Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1998. 27:301–28
Copyright © 1998 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
CULTURE IN NONHUMAN
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PRIMATES?
W. C. McGrew
Department of Sociology, Gerontology and Anthropology and Department of
Zoology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056
KEY WORDS: tradition, social learning, intergroup differences, cultural evolution, behavioral
ecology
ABSTRACT
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:42:12
Cultural primatology is hypothesized on the basis of social learning of
group-specific behavior by nonhuman primates, especially in nature. Schol-
ars ask different questions in testing this idea: what? (anthropologists), how?
(psychologists), and why? (zoologists). Most evidence comes from five gen-
era: Cebus (capuchin monkeys), Macaca (macaque monkeys), Gorilla (go-
rilla), Pongo (orangutan), and Pan (chimpanzees). Two species especially,
Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes),
show innovation, dissemination, standardization, durability, diffusion, and
tradition in both subsistence and nonsubsistence activities, as revealed by
decades of longitudinal study.
INTRODUCTION
In the 1990s, a host of books have appeared, with titles like Chimpanzee Cul-
tures (Wrangham et al 1994b); Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications
for Human Evolution (McGrew 1992); Great Ape Societies (McGrew et al
1996); Hominid Culture in Primate Perspective (Quiatt & Itani 1994); The In-
formation Continuum: Evolution of Social Information Transfer in Monkeys,
Apes, and Hominids (King 1994); and Primate Behavior: Information, Social
Knowledge, and the Evolution of Culture (Quiatt & Reynolds 1993). Clearly,
the wording is deliberate, and some scholars now feel comfortable describing
the existence of culture in primates other than humans. The aim of this chapter
is to scrutinize these efforts at cultural primatology in trying to answer the
question posed in the title.
301
0084-6570/98/1015-0301$08.00
, 302 MCGREW
The answers offered to the question by various interested parties run the full
gamut from “Of course!” to “Nonsense!” The former see a gradation of quanti-
tative (not qualitative) differences in sociocognitive abilities across phyla, so
that natural and cultural phenomena are inextricable. An extreme example of
Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (ar-139450) IP: 128.171.57.189 On:
this viewpoint was Bonner’s The Evolution of Culture in Animals (1980), in
which the microbiologist traced the roots of culture as far back as the slime
molds (Myxomycetes). In contrast, the latter see a yawning gap between Homo
sapiens and even the largest-brained species of living mammal, no matter how
closely we and they are genetically related. For the skeptics, if culture is a
uniquely and essentially human phenomenon, then the general question is just
as pointless as a specific one, like “Are humans the only species to build space-
ships?” In between these polar positions are degrees of skepticism or inclina-
tion, the variation in which needs to be explained (Premack & Premack 1994,
Tomasello et al 1993a).
Asking the question is not new: Kroeber (1928) contemplated it 70 years
ago. Although coming to a negative conclusion, he was willing to frame a set
of testable criteria, based on what he knew of Köhler’s (1927) pioneering stud-
ies of captive chimpanzees:
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:42:12
If one ape devised or learnt a new dance step, or a particular posture, or an at-
titude toward the object about which the dance revolved; and if these new
acts were taken up by other chimpanzees, and became more or less standard-
ized; especially if they survived beyond the influence of the inventor, were
taken up by other communities, or passed on to generations after him—in
that case, we would legitimately feel that we were on solid ground of an ape
culture. (Kroeber 1928:331)
The extent to which the titular question has been explicitly addressed has
varied across decades (e.g. Hart & Panzer 1925, Menzel 1973, Nishida 1987,
Thierry 1994), but here the emphasis is on new findings and insights, with his-
torical aspects kept to a minimum.
The question posed does not read: Is culture found only in living humans?
That would entail a much different critique about the origins of culture in pre-
history: Has culture existed since literacy emerged in the Holocene? Since the
advent of depiction in the Upper Paleolithic? Since the appearance of anatomi-
cally modern humans? (But what about Neanderthals?) Since the global dis-
persal of large-brained Homo erectus? Since the onset of lithic technology in
earliest African Homo? Since the origin of bipedal Pliocene hominids? At
some point our antecedents were nonhuman primates, but were they culture-
bearers? To tackle these questions requires a paleoarcheological approach
(e.g. Joulian 1996), with one huge constraint: All the subjects of study are ex-
tinct (Foley 1991).
This chapter is also not about theories of the evolution of culture, in particu-
lar, models that explore parallels between organic or genetic evolution and cul-
, CULTURE IN NONHUMAN PRIMATES? 303
tural evolution (Durham 1990, Boyd & Richerson 1985). These theories vary
from the speculative to the formulaic, from the heuristic to the pontifical, from
the empirical to the notional, but few concern themselves with the ethnography
of other species.
Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (ar-139450) IP: 128.171.57.189 On:
What Is Culture?
The simplest reason for disagreement over whether or not nonhuman primates
have culture is definitional. Like all complex processes—consciousness, intel-
ligence, language, and so on—culture has been defined from the broadest, loos-
est, and most inclusive ways to the narrowest, most precise, and most specific. Ex-
amples of the former may border on the epigrammatic: “Culture is the human
ecological niche.” “Culture is what human beings do.” Examples of the latter
approximate to checklists of features to be ticked off, inviting challenges, such
as what to do with a hypothetical creature that has language, property rights,
and taboos but lacks kinship terms, religious rites, and aesthetics. Tylor’s
(1871) classic definition spans the range: “Culture . . . is that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other ca-
pabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” (1871:1).
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:42:12
There is plenty of room for honest disagreement over the uniqueness of any
one of these items, even before tackling the catch-all ending phrase. Depend-
ing on how one operationally defines a habit, which could range from a condi-
tioned reflex to a ritual prayer, any number of species could be credited with
the feature, or not.
Further bedeviling the exercise is the a priori assumption made by Tylor
and many others (Kroeber & Kluckhohn 1963) that culture is by definition hu-
man. Logically, this preempts debate, so the answer to the titular question must
be no, but resorting to this weasel-out merely passes the buck on to the ques-
tion of what is humanness. Would we deny humanity to Homo (sapiens) nean-
derthalensis? To anatomically modern but apparently non-symbol-using
Homo sapiens before about 40,000 years ago? To fire-using earlier hominids?
The further we go into the past, the fuzzier things get, until we reach the Last
Common Ancestor of living chimpanzees and living humans, at about 5 mil-
lion years ago. To define culture as uniquely human may be logically tidy, but
it is epistemologically suspect.
As if this were not enough, the presence or absence of culture in either the
present or the past in nonhuman creatures could be a result of phyletic conser-
vatism or of derived convergence (McGrew 1992). If the ancestral hominoid
had culture, then its absence in living great apes could have been a secondary
loss, just as overall body hair, grasping feet, and slashing canine teeth are ab-
sent in living humans. If the ancestral hominoid lacked culture, it could later
have evolved independently more than once, in nonancestral forms that went
Copyright © 1998 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
CULTURE IN NONHUMAN
Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (ar-139450) IP: 128.171.57.189 On:
PRIMATES?
W. C. McGrew
Department of Sociology, Gerontology and Anthropology and Department of
Zoology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056
KEY WORDS: tradition, social learning, intergroup differences, cultural evolution, behavioral
ecology
ABSTRACT
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:42:12
Cultural primatology is hypothesized on the basis of social learning of
group-specific behavior by nonhuman primates, especially in nature. Schol-
ars ask different questions in testing this idea: what? (anthropologists), how?
(psychologists), and why? (zoologists). Most evidence comes from five gen-
era: Cebus (capuchin monkeys), Macaca (macaque monkeys), Gorilla (go-
rilla), Pongo (orangutan), and Pan (chimpanzees). Two species especially,
Japanese monkey (Macaca fuscata) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes),
show innovation, dissemination, standardization, durability, diffusion, and
tradition in both subsistence and nonsubsistence activities, as revealed by
decades of longitudinal study.
INTRODUCTION
In the 1990s, a host of books have appeared, with titles like Chimpanzee Cul-
tures (Wrangham et al 1994b); Chimpanzee Material Culture: Implications
for Human Evolution (McGrew 1992); Great Ape Societies (McGrew et al
1996); Hominid Culture in Primate Perspective (Quiatt & Itani 1994); The In-
formation Continuum: Evolution of Social Information Transfer in Monkeys,
Apes, and Hominids (King 1994); and Primate Behavior: Information, Social
Knowledge, and the Evolution of Culture (Quiatt & Reynolds 1993). Clearly,
the wording is deliberate, and some scholars now feel comfortable describing
the existence of culture in primates other than humans. The aim of this chapter
is to scrutinize these efforts at cultural primatology in trying to answer the
question posed in the title.
301
0084-6570/98/1015-0301$08.00
, 302 MCGREW
The answers offered to the question by various interested parties run the full
gamut from “Of course!” to “Nonsense!” The former see a gradation of quanti-
tative (not qualitative) differences in sociocognitive abilities across phyla, so
that natural and cultural phenomena are inextricable. An extreme example of
Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (ar-139450) IP: 128.171.57.189 On:
this viewpoint was Bonner’s The Evolution of Culture in Animals (1980), in
which the microbiologist traced the roots of culture as far back as the slime
molds (Myxomycetes). In contrast, the latter see a yawning gap between Homo
sapiens and even the largest-brained species of living mammal, no matter how
closely we and they are genetically related. For the skeptics, if culture is a
uniquely and essentially human phenomenon, then the general question is just
as pointless as a specific one, like “Are humans the only species to build space-
ships?” In between these polar positions are degrees of skepticism or inclina-
tion, the variation in which needs to be explained (Premack & Premack 1994,
Tomasello et al 1993a).
Asking the question is not new: Kroeber (1928) contemplated it 70 years
ago. Although coming to a negative conclusion, he was willing to frame a set
of testable criteria, based on what he knew of Köhler’s (1927) pioneering stud-
ies of captive chimpanzees:
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:42:12
If one ape devised or learnt a new dance step, or a particular posture, or an at-
titude toward the object about which the dance revolved; and if these new
acts were taken up by other chimpanzees, and became more or less standard-
ized; especially if they survived beyond the influence of the inventor, were
taken up by other communities, or passed on to generations after him—in
that case, we would legitimately feel that we were on solid ground of an ape
culture. (Kroeber 1928:331)
The extent to which the titular question has been explicitly addressed has
varied across decades (e.g. Hart & Panzer 1925, Menzel 1973, Nishida 1987,
Thierry 1994), but here the emphasis is on new findings and insights, with his-
torical aspects kept to a minimum.
The question posed does not read: Is culture found only in living humans?
That would entail a much different critique about the origins of culture in pre-
history: Has culture existed since literacy emerged in the Holocene? Since the
advent of depiction in the Upper Paleolithic? Since the appearance of anatomi-
cally modern humans? (But what about Neanderthals?) Since the global dis-
persal of large-brained Homo erectus? Since the onset of lithic technology in
earliest African Homo? Since the origin of bipedal Pliocene hominids? At
some point our antecedents were nonhuman primates, but were they culture-
bearers? To tackle these questions requires a paleoarcheological approach
(e.g. Joulian 1996), with one huge constraint: All the subjects of study are ex-
tinct (Foley 1991).
This chapter is also not about theories of the evolution of culture, in particu-
lar, models that explore parallels between organic or genetic evolution and cul-
, CULTURE IN NONHUMAN PRIMATES? 303
tural evolution (Durham 1990, Boyd & Richerson 1985). These theories vary
from the speculative to the formulaic, from the heuristic to the pontifical, from
the empirical to the notional, but few concern themselves with the ethnography
of other species.
Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. University of Hawaii at Manoa Library (ar-139450) IP: 128.171.57.189 On:
What Is Culture?
The simplest reason for disagreement over whether or not nonhuman primates
have culture is definitional. Like all complex processes—consciousness, intel-
ligence, language, and so on—culture has been defined from the broadest, loos-
est, and most inclusive ways to the narrowest, most precise, and most specific. Ex-
amples of the former may border on the epigrammatic: “Culture is the human
ecological niche.” “Culture is what human beings do.” Examples of the latter
approximate to checklists of features to be ticked off, inviting challenges, such
as what to do with a hypothetical creature that has language, property rights,
and taboos but lacks kinship terms, religious rites, and aesthetics. Tylor’s
(1871) classic definition spans the range: “Culture . . . is that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other ca-
pabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” (1871:1).
Sun, 30 Mar 2025 09:42:12
There is plenty of room for honest disagreement over the uniqueness of any
one of these items, even before tackling the catch-all ending phrase. Depend-
ing on how one operationally defines a habit, which could range from a condi-
tioned reflex to a ritual prayer, any number of species could be credited with
the feature, or not.
Further bedeviling the exercise is the a priori assumption made by Tylor
and many others (Kroeber & Kluckhohn 1963) that culture is by definition hu-
man. Logically, this preempts debate, so the answer to the titular question must
be no, but resorting to this weasel-out merely passes the buck on to the ques-
tion of what is humanness. Would we deny humanity to Homo (sapiens) nean-
derthalensis? To anatomically modern but apparently non-symbol-using
Homo sapiens before about 40,000 years ago? To fire-using earlier hominids?
The further we go into the past, the fuzzier things get, until we reach the Last
Common Ancestor of living chimpanzees and living humans, at about 5 mil-
lion years ago. To define culture as uniquely human may be logically tidy, but
it is epistemologically suspect.
As if this were not enough, the presence or absence of culture in either the
present or the past in nonhuman creatures could be a result of phyletic conser-
vatism or of derived convergence (McGrew 1992). If the ancestral hominoid
had culture, then its absence in living great apes could have been a secondary
loss, just as overall body hair, grasping feet, and slashing canine teeth are ab-
sent in living humans. If the ancestral hominoid lacked culture, it could later
have evolved independently more than once, in nonancestral forms that went
