Some of you will have been watching on BBC One Chris Packham’s programmes, Primates. It is beautifully filmed and records in an intimate way all manner of primate behaviour. It made me think if it would help me understand, through evolutionary anthropology, the implications for us of the lockdown and social distancing we are now facing because of Covid-19.
The Great Apes, gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees belong to the same ‘family’ as humans. Chimpanzees have nearly the same DNA as humans (96+%) and are often referred to as our ‘cousins’. By studying the behaviour of primates and particularly chimpanzees and the pygmy chimpanzees, bonobos, we can gain insights into our own behaviour, which has developed and adapted through homo sapiens evolutionary past over hundreds of thousand years.
Primates do not live settled lives in one place and this was true of our human ancestors, who were nomadic hunter-gathers. Chimpanzees' social structure is flexible with groups splitting and congregating in various time frames. These complex social groups are often referred to as ‘fission-fusion’ societies - members splitting into sub-groups and then coming together. Although humans developed more stable gender relations through pair-bonding to help nurture our uniquely helpless offspring, there was more flexibility in the way those prehistoric social groups operated than in our recent, from about seven thousand years ago, sedentary lifestyles.
Like chimpanzees and unlike orangutans, as a species, we are very much social creatures, which has given us huge evolutionary advantages in cooperating to develop and ‘advance’ humankind. However, the evidence is clear that although we relish human contact we also need time and space for ourselves both as individuals and with our sub-groups. This is why being cooped up even with our nearest and dearest can become frustrating and in some cases unbearable.
We should understand this frustration, not as a moral weakness and unnatural but an element of behaviour carried in our genes from our evolutionary past that needs to be managed by creating space for everyone in the family and household. This is, of course, particularly difficult now with lock-down as space is not always available in cramped homes so the focus should be on making personal time available for everyone - as we know, it is particularly important for teenagers to be able to do their ‘own thing’. For once we can say, "thank goodness for social media".
Yes, we have developed a long way from our ‘cousins’ the other primates but we should remember, in evolutionary terms, we are still surprisingly close.
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