Brian Switek reports on recent archeology of a chimpanzee tool assemblage dated between 4300 and 2200 BP. We will definitely have to give up the idea that culture is uniquely human, unless perhaps we accept a contention that culture equates to language. What goes out the door with culture in this case? Historicity?
How natural is nature, I wonder. Has the concept passed its best-by date? And if we have to rework what it means to be a natural phenomenon, what sense do make of culture? Does an inhuman science even make sense, or must it remain fundamentally contradictory? A parahuman science?
In what ways are wild chimpanzees participants in our culture? What claims do they naturally have? Egalitarianism?
Labels: chimpanzees, culture, history, natality, physis, tools