidently, display a rich cultural diversity. Wild chimpanzee populations differ—or so I was about to continue—more than just in their gene pools. I was prepared to describe how different chimpanzee groups have distinct cultures, comprising unique assortments of learned traditions in tool use, groom- ing and hunting styles, and other features seen only among the most socially sophisticated primates. Go from one forest to another and you will encounter a new chimpanzee culture, just as a walk between two human villages may introduce you to different ways of building boats or celebrating marriages. That is what I wanted to say—but I never got the chance.