Wild Cultures: A Comparison between Chimpanzee and Human Cultures
Cambridge University Press, 9/6/2012
EAN 9781107025370, ISBN10: 1107025370
Hardcover, 292 pages, 24.7 x 17.4 x 1.7 cm
Language: English
How do chimpanzees say, 'I want to have sex with you?' By clipping a leaf or knocking on a tree trunk? How do they eat live aggressive ants? By using a short stick with one hand or long stick with both? Ivorian and Tanzanian chimpanzees answer these questions differently, as would humans from France and China if asked how they eat rice. Christophe Boesch takes readers into the lives of chimpanzees from different African regions, highlighting the debate about culture. His ethnography reveals how simple techniques have evolved into complex ones, how teaching styles differ, how material culture widens access to new food sources and how youngsters learn culture. This journey reveals many parallels between humans and chimpanzees and points to striking differences. Written in a vivid and accessible style, Wild Cultures places the reader in social and ecological contexts that shed light on our twin cultures.
Introduction
1. Studying culture in the wild
2. From human culture to wild culture
3. Shaping nature into home
about material culture
4. One for all and all for one
about social culture
5. I want to have sex with you
about symbolic culture
6. Learning culture
from pupils to teachers
7. Dead or alive? Towards a notion of death and empathy
8. Wild culture - wild intelligence
9. Uniquely chimpanzee - uniquely human
Epilogue
will we have the time to study chimpanzee culture?
References
Index.
Advance praise: 'It is hard to imagine a better guide to chimpanzee culture than Christophe Boesch, who for decades has followed these apes in the tropical forest. The author lays out the culture question in all of its richness without any of the anthropocentrism usually surrounding this issue. The result is a highly satisfactory firsthand account of how wild chimpanzees shape their own environment and society.' Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy