Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications for Human EvolutionThe chimpanzee of all other living species is our closest relation, with whom we last shared a common ancestor about five million years ago. These African apes make and use a rich and varied kit of tools, and of the primates they are the only consistent and habitual tool-users and tool-makers. Chimpanzees meet the criteria of a culture as originally defined for human beings by socio-cultural anthropologists. They show sex differences in using tools to obtain and to process a variety of plant and animal foods. The technological gap between chimpanzees and human societies that live by foraging (hunter-gatherers) is surprisingly narrow at least for food-getting. Different communities of wild chimpanzees have different tool-kits and not all of this regional and local variation can be explained by the demands of the physical and biotic environments in which they live. Some differences are likely to be customs based on socially derived and symbolically encoded traditions. This book describes and analyzes the tool-use of humankind's nearest living relation. It focuses on field studies of these apes across Africa, comparing their customs to see if they can justifiably be termed cultural. It makes direct comparisons with the material culture of human foraging peoples. The book evaluates the chimpanzee as an evolutionary model, showing that chimpanzee behavior helps us to infer the origins of technology in human prehistory. |
Contents
Patterns of culture? | 1 |
The prey | 2 |
Six key sites | 3 |
Other sites | 6 |
Nonhuman culture? | 10 |
Studying chimpanzees | 15 |
Development of chimpanzee research | 16 |
Studies in captivity | 20 |
Bananasharing | 107 |
Other foodsharing | 111 |
Other apes | 112 |
Origins of sexual division of labour | 113 |
Origins of tooluse | 115 |
Chimpanzees and foragers | 121 |
Ideal versus actual comparisons | 123 |
humans and apes compared | 127 |
Sites of study | 23 |
Centralwestern chimpanzees | 25 |
Western chimpanzees | 27 |
Captive chimpanzees | 28 |
Methods of study | 29 |
Studies in nature | 30 |
Methodological issues | 34 |
Studies in captivity | 36 |
Collecting data | 38 |
Conclusion | 39 |
Chimpanzees as apes | 40 |
Sources and methods | 41 |
Patterns of tooluse | 44 |
Bonobo | 47 |
Orangutan | 49 |
Highland gorilla | 51 |
Gibbon | 52 |
Socioecology | 53 |
Brain | 55 |
Hands | 57 |
Apes and their tools | 59 |
Ancestral hominoids | 62 |
Cultured chimpanzees? | 65 |
Grooming | 67 |
Defining culture | 72 |
Japanese macaques | 77 |
Additional conditions for culture | 78 |
Chimpanzees as culturebearers? | 79 |
Culture denied? | 82 |
Chimpanzee sexes | 88 |
Sex or gender? An aside | 89 |
Termitefishing | 90 |
Chimpanzees tools and termites | 92 |
Antdipping | 93 |
Chimpanzees and ants | 97 |
meat | 99 |
Carnivory elsewhere | 102 |
Sex and faunivory | 103 |
Nutcracking | 105 |
Foodsharing | 106 |
Tasmanian humans and Tanzanian apes | 131 |
Choosing samples | 134 |
Tasmanian aborigines | 136 |
Tanzanian chimpanzees | 139 |
Subsistants compared | 141 |
Similarities and differences | 144 |
Food acquisition and processing | 146 |
Conclusions | 149 |
Chimpanzees compared | 150 |
Chimpanzee insectivory | 153 |
Termites | 155 |
Ants | 159 |
Honey | 162 |
Explaining variation | 166 |
Fishing for termites | 168 |
Hammers and anvils | 173 |
Chimpanzee ethnology | 177 |
Nonsubsistence technology | 181 |
Regional and local patterns | 189 |
Innovation | 193 |
The invention of termitefishing | 195 |
Crosscultural chimpanzees? | 196 |
Chimpanzees as models | 198 |
Models of what? | 200 |
Stone artefacts | 202 |
Why have palaeoanthropologists ignored other primates? | 207 |
Another cautionary note | 212 |
Conclusions | 214 |
What chimpanzees are are not and might be | 215 |
Evolutionarily relevant gaps | 217 |
Hunting | 218 |
Food processing | 219 |
Communication | 222 |
Unanswered questions | 223 |
Conclusions | 230 |
Appendix Scientific names | 231 |
References | 233 |
| 264 | |
| 270 | |
Other editions - View all
Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications for Human Evolution William C. McGrew No preview available - 1992 |
Common terms and phrases
African analysis animal ant-dipping Anthropology artefacts Assirik baboons behavioural patterns Boesch & Boesch bonobos Bossou Budongo captive chimpanzees chimpanzees Pan comparison diet driver ants early hominids eaten ecology Equatorial Guinea evolutionary example females field-studies Figure fishing Folia Primatologica food-sharing foraging forest free-ranging Gabon gibbons Gombe Gombe's Goodall grooming Guinea habitat habitual Highland gorilla hominid Human Evolution hunter-gatherers hunting insects Jones & Sabater Journal of Human Kasakati Kasoje Kibale kilometres Kortlandt Liberia Lopé lowland gorillas M-group Macrotermes Mahale Mountains mammals material culture Mbuti McGrew meat monkeys mounds natural nests Nishida non-human observation oil palms Okorobikó orang-utans Oswalt palm nuts Pan troglodytes personal communication pongid population of chimpanzees predators prey primates Primatology probes Sabater Pí savanna Senegal sex differences social species sticks stone study of chimpanzees subsistence Table Tanzania Tasmanian aborigines technique technounits Teleki termite-fishing termites tool-use Tutin Uehara Uganda weaver ants wild chimpanzees Wrangham Zaïre
Popular passages
Page 234 - Baldwin, PJ 1979. The natural history of the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) at Mt. Assirik, Senegal. PhD thesis, University of Stirling. Baldwin, PJ, McGrew, WC & Tutin, CEG 1982. Wide-ranging chimpanzees at Mt. Assirik, Senegal.
Page 248 - WC 1982. Tools used by wild chimpanzees to obtain termites at Mt. Assirik, Senegal: the influence of habitat. Journal of Human Evolution, 11, 65-72.