Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Surely this does not get us very far to the essence of human nature. The Platonic definition might suggest, though, a necessary if not a sufficient condition, because standing on two legs is essential for freeing the hands, hands are the key to technology, and many people think our technology defines us. Still, raccoons and prairie dogs have hands and no technology, and bonobos walk upright a good part of their lives. We will address chimpanzee technology shortly.

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In his classic justification of free enterprise capitalism, Adam Smith asserts that “the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another … is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.”¹⁰ Is this true? Private property was proposed as the central difference between humans and the other animals by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, and by Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth.¹¹ Is this true?

Chimpanzees are fond of trade, and understand the idea very well: food for sex, a back rub for sex, betrayal of the leader for sex, spare my baby’s life for sex, virtually anything for sex. Bonobos take these exchanges to a new level. But their interest in barter is by no means restricted to sex:[Chimpanzees] are famous for their tradesmanship. Experimental studies indicate that the ability comes without any specific training. Every zookeeper who happens to leave his broom in the baboon cage knows there is no way he can get it back without entering the cage. With chimpanzees it is simpler. Show them an apple, point or nod at the broom, and they understand the deal, handing the object back through the bars.¹²

With regard to females at least, chimp males have a well-developed sense of private property (raised to institutional status among the hamadryas baboons), and a rudimentary sense of private property attaches to food and to some tools.

The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, well before any serious study had been made of the lives of the apes, even in captivity. However, Smith’s argument about the uniqueness of trade among humans is embedded in a deeper misreading of the animal world:In almost every other race of animals, each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them.

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But the gregariousness of the primates is one of their hallmarks. Mutual aid in working both sides of the predator/prey relationship and in conflict with other groups of the same species is widespread, not just among the primates, but among most mammals and birds.

While selfishness, exploitation, and trade are commonplace in chimpanzee society, we cannot use this fact along with our kinship with chimps to justify laissez faire economics. Nor can we use it to discredit free market societies on the grounds of their being ape-like.* Cooperation, friendship, and altruism are also chimp traits, but this is not an argument for some competing socialist economic doctrine. Recall the macaques who would rather go hungry than administer an electric shock to other, not closely related macaques—going so far as to reject even substantial material incentives. Is this a rebuke to advocates of capitalism? At least as far back as Aesop, animal behavior has been used to buttress this or that economic theory. Even in our ideological debates, we make the other animals work for us.

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“Man is a social animal,” wrote Aristotle, or, as it is sometimes translated, “Man is a political animal.” This was meant to be characteristic of humans, but not defining; again, a necessary but not a sufficient condition. The subtle and volatile factionalism of chimp and bonobo societies shows how far off the mark this is as a distinction of humanity. The social insects—ants, bees, termites—have much better organized and much more stable social structures than humans. Particular aspects of human social behavior fare no better, although a great many such definitions have been proposed: For example, humans tenderly cherish their young, but so do most other mammals and birds.

“Courage is the peculiar excellence of man,” Tacitus recorded the Roman aristocrat Claudius Civilis as saying.¹⁴ Even if the heroic exploits of mother birds shamming a broken wing, or of elephants and chimps saving their young from predators or rushing water, or of the beta hind staring the wolf in the eye so her companions can escape—even if such examples were unknown in the time of this Claudius, didn’t he know about dogs? He was put in chains and brought before Nero. History does not record how much of the “peculiar excellence” was available to him in his hour of need.