Chimpanzee Material Culture
Implications for Human Evolution
£105.00
- Author: William C. McGrew, University of Stirling
- Date Published: October 1992
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521413039
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The chimpanzee, of all other living species, is our closest relation, with whom we last shared a common ancestor about 5 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 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. Chimpanzees serve as heuristic, referential models for the reconstruction of cultural evolution in apes and humans from a common ancestor. However, chimpanzees are not humans, and key differences exist between them, though many of these apparent contrasts remain to be explored empirically and theoretically.
Read more- The chimpanzee is humankind's nearest living relative
- An understanding of chimpanzee behaviour helps us to infer the origins of technology in human prehistory
- Of interest to a wide range of disciplines: animal behaviour, psychology, anthropology, archaeology
Reviews & endorsements
' … masterfully integrates primatology and (paleo)anthropology …' Elisabetta Visalberghi, Science
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×Product details
- Date Published: October 1992
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521413039
- length: 296 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 157 x 19 mm
- weight: 0.614kg
- contains: 77 b/w illus. 36 tables
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Patterns of culture?
2. Studying chimpanzees
3. Chimpanzees as apes
4. Cultured chimpanzees?
5. Chimpanzee sexes
6. Chimpanzees and foragers
7. Chimpanzees compared
8. Chimpanzee ethnology
9. Chimpanzees as models
10. What chimpanzees are, are not, and might be
References
Appendix
Index.
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