The celebrated philosopher Henri Bergson—an exponent of the “revolt against reason” and best known for the idea that some immaterial “vital impulse” permeates life and makes evolution go—wrote that “man … is alone in realizing that he is subject to illness.”39 But chimps have a vast pharmacopoeia all around them, and a kind of folk or herbal medicine. For example, for chimps both at Gombe and at Mahale, leaves of a plant called Aspilia are a kind of dietary staple, preferentially eaten in the early morning. Despite the wrinkled noses of those partaking (the taste is bitter), it’s consumed by both sexes, all ages, the healthy as well as the sick. But there’s something odd about it: The chimps eat these leaves regularly, but consume very few of them at any one time—so their nutritional value is in doubt. In the rainy season, though, when apes are plagued by intestinal worms and other illnesses, ingestion increases dramatically. Analysis of Aspilia leaves reveals the presence of a powerful antibiotic and an agent that kills nematodes. It’s a good guess they’re treating themselves. Among other examples, a chimp sick with an intestinal disorder ingested large amounts of the shoots of a plant, different from Aspilia and not ordinarily a part of its diet, which also proved to be rich in natural antibiotics.40
How is “chimpanzee ethnomedicine” possible? Could it be based on some kind of hereditary information: You feel sick and suddenly you have a craving for a leaf whose shape or aroma is implanted in your brain from the beginning—like the goslings who are said to be born with a hereditary fear of the silhouette of a hawk? Or, more probably, is this cultural information passed on—by emulation or instruction—from generation to generation, and subject to rapid change if the available medicinal plants change, or if new diseases arise, or if new ethnomedical discoveries are made? Except that there are apparently no professional herbalists or medical specialists among the apes, chimpanzee folk medicine does not seem so different from human folk medicine. There’s a common complaint for which everyone knows what medicine to take. It’s something you learn as you grow up. Why the medicine works is a mystery to them—as it still is, in many cases, to us.
Some scholars have imagined that sexual repression was the first and inaugurating facet of human culture.41 Unrestrained expression of sexual desire—especially among young men and women—will destroy the framework of society, it is suggested, so early human cultures must have placed severe restraints on sexual activity, and encouraged guilt, modesty, hard work, cold showers, and clothing. However, there are many human cultures, often in the tropics, with frameworks apparently uncompromised by the fact that adults go around unselfconsciously stark naked—or perhaps with a thin vine or cotton belt that conceals no sexual parts. In South America, Yanomamo women are wholly unclothed, except for such a belt; the men tie their foreskins to their belts (although they are embarrassed should the penis slip free).42 In New Guinea and elsewhere, men cover up by wearing gourd sheaths that immodestly exaggerate their proportions. Before the Europeans arrived, the aboriginal peoples of Australia, even those in chilly climates, wore no clothes at all. In ancient Greece, Egypt, and Crete, adult nakedness was common, at least for slaves and athletes (although women spectators were excluded from the Olympic games on the grounds that it would be immodest for them to watch male athletes competing in the nude). Nudist camps seem to be models of decorum. Restraints on the permissible can be much less severe than the more repressive cultures ever imagine—as Captain James Cook’s crews discovered in Tahiti.
Victorian sexual attitudes are clearly not characteristic of our species. Moreover, sexual jealousy is a common cause of domestic violence among monkeys and apes; despite their more relaxed sexual standards, they have inhibitions in place. All primate societies, humans and everyone else, set limits on acceptable practice. Sexual repression and associated feelings of shame cannot be the hallmark of our species.
Another aspect of cultural life sometimes thought to be uniquely human is art, dance, and music. But given pencils or paints, chimps with considerable drive and deliberation make art that, though exclusively nonrepresentational as far as we can see, is thought presentable in some circles.43 Male bower birds decorate their nests guided by an aesthetic that resonates with ours; they regularly replace picked flowers, feathers, and fruit that are no longer fresh; their art evolves through the summer. Gibbons fling themselves balletically through the high forests, and chimps can be counted on to rock and roll at waterfalls and in rainstorms. Chimps delight in resonant drumming, and gibbons in song. Although we like to think it has reached its greatest elaboration in us, culture is not restricted to humans, or even44 to the primate order.
Here is a 1932 joint assessment of primate and human culture by Solly Zuckerman:At the one extreme there is the monkey or ape with its harem, frugivorous [fruit-eating], without any vestige of cultural processes. At the other extreme is man, usually monogamous, omnivorous, whose every activity is culturally conditioned. Socially there are no obvious comparisons between man and ape.45
Put aside the facts that chimps eat meat, that most monkeys and apes have no harems, and—a fact known even in 1932—that in many cultures humans are not “usually” monogamous; and compare Zuckerman’s assessment with Toshisada Nishida’s, in a much later overview of twenty-five years of research on chimpanzees in the Mahale mountains:[T]he following social behavioral patterns are known to be present in both the chimpanzee and our own species: strong tendency to avoid incest, long-lasting mother-offspring relationship, male philopatry [males remaining in the group they are born into], strong antagonism among groups, cooperation among males, development of reciprocal altruism, triadic awareness [for example, sexual triangles], alliance fickleness strategy, revenge system, sex difference in political behavior …46
Much of this may be genetically, as well as culturally, determined, but “socially” there do seem to be some “obvious comparisons” between man and ape.
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Consciousness and self-awareness are, in the West, widely esteemed as the essence of being human (although the absence of self-awareness is considered a state of grace and perfection in the East); the origin of consciousness is imagined to be an unfathomable mystery, or—not so different—the consequence of the insertion of an immaterial soul into each human being, but into no other animal, at the moment of conception. Consciousness may not be so mysterious a trait, though, that supernatural intervention is needed to explain it. If its essence is a lucid awareness of the distinction between the inside of the organism and the outside, between you and everyone else, then, as we’ve argued, most microorganisms are to this degree conscious and aware; and then the origin of consciousness on our planet dates back more than 3 billion years. There were vast numbers of microscopic creatures then, buffeted by sea swells and ocean currents, reveling in the sunlight, each with a rudimentary consciousness—perhaps only a microconsciousness, or even a nano- or picoconsciousness.47
Every cell in a healthy body can make the distinction between itself and others, and those that cannot, that suffer from auto-immune diseases, quickly kill themselves or fall prey to disease microorganisms. But maybe you’re thinking that a cell distinguishing itself from another cell (in your body or in the primeval sea) is not what is generally meant by consciousness or self-awareness, that even for exceptionally unreflective humans there’s more to it than that. Yes. As we’ve said, only the most rudimentary kind of consciousness can be imagined in the early history of life on Earth. Of course, there’s been substantial evolution since then. Do we know—it might be a very hard thing to know—whether any other animals have our kind of self-awareness?