Chapter Summary

The study of nonhuman primates has been a traditional aspect of biological anthropology. Humans are primates, after all, and the characteristics of our relatively new species have evolved out of the basic primate traits and the adaptive strategy that they facilitate. We can only fully comprehend ourselves as a biological species by understanding where we fit into the natural world.

Taxonomy provides us .with a way of naming and categorizing species so as to indicate their biological relationships. It also gives us an idea as to the evolutionary relationships among species. At present, there are two major schools of thought about taxonomy. One (phenetic) names and classifies according to both comparisons of phenotypic features and data on evolutionary relationships. The other (cladistics) uses only evolutionary relationships.

The primates are one of nineteen orders of mammals. They may be characterized as adapted to arboreal environments through manual dexterity, visual acuity, and intelligence. There are about 200 living species of primates, each a unique manifestation of the general primate theme. The human primate’s major uniqueness is in its form of locomotion; we are the only primate that is habitually biped, a trait that evolved more than 4 million years ago. Since then, our other distinguishing feature has evolved—our big brain, capable of such complex functions that we can create our own adaptive behaviors, expressed as our various cultural systems. It is to the possible precursors of our behaviors that we will turn next.

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