Page 471 - Cultures and Organizations

436 IMPLICATIONS

neanderthaliensis in Europe, while keeping the name Homo erectus in Asia.
During most periods the Sahara was inhospitable, so that with the sea, it
prevented human colonization of other continents. Our own ancestors left
Africa just recently, and we will meet them again in the next section.
Of all the species and subspecies of apes that populated the world fi ve
million years ago, only ours has thrived, and few have survived. Culture,
though, is not uniquely human. Even the apes that did not make it into world
conquerors—today’s great apes (bonobo, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan,
gibbon)—have developed cultural differences among their populations.
Dutch-American primatologist Frans de Waal has shown that various spe-
cies of apes have different sets of behaviors for maintaining moral circles. 7
In-group solidarity is always matched with out-group violence, although
the balance is widely different for different species: chimpanzee males form
bands that raid neighboring tribes, while bonobo males tend to go no fur-
ther than to be somewhat stiff during otherwise peaceful between-tribe
encounters. Actually, experiences in zoos have shown that chimps and
bonobos are perfectly mutually fertile. As with other related species, the
genetic differences are small enough to allow for cross-fertilization. They
have just developed distinctly different cultures, probably after a small
settling population of bonobos diverged from mainstream chimp culture,
perhaps after crossing the Congo River less than a million years ago. 8
It is thus likely that along with the genetic variation, a wide variety
of human cultures has existed throughout ancient times. Fossil fi ndings of
early hominins show huge differences in skeleton robustness and in size
ratio between the sexes. Our early ancestors showed marked variability
and adaptability to circumstances.

One Million to Forty Thousand Years Ago:
Ice and Fire

Ice ages intensified about one million years ago; the last ice age set in about
a hundred thousand years ago, and we may still be in it today, enjoying a
warmer interlude. Even on smaller time scales of hundreds of years, cli-

mates were fluctuating a lot, and they still do. To what extent the African
continent partook of icy conditions is not certain, but the climate obviously

fluctuated there as well. Our migrating ancestors had been using simple
tools for at least a million years, and they may well have mastered fi re,

although we cannot be sure because fossil evidence for fire is far more dif-