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23 - Wisdom of the Ages

Chimpanzee Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2020

Kevin D. Hunt
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
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Summary

Culture is widely viewed as the hallmark of humanity, a feature unique to human existence and not found among other beings. This distinction, of course, depends on your definition of “culture.” Many definitions follow that of E.B. Tylor (1874): “the sum total of what an individual acquires from his society – those customs, artistic norms, food-habits, and crafts which come to him not by his own creative activity but as a legacy from the past” (Lowie, 1937). If cultural phenomena are boiled down to a mere list, many would emphasize what society teaches its members about art, science, myth, literature, ethics, morality, tradition, and religion. In translating a definition such as that of Taylor and Lowie into something more useful for primates, we might follow that of the co-founder of Japanese primatology, Kinji Imanishi; he took a more pragmatic and streamlined approach. He defined culture as “socially transmitted, adjustable behavior” (Imanishi, 1952). In some quarters, among sociocultural anthropologists, for example, the question of whether chimpanzees (and some other animals) have culture is controversial (Galef, 1992), but among primatologists the possession of culture by chimpanzees is not the least bit controversial (Wrangham et al., 1996; Boesch & Tomasello, 1998; Whiten et al., 1999). Wild studies aside (Wrangham et al., 1996; Boesch & Tomasello, 1998; Whiten et al., 1999), chimpanzees learn to eat with a fork, drink from a cup, wear clothes, name objects, request a hug, and carry their favorite toys in a backpack; denying they possess culture seems willfully blind.

Type
Chapter
Information
Chimpanzee
Lessons from our Sister Species
, pp. 419 - 426
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Wisdom of the Ages
  • Kevin D. Hunt, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book: Chimpanzee
  • Online publication: 10 July 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316339916.023
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  • Wisdom of the Ages
  • Kevin D. Hunt, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book: Chimpanzee
  • Online publication: 10 July 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316339916.023
Available formats
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  • Wisdom of the Ages
  • Kevin D. Hunt, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book: Chimpanzee
  • Online publication: 10 July 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316339916.023
Available formats
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