Human and Primate Culture

Paper Summary:

There is currently a great debate over the nature of culture, and by extension, whether aspects of behavior shown by nonhuman primates can be called evidence of culture. There are two basic schools of thought on the topic.

From the Paper:

"The Study of Culture and The Importance of Definitions
Introduction
There is currently a great debate over the nature of culture, and by extension, whether aspects of behavior shown by nonhuman primates can be called evidence of culture. There are two basic schools of thought on the topic. One group argues that culture is by definition human,, while a second group believes that examples of social learning by apes and monkeys are proof of distinct simian cultures. The gulf between these two camps is caused by problematic definitions. Definitions are crucial to language and reasoning, but also to science (Babbie, 1986, p. 93). The debate over ape culture will not be resolved until a unified definition of culture is accepted within the scientific community. "

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