Chapter Summary

As we noted in the last chapter, one way to guide us as we look at our own species is to understand the context from which our species evolved. This approach works for behavior as well as for physical adaptations. The importance of a well-defined social organization is seen among one savanna primate, the baboon, and is a good hint that an analogous behavior was a key to the survival of early savanna hominids.

More useful to understanding our own behavior is to examine the behavior of close evolutionary relatives, especially the chimpanzee and bonobo. Chimp and bonobo behaviors differ in specifics from ours and have been evolving separately from ours for 5 or 6 million years. All three species have adapted to different niches. The basic patterns for the behavior of all three species, however, are homologous. They are the same because we inherited them from a common ancestor. It is highly likely, then, that our remote hominid ancestors also manifested these patterns in some way.

Such studies indicate to us that the early hominids of Africa may very well have been highly social creatures and that their social organization was built around differing interpersonal relationships, a family unit, conscious sexuality, recognition of group membership and territory, and mutual care at both the individual and the group level.

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