Chimpanzee Culture Wars: Rethinking Human Nature alongside Japanese, European, and American Cultural Primatologists

The first ethnographic exploration of the contentious debate over whether nonhuman primates are capable of culture

In the 1950s, Japanese zoologists took note when a number of macaques invented and passed on new food-washing behaviors within their troop. The discovery opened the door to a startling question: Could animals other than humans share social knowledge—and thus possess culture? The subsequent debate has rocked the scientific world, pitting cultural anthropologists against evolution...