keywords: ethology, primatology, sociology
Wading into current gender debates is not for the faint of heart, but that has not discouraged Dutch-born primatologist Frans de Waal from treading where others might not wish to go. In Different, he draws on his decades-long experience observing our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, to see what we can learn from them about us. As much as many people would like it to be otherwise, our ape heritage influences us strongly, also where sex and gender are concerned. Unbeholden to mainstream ideology, this nuanced book is a breath of fresh air that is sure to simultaneously delight and upset people on both sides of various gender-related discussions.
Different: What Apes Can Teach Us About Gender, written by Frans de Waal, published in Europe by Granta in May 2022 (hardback, 396 pages)
Before delving in, it is worth highlighting a few disclaimers. In his comparisons between primates and humans, De Waal omits human behaviour without proper animal parallels. These comparisons are always made in the understanding that today’s primates are not our ancestors, but models of our shared ancestor, and that “they offer a comparison, not a model for us to emulate” (p. 8). He also does not discuss the role of hormones or neurobiology for the simple reason these are outside his wheelhouse. De Waal reminds readers that studying the biological roots of behaviour does not endorse it—research should not be used to excuse bad behaviour and he opposes the misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia characterising discussions. And then there is the linguistic confusion over sex and gender. Yes, the former is biological and the latter cultural, but “despite their different meanings, these two terms remain joined at the hip” (p. 13), you cannot discuss one without the other. Echoing the skillful distinction he made between feelings and emotions in his previous book Mama’s Last Hug, De Waal here offers a similarly thoughtful description: “gender is like a cultural coat that the sexes walk around in. It relates to our expectations of women and men, which vary from society to society and change through the ages” (p. 42). Finally, he makes the useful distinction between gender identity (i.e. what you identify as) and cultural gender roles.
What makes Different such a breath of fresh air is that science trumps ideology for De Waal. The problem he sees is that many gender debates ignore or flat-out deny biology because it clashes with their message. Except when it does not. So, feminists love bonobos as they can be presented as “proof that male dominance is not hardwired in us” (p. 104) but they dislike chimpanzee research that suggests the opposite, while gay communities welcome biological observations of animal homosexuality in their fight against homophobia. This is ideological cherry-picking, “why not let biology shine its light on all gender-related issues?” (p. 286). Another disclaimer seems in order here: De Waal is explicit about the pointlessness of past nature/nurture debates, “every human trait reflects an interplay between genes and environment” (p. 43). But, like it or not, men and women differ and this book will not sugarcoat reality with political correctness. However, if you came here looking for ammunition for your next tweet-rage, this is not the book for you. De Waal cuts across numerous heated debates at right angles, offering observations, insights, and results that will simultaneously upset and delight people in all ideological camps.
“De Waal cuts across numerous heated debates at right angles, offering observations, insights, and results that will simultaneously upset and delight people in all ideological camps.”
Thus, some observations here will not be welcomed by feminists because they reinforce traditional gender roles. Yes, women are naturally more nurturing towards infants—this is simply a universal mammalian trait. Though, adds De Waal, calling this a maternal instinct obscures the fact that such skills have to be acquired in life, as exemplified by ape orphans in zoos who as adults have no idea what to do with a newborn. And, yes, play behaviour in primates and humans follows traditional gender patterns. He is particularly critical of parents who insist on a gender-neutral upbringing “in reaction to society’s gender stereotyping and the associated inequality. Note, however, that only one of the two words in gender inequality refers to a problem, and it’s not gender. No one would propose to fight racism by urging people of different races to try to look more alike” (p. 49). But other observations might strike you as progressive. Do men have a bigger sex drive than women? This seems to be true of male chimpanzees but is exaggerated in humans. De Waal repeatedly criticizes psychological research in this book for relying on questionnaires and self-reporting. This rarely yields reliable data. There is similarly no reason to think that men are natural-born leaders; research on primates shows the influence wielded by female leaders. And homosexual behaviour has now been widely documented in the animal kingdom and is neither anomalous nor an evolutionary puzzle; De Waal proposes a logical explanation here.
The fact that De Waal is not beholden to ideology shows in another way. Different is not a book to exclusively wade into human gender debates while flying the primate flag. For a primatologist, there are so many other interesting and important topics that come up once you start talking about sex and sexuality. De Waal recounts a fair bit of the history of primatological and anthropological research here. This matters because it explains where our ingrained ideas about our primate cousins and ourselves come from. Furthermore, he discusses plenty of research on chimpanzees and bonobos for its own sake as it is just incredibly interesting.
“Different is not a book to exclusively wade into human gender debates while flying the primate flag. [It] discusses plenty of research on chimpanzees and bonobos for its own sake […]”
For example, genetic paternity tests have revealed that many presumed monogamous species are not. But given the small number of infants born and the long care they require, why do female primates elicit illicit copulations from other males? The likely answer, which even primatologists were initially not prepared for, is protection against infanticide—no male will risk killing offspring he might have fathered. This shocking behaviour was first observed in langurs and only became an accepted fact after being documented in many other species (including, famously, lions). And thanks to research by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, we have an interesting explanation for the existence of menopause and grandmothers: evolution has gifted females with experienced helpers with time on their hands that are also related to your offspring, so-called alloparents. One more example. Homosexuality; an evolutionary puzzle? De Waal instead asks why we are so surprised by sexual activities that cannot lead to reproduction. He argues that, once it has evolved, behaviour can be multipurpose, just like anatomical adaptations. Sex drive can spill over into the attraction behind friendships. Or, in his words, homosexuality can best be understood: “not as a specifically evolved trait that starkly contrasts with heterosexual behavior, but as the outcome of powerful sexual urges and pleasure-seeking tendencies mixed with same-gender attraction” (p. 306). And, unlike us, primates have no hangups about mixing social and sexual behaviour. This is where our language is a curse, De Waal adds, we invent words and categories for everything and divide the world up accordingly.
Much as we like to think that we have escaped our biological roots, our language and intellect are evolutionary innovations that have been grafted onto a primate body plan with different sexes. But this need not discourage us. It is hard to disagree with De Waal’s take-home message: “equality doesn’t require similarity. People can be different and still deserve exactly the same rights and opportunities” (p. 14). Some readers might be disappointed that the book offers no blueprint on how to achieve such a society. For De Waal, the starting point is acknowledging our biological roots which Different aims to do by providing fascinating insights into the behaviour of our closest primate relatives.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Science has brought us many advances and has deepened our understanding of the world around us, pushing back the boundaries of our ignorance. But as it has given, so it has taken. It has revealed a vast stage whose age is measured in incomprehensible epochs of Deep Time and whose dimensions stretch away into the frigid depths of an uncaring cosmos. Leaving us bereft of meaning and purpose, science has driven home how utterly insignificant we, the denizens of that Pale Blue Dot, ultimately are. Personally, I find this perspective deeply humbling and I know many scientists feel likewise, but I also realise we live in a bubble of our own.
The notion that we are unique, special, or – in the eyes of many still – God’s chosen children, persists. Luckily for us all, evolutionary biologist David P. Barash is here to take down our “species-wide narcissism” a peg or two (or three). But far from a self-congratulatory circle-jerk, Through a Glass Brightly is an erudite, life-affirming, and sometimes riotously amusing look at ourselves.
Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are, written by David P. Barash, published by Oxford University Press in August 2018 (hardback, 203 pages)
About half of the chapters in this book are reworked and expanded versions of essays and articles published in other outlets. But the format of this book allows Barash to bring together his thinking on these topics, and add others in the process. The first eight chapters mostly deal with paradigm shifts that diminished humanity’s sense of self-importance and have thus been fiercely resisted, while the last eight chapters look more closely at scientific ideas on human nature and how these have changed. Each chapter focuses on an old anthropocentric paradigm to which Barash marries a new “anthropodiminishing” paradigm (both handily summarised at chapter’s end).
As such, Barash initially wanders widely, taking in (of course) how astronomy made us the centre of the universe no more. How evolution explained the maddening imperfections in our body, a ramshackle patchwork that is a far cry from an intelligent design. How the anthropic principle, the idea that the cosmos has been fine-tuned for human life, is but an illusion. And in perhaps his most gripping chapter, he ponders the meaning of life or the lack thereof: “Meaning isn’t bestowed upon anyone merely because there is a god who gives a damn, or by virtue of existence itself“. But his assertion that life is inherently meaningless is no call for nihilism. He besieges us to take responsibility for our own choices, to create meaning for ourselves in a world without purpose. Now, where have I heard that before?
“Sometimes the problem isn’t simply to discover truths but to accept them (p. 5)”
Ah yes, my favourite foul-mouthed blogger Mark Manson who so eloquently highlighted how we avoid the, what he calls, uncomfortable truth: that human existence is meaningless. To then argue that we must learn to act without hope. It should come as no surprise that both Manson and Barash profess an interest in Buddhism. The upshot is that Barash is surprisingly unconfrontational. Whereas a Richard Dawkins seems hell-bent on pissing off the world’s religions, Barash is, in my opinion, strident without being demeaning. Above all, he seeks to dispense wisdom, “so that paradigms lost become wisdom gained“.
The second part of the book is where Barash turns his gaze inwards, towards science itself. This is the more technical half, focusing on anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. He gives a masterful recounting of the birth of ethology as a biological discipline and how it led to the idea that animals lack complex cognition, making humans unique – something a new generation of researchers is hard at work dismantling. Think of Marc Bekoff, Frans de Waal and Carl Safina.
“Call it a kind of evolutionary existentialism. In an absurd, inherently meaningless world […] the only route to meaning is to achieve it by how we engage our own sentient existence. (p. 27)”
Barash questions the honesty of communication. He doubts the concept of free will. And he gets downright technical when discussing parent-offspring conflict, kin selection and altruism. The better (and worse) angels of our nature are not god-given but have plausible biological explanations. Naturally, he has to introduce his hobby-horse monogamy, while reminding us that biology is not destiny – so don’t you get any funny ideas.
And although he agrees with Steven Pinker that violence has declined in recent times, he disagrees with the idea that we have always been chronically prone to war. Nor are we natural pacifists. The truth, as usual, is more complicated and lies somewhere in the middle. Although he draws different conclusions, he channels Richard Wrangham when he distinguishes between two kinds of violence: “violence is almost certainly deeply entrenched in human nature; warfare, not so much“.
“As it happens, Occam’s Razor is generally a good rule of thumb. But it is neither sacrosanct, nor so sharp that it cuts through all aspects of reality (p. 97)”
A final chapter sees Barash worry about the insane pace at which our cultural evolution has outstripped our biological evolution, with concomitant mismatches occurring at all levels. The result is a “terrifying paradox of culturally mediated power wielded by a creature that is not only biologically unprepared to do so, but actively ill-prepared“. Something which deeply troubles him in the context of nuclear proliferation. And, much to my delight, he calls out overpopulation as the root cause of many of our current problems, noting how it “is set at its maximum effective rate” which did not use to be a big problem. I will kiss the feet of any man or woman who publicly calls out the demon in demography.
Throughout, Barash quotes poets, classical authors, scientists, and philosophers to enliven his narrative, though he is notably quotable himself as I have tried to show above. Through A Glass Brightly slays holy cows without patronising chest-thumping, and champions science without succumbing to cringeworthy glorification. Erudite and uplifting, it is the light-bearing brother to Nicholas Money’s The Selfish Ape that I will be reviewing next.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
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“The Cradle of Humanity: How the Changing Landscape of Africa Made Us So Smart“, written by Mark Maslin, published by Oxford University Press in April 2017 (hardback, 228 pages)
From the above, it is immediately clear that Maslin subscribes to Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of contingency laid out in Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. To the question posed by a book such as Improbable Destinies: How Predictable is Evolution?, Maslin’s answer is “not very”. If you could rewind and replay the proverbial tape of life, you would not get the same outcome.
Maslin starts off with an excellent primer on early human evolution that quickly outlines all the currently known hominin genera, such as Paranthropus, Australopithecus, and, of course, Homo. New fossil finds constantly update and refine that story, so you can expect that a book like Our Human Story: Where We Come from and How we Evolved (an updated version of its 2007 predecessor) will need to be updated again in the future. Elsewhere I have already discussed the insights that we are gaining from the analysis of ancient DNA (see my review of the highly recommended Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past). It is pleasing to see Neanderthals making a return later in the book. Other than the fact that we crossbred with them (see Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes), their story is being rewritten by new findings. Far from primitive brutes, these close cousins of ours used tools, buried their dead, adorned themselves – in short, were far more sophisticated beings than we used to give them credit for (see The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science is Rewriting Their Story and my review of The Smart Neanderthal: Cave Art, Bird Catching, and the Cognitive Revolution for more).
“It is pleasing to see Neanderthals making a return later in the book […]. Far from primitive brutes, these close cousins […] were far more sophisticated beings than we used to give them credit for”
After this warm-up, Maslin launches into his main argument. What were these large factors that influenced our evolution? Obviously, you need a habitable planet with just the right conditions. Rather than retread the general overview put forward in books such as How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind and The Goldilocks Planet: The Four Billion Year Story of Earth’s Climate, Maslin effectively says “let’s say take that starting point for granted”, and zooms in on East Africa and the last few million years. Why East Africa? Because this is where many fossils are found and our story as humans seems to have started.
In short, well-illustrated chapters Maslin discusses the influence of astronomy and geology on the planet’s climate. First, there is the combination of several wobbles in the planet’s orbit and axis of rotation (technically speaking eccentricity, obliquity, and precession, but Maslin does a far better job than I do here explaining them). Each of these has their own periodicity and they can neutralise or amplify each other, affecting how much sunlight the planet, or parts of it, receive. This planetary pulse (technically known as Milankovitch cycles) is the driving factor behind the cyclical pattern of ice ages over the last few million years.
Maslin also introduces the geological history of the East Africa Rift System, which has formed at the boundary of several continental plates meeting in East Africa. Geology, specifically plate tectonics, influences ocean circulation and weather patterns. Elsewhere (see my reviews of The Oceans: A Deep History and Brave New Arctic: The Untold Story of the Melting North) I have already highlighted that the coming together of various mechanisms results in fiendishly complex climate patterns that are very hard to predict and sometimes have counterintuitive effects. Maslin, however, excels at explaining phenomena such as monsoons, the El-Niño Southern Oscillation and the influence of land bridges and mountain building episodes.
“Why such a large brain? It is energetically expensive and makes childbirth (quite literally) a pain.”
The theory that Maslin and others have developed is that pulses of climate variability interrupting longer periods of stability were the driving force behind the evolution of new hominin species. It is an attractive model, though it is not the only one out there and Maslin is perfectly at ease arguing that his and other models might all be equally valid explanations.
There are two other topics that Maslin shortly tackles in the last two chapters. The first is our large brain. Why? Why such a large brain? It is energetically expensive and makes childbirth (quite literally) a pain. Here, too, there are many explanations, but Maslin sides with the camp that argues that larger brains helped us navigate living in large social groups. Language is, of course, an important part in this, and he shortly explores the various ideas that have been floated to explain its evolution. Similarly interesting is the idea of self-domestication: changing skull morphology during our evolution – away from heavy-browed skulls to lighter and flatter skulls – suggests a drop in testosterone levels, which would result in less violent behaviour and more social tolerance (see also my review of The Goodness Paradox: How Evolution Made Us Both More and Less Violent).
“[The book features] 50 helpful illustrations and diagrams […] something I rate very highly in a book”
The other topic is the Anthropocene, on which Maslin has written more extensively in The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene. By now, you will no doubt have come across the idea that humanity is altering the planet at such a scale that ours can be considered a new geological epoch (see my review of The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit). Maslin very briefly surveys our impact on climate (see also Plows, Plagues, Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate), the biosphere (see also Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken from Nature), and biodiversity (see also The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History).
In a book of this brevity, topics are necessarily treated in a cursory fashion only, and each section could function as a springboard from which to explore further, as I have tried to show throughout this review. Luckily, I was taken by Maslin’s style. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it is very to the point, wasting little space on fluff. His clear explanations are combined with over 50 helpful illustrations and diagrams that clarify geological, climatological, and evolutionary facts and processes. This is something I rate very highly in a book, and it is something many publishers, unfortunately, pay too little attention to in my opinion. The result is a superb and highly recommended book that convincingly argues how the happenstance conditions in East Africa shaped us and our forebears.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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“The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional”, written by Agustín Fuentes, published by Dutton Books in March 2017 (hardback, 340 pages)
After an introduction the book breaks down into four parts. The first shortly looks at creativity in primates and gives an update on our current knowledge on the adaptive radiation of our genus and our other evolutionary cousins. There have been tremendous developments in this field in the last few decades fueled by new fossil finds. The current picture of human evolution is more akin to a tangled bush of hominin lineages, many of which went extinct, from which ultimately we, as Homo sapiens sapiens, have been left as the last hominid standing. The book then proceeds to look at how creativity helped us to feed ourselves (from crafting ever more complex tools, hunting, and cooking with fire, to domesticating animals and plants and settling down as agriculturalists); the role of creativity in violence, warfare, and sex; and, finally, its role in the rise of religion, art and science.
You would be forgiven for thinking that this a lot of ground to cover. But Fuentes is on home ground here and has written about these topics before (his previous book Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths About Human Nature sounds like another interesting read). The Creative Spark is nuanced and draws on a solid basis of the latest science. Some things I have read about recently, but other ideas were new to me. In the chapters about food, Fuentes touches upon the work of Ungar and others who have shown what fossil teeth can reveal about past diets (see my review of Ungar’s Evolution’s Bite), and along the way he nicely makes the point that the cliché of man the hunter is wrong. Yes, we hunted, eventually, but for most of our evolutionary history we foraged and scavenged, and one of the first real developments is the move from passive scavenging to what Fuentes calls “power scavenging”, i.e. getting to a fresh kill and driving off the original predators before they have even taken the prime cuts. It requires a careful look at the data to come to this conclusion, but Fuentes makes a convincing point here.
“Gender inequality is another “beautiful” example of something that only arose very recently, but has retrospectively distorted the picture of our prehistoric past”
And there are several other examples in this book where Fuentes carefully takes all the available evidence to come to conclusions that run counter to accepted wisdom. In The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker makes the point that violence has decreased lately, and that our past was a consistently violent one. The first point I think is certainly true, but not so the last one, argue Fuentes and others, such as primatologist Frans de Waal, who observe a natural inclination towards compassion and altruism in our ancestors. The evidence for mass violence and warfare shows up late in the archaeological record, in the last 20,000 to 5,000 years. Really only when humans develop agriculture and settlements and have possessions to fight over. Similarly, in the chapter about sex, the idea that marriage and the nuclear family (husband, wife and children) are the natural order of things are shown to be recent inventions, more to do with inheritance of property than with how our forebears raised offspring. The latter likely involved communal effort in raising the needy, slowly-developing, big-brained babies. Fuentes is in good company here, and I have read several other books he also mentions that convincingly make this point, such as Barash & Lipton’s The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and Humans and Ryan and Jetha’s Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships. Gender inequality is another “beautiful” example of something that only arose very recently, but has retrospectively distorted the picture of our prehistoric past; virtually every painting of cavepeople shows a young man returning from the hunt, older men crafting tools and women cooking and caring for the children – but a careful look at the archaeological evidence reveals that both men and women took part in organised hunts and tool production.
The chapter about religion is another good example of a very carefully written chapter. Fuentes opposes religious fundamentalism, or the dominion some religions wish to exert over altruism and morality – you can be both these things without being religious, and for the longest time we weren’t. But similarly, he is careful to make the difference that being upset with the actions of certain religious people is not the same as being against religiousness. He also would like to see our scientific models and hypotheses better account for the importance of the religious experience to the individual. The most interesting point Fuentes makes here, I thought, is that wishing and hope are precursors to religiousness. Both are clear forms of creativity requiring the use of imagination to envision an outcome or a future that sometimes is unlikely, but that have time and again made humans go against the odds (e.g. when facing famine or battle) and sometimes succeed. I find this a more satisfying and logical explanation than what I read in Evolving God.
The Creative Spark is bristling with many other fascinating ideas and insights, many of which I haven’t mentioned here, and the book is a terrific read with a great narrative. If you have any interest in human evolution, this book comes highly recommended, and it certainly succeeds in making you rethink certain, by now antiquated, notions we hold.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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