Introduction: Nature Explains Nurture

Abstract

In this book it will not be proved, as has already been done a hundred times before, that man is not much more than an ape, although possibly slightly more intelligent or, as the zoologist Desmond Morris demonstrated with a convincing cover picture some years ago, a largely naked ape (Morris 1967). On the contrary, we will accept such a viewpoint simply as given and instead will address far more difficult and, I hope in the long run, far more exciting questions about the real nakedness of the natural being which we call Homo sapiens. For the average zoologist as well as for the scientifically interested layman it has indeed been clear for some time that we humans are biologically related not only to some of these more hairy creatures, such as the bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan, but of course in the same manner also to the rest of the large family of primates consisting of over 200 different species (overview in Diamond 1992; Kenyon and Moraes 1997; for the technique of transplanting mitochondria, see Osusky, Kissova and Kovac 1997). The degree of purely external similarity is simply too striking to allow us to doubt the fact. For the case of the bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus), which are at least genetically as closely related to humans as the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes),Sue Savage Rumbaugh, one of the most experienced experts on the behavior of this species, set out the following arguments:

By asking the question: what is it that makes man a man? I am saying on the one hand, that there is his culture and, on the other, his genome, that is clear. However, what are the genetic limits of culture? We have absolutely no idea. And that is a pity, because this is the most fascinating problem, the most fundamental one that exists.

Jacques Monod