What is primate culture?

Answer 1

Culture is defined as knowledge that is passed on from generation to generation. Therefore, non-human primates do have culture. Chimpanzees are a very good example because, just like humans living in different parts of the world, different communities have different ways of doing things. Some Chimp communities use rocks as hammers and anvils to bust open nuts, others use twigs to fish for ants or termites. There is even a community that hunts with spears and cools off in caves! Another good example is the Japanese macaque, the light brown monkeys with pink faces that are often photographed lounging in hot springs. They became famous during the 1950s when one female was observed washing a sweet potato in water. This technique eventually caught on as new innovations are usually adopted by the younger generations and passed on to their own children later--this is an important point that can't be stressed enough. Some years later, one of these macaques started washing their potato in salty sea water. This is a common practice today because they apparently like salt just as much as humans do.

A paper published in 2007, "4,300-Year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology," found that Chimpanzees have been using stone tools for at least 4 millennia. Tool use probably goes back much further than this. Man was thought to be the only one capable of using tools until researchers in the 1960s first witnessed Chimps using stone anvils. (Such tool use was actually recorded as far back as the 16th century but forgotten. See "Reports of Chimpanzee Natural History, Including Tool Use, in 16th- and 17th-Century Sierra Leone"). So if both man and Chimps, our closest living genetic cousin, both use tools, our common ancestor who lived around 7 million years ago most likely used tools as well.

A good book for learning the difference between a Chimp's genetically engrained behavior and behavior that is learned (i.e. culture) is Prof. Frans de Waal's The Ape and the Sushi Master (2001).