Significant Others: The Ape-Human Continuum And The Quest For Human Nature - Hardcover

Stanford, Craig B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465081711 ISBN 13: 9780465081714

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

In Significant Others, the co-director of the world-famous Jane Goodall Research Center uses our recent knowledge of great ape behavior to examine (and puncture) many myths about humans-about infanticide, mating practices, the origins of human cognition, the human diet, language, and many other subjects. Evolutionary scientists know that the dividing line between humans and other animals has grown increasingly blurry-it's even become a cliché to note that we share 99 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet this knowledge, while superficially accepted, has not really been absorbed by many fields, especially the social sciences. At the same time, the knowledge that all humans are genetically and cognitively modern, no matter how "primitive" we may find them, has left the apes the only true "savages." Thus if we want to learn about human nature and how we came to be as we are, we have to look to the apes to tell us.This is a sweeping, fresh, controversial book on what the science of primates can tell us about our own natures.

About this title

About the Author

Craig B. Stanford is a renowned specialist in human origins and primate behavior who splits his time between Uganda and Los Angeles, California. He is Co-Director of the Jane Goodall Research Center, Director of the Bwindi-Impenetrable Great Ape Project in Bwindi-Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. His previous books include The Hunting Apes and Chimpanzee and Red Colobus.

Reviews

"Apes and humans are cut from the same evolutionary cloth; all that fundamentally distinguishes us is posture, we being upright walkers and the apes quadrupeds. Everything else, from the size and function of our brains to the other aspects of our shared anatomies, is a difference of degree and not of kind." In eloquently laying out his argument, Stanford touches on many elements of modern anthropology, including its disagreements. Serving simultaneously as associate professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, co-director of the Jane Goodall Research Center there and director of the Great Ape Project in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, he brings a rich background to his presentation.

Editors of Scientific American

Perfectly complementing Frans de Waal's magisterial The Ape and the Sushi Master [BKL Mr 1 01], Stanford homes in on the relationships between apes and humans, contending that "to understand human nature, you must understand the apes." In the book's first part, he shows that what has been learned about how ape societies handle food seeking, reproduction, and child rearing enlightens us about how early hominids behaved, why such traits as higher intelligence developed, and why certain problematic behaviors, such as infanticide, are so persistent. The second part takes up language, considered a sine qua non of humanity but which apes have modestly mastered; species' disparate language capabilities, Sanford says, should be investigated to discover "what adaptive problems are solved through the use of language." But nothing will be learned if the great apes die out, and in the concluding chapters, Stanford pleads for them, drawing on his experience in the field observing chimpanzees and mountain gorillas. And so science segues to advocacy, potently ending a cogent and absorbing book. Ray Olson
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Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465081711
• ISBN 13: 9780465081714
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256