[lbo-talk] Bonobo you don't (was was Weath Distribution and hot air something)

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon Apr 30 11:17:22 PDT 2007


Jerry Monaco

Now the term "culture" and the term "politics" are not scientific terms, no matter how hard we try to make them so. There was a famous article written in 1952 by Kroeber and Kluckholmm which identified 162 different definitions of culture proposed by anthropologists and social scientists.

^^^^ CB; You are not claiming that Kroeber and Kluckohln say chimps have culture, are you ?

^^^^^

I am not proposing a new definition of culture when I say that our closest cousins among present species exhibit culture.

^^^^

CB; Yes, you are.

^^^^

I am only taking a realistic attitude toward the evidence. We would call ways of making tools that differ from hunter-gatherer group to hunter-gatherer group two different "tool-cultures". Thus when we meet the phenomena of tool-making in a variety of troops of chimpanzees and we also see that it is a "learned" phenomena and that the process of "learning", "making", and "using" is both similar and different from troop to troop, primatologists are warranted in calling this phenomena "cultural."

^^^^^^

CB: Chimps don't have kinship. They do not trace living relationships based on descent from dead ancestors. They don't use symbolling and language.



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