Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

1. Translated by John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough (New York: The Modern Library, 1932), pp. 378, 379.2. Work of Wendy Bailey and Morris Goodman; private communication from Morris Goodman, 1992. See also ref. 12.3. Michael M. Miyamoto and Morris Goodman, “DNA Systematics and Evolution of Primates,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 21 (1990), pp. 197–220.4. Marc Godinot and Mohamed Mahboubi, “Earliest Known Simian Primate Found in Algeria,” Nature 357 (1992), pp. 324–326.5. Leonard Krishtalka, Richard K. Stucky, and K. Christopher Beard, “The Earliest Fossil Evidence for Sexual Dimorphism in Primates,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 87 (13) (July 1990), pp. 5223–5226.6. Almost 9% of the volume of the brain of insectivores (“insect-eaters,” small mammals that may resemble the ancestors of primates) is concerned with the analysis of odors. For prosimians, the number is down to 1.8%; for monkeys, around o. 15%; and for great apes, 0.07%. The fraction for humans is only 0.01%: Only one part in ten thousand of the volume of our brain is devoted to the understanding of smell. (H. Stephan, R. Bauchot, and O. J. Andy, “Data on Size of the Brain and of Various Brain Parts in Insectivores and Primates,” in The Primate Brain, C. Noback and W. Montagna, editors [New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970], pp. 289–297.) For insectivores, smell is a major part of what the brain does. For humans, it is an almost insignificant part of our perception of the world—as everyday experience confirms. Humans require 10 million times more butyric acid in the air than dogs do in order to smell it reliably. For acetic acid the factor is 200 million; for caproic acid, 100 million; and for ethyl mercaptan, which is not involved in sexual signaling, two thousand times. (R. H. Wright, The Sense of Smell [London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964]; D. Michael Stoddart, The Scented Ape: The Biology and Culture of Human Odour [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], Table 9.1, p. 235.)7. J. Terborgh, “The Social Systems of the New World Primates: An Adaptationist View,” in J. G. Else and P. C. Lee, eds., Primate Ecology and Conservation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 199–211.8. H. Sigg, “Differentiation of Female Positions in Hamadryas One-Male-Units,” Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 53 (1980), pp. 265–302.9. Connie M. Anderson, “Female Age: Male Preference and Reproductive Success in Primates,” International Journal of Primatology 7 (1986), pp. 305–326.10. Dorothy L. Cheney and Richard W. Wrangham, “Predation,” Chapter 19 in Barbara B. Smuts, Dorothy L. Cheney, Robert M. Seyfarth, Richard W. Wrangham, and Thomas T. Struhsaker, editors, Primate Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 227–239.11. Susan Mineka, Richard Keir, and Veda Price, “Fear of Snakes in Wild- and Laboratory-reared Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta),” Animal Learning and Behavior 8 (4) (1980), pp. 653–663.12. Wendy J. Bailey, Kenji Hayasaka, Christopher G. Skinner, Susanne Kehoe, Leang C. Sien, Jerry L. Slighton and Morris Goodman, “Re-examination of the African Hominoid Trichotomy with Additional Sequences from the Primate β-Globin Gene Cluster,” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, in press, 1993. See also, C. G. Sibley, J. A. Comstock and J. E. Ahlquist, “DNA Hybridization Evidence of Hominid Phylogeny: a Reanalysis of the Data,” Journal of Molecular Evolution 30 (1990), pp. 202–236.13. Toshisada Nishida, “Local Traditions and Cultural Transmission,” Chapter 38 in Smuts et al., eds., op. cit., pp. 467, 468. One of the original discussions is by S. Kawamura, “The Process of Subculture Propagation Among Japanese Macaques,” Journal of Primatology 2 (1959), pp. 43–60. See also Kawamura, “Subcultural Propagation Among Japanese Macaques,” in Primate Social Behavior, C. A. Southwick, ed. (New York: van Nostrand, 1963); and A. Tsumori, “Newly Acquired Behavior and Social Interaction of Japanese Monkeys,” in Social Communication Among Primates, S. Altman, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).14. Masao Kawai, “On the Newly-Acquired Pre-Cultural Behavior of the Natural Troop of Japanese Monkeys on Koshima Islet,” Primates 6 (1965), pp. 1–30.15. These findings have led to a widely accepted, but wholly unsubstantiated myth sometimes called the hundredth-monkey phenomenon (Lyall Watson, Lifetide [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979]; Ken Keyes, Jr., The Hundredth Monkey [Coos Bay, OR: Vision, 1982]). Potato washing spread slowly through the macaque colony, it is said, until some critical threshold was reached; as soon as the hundredth monkey learned the technique, this knowledge was achieved by everyone, “overnight”—a kind of paranormal collective consciousness. Various edifying lessons for human society are then drawn. Unfortunately, there is no evidence at all in support of this heartwarming account (Ron Amundson, “The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon,” in The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal, Kendrick Frazier, editor [Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1991], pp. 171–181.) It seems to have been invented out of whole cloth.16. The pioneering physicist Max Planck remarked, after encountering enormous resistance to his new quantum theory, that it takes a generation for physicists to accept radically new ideas, no matter how much they explain.17. William Coffmann McDermott, The Ape in Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1938).18. Julian Huxley, The Uniqueness of Man (London: Chatto and Windus, 1943), p. 3.19. H. T. Gardner and R. A. Gardner, “Comparing the Early Utterances of Child and Chimpanzee,” in A. Pick, editor, Minnesota Symposium in Child Psychology (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1974), volume 8, pp. 3–23.20. H. S. Terrace, L. A. Pettito, R. J. Sanders, and T. G. Bever, “Can an Ape Create a Sentence?” Science 206 (1979), pp. 891–902; C. A. Ristau and D. Robbins, “Cognitive Aspects of Ape Language Experiments,” in D. R. Griffin, editor, Animal Mind-Human Mind (Report of the Dahlem Workshop on Animal Mind-Human Mind, Berlin, March 22–27, 1981) (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1982), p. 317.21. Herbert S. Terrace, Nim (New York: Knopf, 1979); H. S. Terrace, L. A. Pettito, R. J. Sanders, and T. G. Bever, “Can an Ape Create a Sentence?” Science 206 (1979), pp. 891–902; Robert M. Seyfarth, “Vocal Communication and Its Relation to Language,” Chapter 36 in Smuts et al., eds., op. cit.22. Roger S. Fouts, Deborah H. Fouts, and Thomas E. Van Cantfort, “The Infant Loulis Learns Signs from Cross-fostered Chimpanzees,” in R. A. Gardner, B. T. Gardner, and T. E. Van Cantfort, eds., Teaching Sign Language to Chimpanzees (New York: State University of New York Press, 1989).23. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume II, Mortimer J. Adler, editor in chief, William Gorman, general editor, Volume 3 of Great Books of the Western World, Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor in chief (Chicago: William Benton/Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952, 1977), Introduction to Chapter 51, “Man.”24. E. S. Savage-Rumbaugh, D. M. Savage-Rumbaugh, S. T. Smith, and J. Lawson, “Reference—the Linguistic Essential,” Science 210 (1980), pp. 922–925.25. Patricia Marks Greenfield and E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, “Grammatical Combination in Pan paniscus: Processes of Learning and Invention in the Evolution and Development of Language,” in “Language” and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes, Sue Taylor Parker and Kathleen Gibson, editors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); idem, “Imitation, Grammatical Development, and the Invention of Protogrammar by an Ape,” in Biological and Behavioral Determinants of Language Development, Norman Krasnegor, D. M. Rumbaugh, R. L. Schiefelbusch and M. Studdert-Kennedy, editors (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991).26. These experiments by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Duane Rumbaugh are briefly described in D. S. Rumbaugh, “Comparative Psychology and the Great Apes: Their Competence in Learning, Language and Numbers,” The Psychological Record 40 (1990), pp. 15–39. A detailed description is in E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Jeannine Murphy, Rose Sevcik, S. Williams, K. Brakke, and Duane M. Rumbaugh, “Language Comprehension in Ape and Child,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, in press, 1993.27. D. M. Rumbaugh, W. D. Hopkins, D. A. Washburn, and E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, “Comparative Perspectives of Brain, Cognition and Language,” In N. A. Krasnegor, et al, editors, op. cit. (ref. 22).28. David Premack, Intelligence in Ape and Man (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1976).29. D. J. Gillan, D. Premack, and G. Woodruff, “Reasoning in the Chimpanzee: I. Analogical Reasoning,” Journal of Experimental Psychology and Animal Behavior 7 (1981), pp. 1–17; D. J. Gillan, “Reasoning in the Chimpanzee: II. Transitive Inference,” ibid., pp. 150–164.30. David Premack and G. Woodruff, “Chimpanzee Problem-solving: A Test for Comprehension,” Science 202 (1978), pp. 532–535; Premack and Woodruff, “Does the Chimpanzee Have a Theory of Mind?” Behavior and Brain Sciences 4 (1978), pp. 515–526.31. An early, although limited attempt: Duane M. Rumbaugh, Timothy V. Gill and E. C. von Glasersfeld, “Reading and Sentence Completion by a Chimpanzee (Pan),” Science 182 (1973), pp. 731–733; James L. Pate and Duane M. Rumbaugh, “The Language-Like Behavior of Lana Chimpanzee,” Animal Learning and Behavior 11 (1983), pp. 134–138.32. This quotation and the basis for its supporting paragraph is from Derek Bickerton’s stimulating Language and Species (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).33. E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh et al., op. cit. (Note 24).34. Eugene Linden, Silent Partners: The Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments (New York: Times Books, 1986), pp. 144, 145.35. Jane Goodall, Through a Window (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), p. 13.36. Linden, op. cit., pp. 79, 81.37. Janis Carter, “Survival Training for Chimps: Freed from Keepers and Cages, Chimps Come of Age on Baboon Island,” The Smithsonian 19 (1) (June 1988), pp. 36–49.38. The total number of chimps left on Earth is now about fifty thousand. They are very much an endangered species.39. II, 17, translated by Maxwell Staniforth (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1964); in Michael Grant, editor, Greek Literature: An Anthology (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1977) (first published in Pelican Books as Greek Literature in Translation, 1973), p. 427.