Hominid culture in primate perspective

"Human culture and animal behavior are commonly differentiated through perceived contrasts in the ability to use tools, to invent symbols, to form words, and so on. In Hominid Culture in Primate Perspective, primatologists discuss how human thought, language, and culture are actually rooted in the evolution of primate cognition, communication, and "precultural" behavior. Their research indicates that the perceived differences between human culture and primate behavior are increasingly difficult to identify." "Exploring the questions surrounding the origin and evolution of human culture using nonhuman primate data, the contributors examine posture, gesture, and locomotion; object manipulation and tool use; social cognition and kinship; simulation, deception, and play; cultural diversity in the behavior of non-human primates; and the late origins of vocal language in human evolution." "Hominid Culture in Primate Perspective is a valuable collection of current and thoughtful ideas that will be of particular interest to anthropologists, primatologists, and students of culture and complex behavior in evolution."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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The purpose of these essays apparently is to offer yet another approach to the interface between human cultural behavior and its primate underpinnings. The editors (including Itani, a senior Japanese scholar whose own work is unfortunately not represented in the ten chapters) argue that culture is a biological phenomenon that deserves the comparative study typical of modern biology, and that it can be best understood as "socially processed information," whether that involves communication or morality. Human culture is unique, but so is that of any species, and the authors were encouraged to freely explore both differences and similarities across primates. In the first essay, for example, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh suggests that reinterpretation of both fossil and behavioral data may lead to a new scenario of human origins in which a relatively arboreal, small-canined ape become a bipedal tool-user before the ancestors of African apes evolved into larger-canined knuckle-walkers. The next chapters examine ways of comparing ape and human cultural diversity, including examination of the least technologically modern people. Further chapters consider aspects of primate (including human) cognition, language, and culture. A final essay by Quiatt and one of his students explores the implications of a proposed late development of spoken human language around the time that anatomically modern people became dominant. A thought-provoking anthology, recommended for specialized collections. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. E. Delson; Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY

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