--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Kinship is central to culture. Chimps don't have
> kinship.
>
> ^^^^^
>
Seems pretty arbitrary to me. If a society of people, say, as some of the odder utopian socialists wanted to do, were to do away with family relations (taking children from their parents and rearing them with no knowledge of their parentage), they wouldn't have culture? If human beings were a different intelligent species that was identical in all ways except that family bonds were meaningless to them, they wouldn't have culture? If the Giant Intelligent Jovian Gasbags reproduce impersonally through random drifting of genetic material through the atmosphere, like plants, they a priori don't have culture too?
Anyway, chimps DO have relatives. A relative is someone that you are biologically related to. I am related to my great-grandfather even though I don't know who the hell he was. A kitten is related to its mother. Whether chimps attach significance to blood relationships is another matter and an empirical question. Jerry?
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