Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

But after a year or two in Gambia, thanks to the loving care of Janis Carter, she began to adjust. She had regular contact with humans and was often the first chimp to greet visitors to the island. She was used to humans. Her relations with other chimps were more strained. She had missed out on the rollicking childhood of a chimp in the wild.

In 1987 Lucy’s skeleton was discovered. The most likely reconstruction of events is that humans came to the island, killed Lucy, probably by shooting her, and skinned her body. Her hands and feet, the very organs that had made her famous, were missing.³⁷ Those responsible have never been found.³⁸

ON IMPERMANENCE

In the life of a man, his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful. In short, all that is of the body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapours; life a warfare, a brief sojourning in an alien land; and after repute, oblivion. Where, then, can man find the power to guide and guard his steps? In one thing and one alone: the love of knowledge.

MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations³⁹

* Ring-tailed lemur males will smear a pheromone they generate onto their tails and then wave these prominent, black-and-white-banded appendages at each other, wafting the smell into the air. This is mainly a competition for females: Apparently the most aromatic lemur tends to win the most attractive female. In one lemur species, all adult males may have their tail waves answered in the same evening, because all adult females come into heat together, by the light of the silvery (and full) moon.* Used in panning for gold.* Also called the fallacy of the enumeration of favorable circumstances. No dishonest intent is implied; it is merely one of those failures of logic that humans are prey to. We tend not to be dispassionate observers.* One expert reviewer likens this sentence to saying that “90% of the materials dug from a gold mine are not gold ore”

Chapter 19

WHAT IS HUMAN?

Having proved mens & brutes bodies on one

type: almost superfluous to consider minds.

CHARLES DARWIN

Notebooks on Transmutation of Species¹

We humans are the dominant species on the planet, a status affirmed by several standards—our ubiquity, our subjugation (politely called domestication) of many animals, our expropriation of much of the primary photosynthetic productivity of the planet, our alteration of the environment at the Earth’s surface. Why us? Of all the promising lifeforms—implacable killers, professional escape artists, prolific replicators, nearly invisible beings that no macroscopic predator can find—why did one primate species, naked, puny, and vulnerable, manage to subordinate all the rest and to make this world, and others, its domain?

Why are we so different? Or are we? Unambiguous definitions of humans—definitions that include almost all members of our species, but no one else—can be produced from anatomy or from DNA base sequencing. But they fail the purpose. They explain nothing that we recognize as fundamental about ourselves. Perhaps sometime in the future we will discover that unique sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts encode for particular sequences of amino acids that constitute particular proteins that catalyze particular chemical reactions that motivate particular behavior that we might agree is characteristically human. But so far no such sequence has been found.

If, then, we can discern no clear-cut distinction in our chemistry (or anatomy) that explains our dominant role, the only ready alternative is to survey our behavior. It seems plausible that the sum of our everyday activities would be sufficiently defining, but a surprisingly large number of those activities can be performed by apes. For example, here’s a description of the accomplishments of Consul, the first chimp acquired, in 1893, by the zoo in Manchester, England:[He was] able to put on his own coat and hat, seat himself in his own carriage for a drive, sit at table with company, use his knife and fork with propriety, pass his plate for a fresh supply of food, use his serviette [napkin], wash his hands after meals, put coals on the fire, ring the bell for the maid, go into the kitchen for a romp with the girls, walk into his hotel, shake hands with his friends, kiss the barmaid, smoke his pipe, and mix his own drinks.²

True, Consul’s deportment may be dismissed as mere mimicry; but that may also be said of those of us who marvel at his abilities.

Is there anything we do that’s uniquely human—that all or almost all of us, of every culture, throughout history, do and that no other animal does? You might think something along these lines would be easy to find, but the subject is redolent with self-deception. We have too much of a stake in the answer to be unbiased.