¶ … human? This might seem to be a simple question, but that is probably because we have not thought very deeply about the issue. For decades physical anthropologists and other scholars have investigated this question. Their early efforts tended to take the form of trying to find one single trait that defined humans as different from all other species - whether it was our opposing thumb or the way in which we use language or in our recognition of our own mortality or even in the fact that we murder others of our own species.
Related to this search for the "missing trait" was the search for a "missing link" - a species that would link Homo sapiens to the species that had come before us historically on the evolutionary train. The thinking behind both of these searches was very much the same: Scientists could not believe that we (that is, we humans) existed on a continuum with other primates. There must be, the conventional thinking went, something that set us aside from all of these other animals. Some missing, linking species that showed the first signs of whatever bright intelligence it is that sets humans off as being on a different order of development than all other primates, not to mention all other species.
But within the last few decades such a search for what it is that makes us different from all other species has become less and less of a concern for scholars. Certain, humans are considered by biologists and anthropologists to be unique - but so are all other species. Much of the recent research in physical anthropology, paleontology and primatology has helped to fill in the gaps in knowledge about how humans are in fact connected to other primates rather than in how we are set apart from all other species.
Shirley Strum's book on her research on baboons is an example of this more recent kind of research, work that has as its focus an attempt to understand human development and human behavior from a broader perspective, one that places it within...
She offers definitive proof - of such proof be still needed by anyone - that human behavior can better be understand not as something unique in the animal kingdom but rather as sharing significant points of similarity with the behavior of those animals that are most closely related to us.
The baboon, or the Papio hamadryas to give it its scientific name, is a large monkey that is a member of the family Cercopithecidae. Its natural habitat spans both Arabia and Africa in those regions south of the Sahara desert. Their size almost overlaps that of humans, with males (who are about twice the size of females) ranging up to almost 90 pounds and extending 45 inches in length, not counting their tails.
Fairly omnivorous in their diet, they eat a variety of plants as well as small mammals and birds. They live together in social groups in which both males and females are members of ranked hierarchies and have a fairly well-developed system of calls or language.
The chart on the next page illustrates how close their relationship is to humans:
http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/r/taxonomy.html
Baboons have traditionally classified as five separate species within the Papio genus, although there has been recent disagreement over the divisions into P. anubis, P. ursinus, P. comatus, P. papio and P. hamadryas.
In writing this account of her fieldwork in the world of the Papio anubis, Strum has a number of important points to make about the social behavior of her subjects. The most important of these is actually one that can be applied to any field of science or research: It is important not to accept the accounts of those who have gone before you as the gospel truth. Strum went into the field knowing what other researchers "knew" about baboon behavior; however, she did not let these other accounts influence her to too large a degree, which is important. When she discovered discrepancies between…
