Humans are still monkeys at their core – The breakup was perhaps due to child care

Than a combination of parliament and a soap opera, thought the behavioral biologist Sonja Koski while observing chimpanzee quarreling, reconciliation and alliances.

Chimpanzees bicker and annoy each other. Females most often fight over food. Males test their strength. Young males bully females.

Chimpanzees also have friends that they hug and with whom they like to take naps. However, friends become ex-friends if they fight often and especially if they don’t reconcile.

And the chimpanzees really did settle their quarrels.

Rapids and other primate researchers have spent weeks and months observing how chimpanzees fight and agree.

It is usual for the pukari to come towards each other calmly, at least a couple of minutes after the confrontation subsides.

One of them touches the other on the shoulder, back or face – and hugs. Then they sit together for a while, munching on each other or just looking around.

Reconciliation is much more likely if the quarrelers are friends.

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“The differences are only different shades of gray.”

Sonja As a 23-year-old graduate student, Koski went to Sumatra to observe howler monkeys in the protected rainforest of Ketambe.

Based on his life’s work, he has written a beautiful and clear speech about the importance of evolution and culture in the development of man as a special species of animal. Koski did not have time to see the publication of the work before his death at the age of 51.

His conclusion is that man is not a very special species after all, except perhaps a particularly destructive one.

Man is an ape. Strictly speaking, a great ape, part of the family Hominidae. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos.

The common stock form of chimpanzees and humans was 6–7 million years ago. There are still features in our behavior and cognition that are inherited from a common evolutionary history, Koski writes.

“We are largely similar to our closest relatives, and the differences are only different shades of gray.”

Osa anthropologists think that humanity cannot be understood through the glasses of evolution and by comparing humans to other species.

Koski had time to study, research and teach animal and human behavior within the framework of anthropology, anthrozoology, comparative psychology and behavioral biology. He expresses the wish that the scientific community would step out of the pots more widely and venture into a wide-ranging discussion.

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Humans are known not to have used sex to manage social relationships as extensively as bonobos.

He takes up the argument put forward by anthropologists, that human activity is so diverse and variable that no uniformity can be found. Humans would not have species-typical behavior, but “human nature” is an illusion.

Koski admits that a person is capable of living in the most diverse ways. Common human-typical behavior is impossible to find in many matters.

However, the diversity is not endless. According to Koski, certain behavioral characteristics of other primates are not found in humans.

In no other culture are humans known to have used sex to manage social relationships as extensively as bonobos.

In no community do humans regularly take care of children in the same way as other great apes. With them, the mother takes care of the offspring for years alone, without any help from other members of the community.

There are also no known societies in which people live mostly alone, meeting others only by accident and even then as briefly as possible. This is how some nocturnal monkeys live.

In common with other apes there is an influence of culture on life. Monkeys also learn skills and habits from each other, for example using tools to open a nut.

A lot has been and is still being fought over whether a person is a product of culture or evolution. The answer is of course both–and.

“The influence of culture on human evolution and the influence of evolution on human culture are inseparable,” Koski writes.

The leap of the human species towards its extraordinary abilities also happened as a result of the tide of culture and evolution.

Decisive as a step forward, Koski suggests moving to so-called increased cooperation. The care given to the children by all the adults together could have been an essential starting point for the development of linguistics.

Presumably, like great apes, our ancestors took care of their children alone. The changing climate and the scarcity of food could lead to the fact that cooperation in hunting and taking care of children became necessary. The slowly developing offspring and the entire community would not have survived otherwise.

Cooperation promoted social learning and language development. They, on the other hand, greatly enhanced the spread of innovations and the accumulation of knowledge.

Thanks to successful educational cooperation, the human brain could continue to grow. Because of the growing head, human children are born incomplete and helpless. As they are more ready and with bigger heads, they wouldn’t be able to get out of the mother.

According to the author, it is also pointless to fight about whether a person is inherently selfish and competitive or cooperative and benevolent. We are both, like many other animals.

“Competition and cooperation are the basic pillars of social life.”

Sonja Koski: The chimpanzee inside us. SKS 2025.