Book Reviews

REACHING INTO THOUGHT: THE MINDS OF

GREAT APES. Edited by Anne E. Russon,Kim A. Bard, and Sue Taylor Parker. NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1996.464 pp. ISBN 0-521-47168-0. $84.95(cloth).

Anthropologists face a bewildering choiceof rather pricey books on non-human pri-mate cognitive capacity. Every conferenceseems to spawn another volume, while therange and complexity of phenomena nowbeing studied expands rapidly. If you wish tochoose one volume to start your reading onthe subject, Reaching Into Thought is a goodchoice.

The 19 papers by 25 authors introducerecent debates on a range of the hottesttopics in nonhuman primate cognitive capac-ity, including tool-use, reconciliation, imita-tion, deception, logico-mathematical think-ing, self-recognition, and regional variationwithin the natural species distribution. Thegreat apes are given center stage, but one ofthe most attractive aspects of this volume isthat the papers attempt to define great apes’capacities with comparative research on bothends of the evolutionary spectrum borderingthem.

The editors divide the volume into twoparts. The first part collects papers on the‘‘scope’’ of great ape intellectual abilities, bywhich the editors mean the breadth andcomplexity in capacities for specific abilities.The second part emphasizes the ‘‘organiza-tion’’ of great ape abilities; for instance, theinterdependencies among various abilitiesand the developmental, socio-cultural, andevolutionary mechanisms from which theyderive. This reviewer did not find this divi-sion to be very useful, if only because allpapers deal to some degree with both thescope and organization of cognitive capaci-ties in the species they covered.

Many papers, of course, follow the funda-mental research theme of investigatingwhether apes exhibit human-like capacities.

Gomez reviews data on how apes use eye-contact to show ostensive intent. Boysenreports that chimpanzees can use a ‘‘smaller/larger’’ criterion to select rewards in decep-tion experiments using Arabic numerals,although they fail similar experiments whenchoosing between two differing quantities ofreal candy, perhaps because symbols allowthe chimpanzees to avoid a strong responseto a high incentive food source. Bard andGardner find that a specially designed re-sponsive care regime enhances both thephysical development and social develop-ment of nursery-reared infant chimpanzees.Miles, Mitchell, and Harper investigate howa language-trained orangutan imitates signsand motions modeled for him by caregivers.Whitten reviews research on whether nonhu-man primates apply a ‘‘theory of mind’’ insocial interactions, imitation, and pretendplay.

Just as importantly, several authors focuson the contrast between ape and non-apeprimates. Anderson compares the cognitivecapacities of chimpanzees and capuchin mon-keys as revealed by tool-use and self-recogni-tion. Visalberghi and Limongelli argue thatcapuchin monkeys use tools but, unlike hu-mans and chimpanzees, do not understandcause-effect relations. De Waal and Aurelishow that post-conflict behavior (e.g., recon-ciliation) reveals important differences incognitive capacity between chimpanzees andmacaque monkeys. Hart and Karmel reviewthe cognitive-behavioral markers of self-awareness and self-knowledge in humans,apes, and monkeys.

Field primatologists will appreciate theattention given to primates using their cog-nitive capacities in relatively natural set-tings. Russon studied imitation in everydayuse among free-ranging orangutans in arehabilitation colony in Indonesia. Ingman-son describes tool-use and related objectmanipulation, such as toothpicks, scratch-ers, and rain hats, among wild pygmy chim-panzees in Zaire.

Two papers extensively cover regional be-havioral variation. Matsuzawa and Yamako-

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 105:251–255 (1998)

r 1998 WILEY-LISS, INC.

shi compare chimpanzee tool-use and mate-rial-use between two nearby populations ofchimpanzees in West Africa. Boesch appliesthree approaches to investigate the causesof behavioral variation among chimpanzeepopulations: the ecological, transmissionmechanism, and regional innovation ap-proaches.

The evolution of cognitive capacity is an-other major theme. Byrne argues that goril-las are not dull compared to chimpanzees ororangutans because gorilla feeding and so-cial strategies provide enough complexity toact as selective factors for cognitive capaci-ties. Langer proposes that heterochronic evo-lution in the ontogeny of cognitive domainsexplains differences in the cognitive capaci-ties of monkeys, apes, and humans. Parkerevaluates evidence for not only the evolutionof imitation, but also the evolution of teach-ing. Call and Tomasello review the effects ofartificial environments on ape cognitive de-velopment to argue that apes exhibit differ-ent skills as a function of human contact.

A central question for anthropologists,and an underlying theme in several contrib-uted chapters, is how and when we canapply the term ‘‘culture’’ to nonhuman apes.Culture and ‘‘culture’’ appear in several pa-pers, three times in titles. The papers byBoesch, Parker, and Russon take up thechallenge of formulating comparative defini-tions of culture. Russon also proposes anexplanation for why only chimpanzees, andpossibly bonobos, show regional culturesdespite the similar cognitive abilities of allthe great apes.

This volume keenly reflects the rapidlyexpanding research on cognitive capacityamong nonhuman primates. The paperscover a wide range of topics, yet no paper isout of place or redundant. Readers oftenpick and choose the papers to read in editedvolumes. This is one edited volume that theymay find themselves reading entirely.

DAVID S. SPRAGUE

Institute of History and AnthropologyUniversity of TsukubaTsukuba, Japan

252 BOOK REVIEWS

DEMONIC MALES: APES AND THE ORIGINS OF

HUMAN VIOLENCE. By Richard Wranghamand Dale Peterson. Boston: Houghton Mif-flin. 1996. 350 pp. ISBN 0-395-69001-3.$24.95 (cloth).

Demonic Males. It is difficult to imagine atitle more deliberately provocative than thisfor a book that situates the origins andpersistence of human violence in an evolu-tionary context. The compelling prose bringsreaders into the lives of ruthless, power-hungry apes, simultaneously capturing theimagination and prickling the spine. But itisn’t the blood, gore, or sinister strategizingthat cause the discomfort. Rather, it is theidea that yet another distinguishing hall-mark of humanity, that of our own savagery,is really not so special after all. And with thedark side of our nature so firmly rooted inour primate past comes the chilling prospectthat mastering it may be just beyond ourcontrol.

Clues to how we might have taken adifferent evolutionary track, or might stillyet do so, are equally unsettling. If onlyfemale hominids could have bonded withone another like female bonobos, then we,too, might have the power to exert a calminginfluence on the aggressive tendencies thatthe males of our species have unwittinglyinherited. If only modern women could befirm about rejecting lucrative sexual ex-changes with resource-controlling men, thenwe could possibly eliminate the winningadvantages that male status strivers havemanaged to gain in the evolutionary game.

The problem, of course, is that humanfemales are every bit as much a product ofour biological ancestry as the males wechoose as mates. If female hominids didn’tbond with one another, it was because theadvantages of doing so must have beenovershadowed by the disadvantages, just asfor contemporary chimpanzees depicted inthis volume, where the distribution of fe-