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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
Every circumstance concurs in demonstrating that the brutes are actuated by appetite only, and that man is influenced by a superior principle. The only doubt that remains is the difficulty of conceiving how appetite only should produce in animals effects so similar to those produced in men by intelligence
George de Buffon (Natural History, History of Man, vol. 3, 1748, English translation 1812)In the 4th century, Diogène asked Plato what a man is. Plato said, “It is a bipedal with a naked skin.” Diogène left the room and came back a bit later with a featherless chicken and told the audience, “Here, Plato’s man!”
In 1979, just a short time after beginning my PhD research on the chimpanzees of Taï National Park, I experienced my first culture shock. Our friends, the Sangbé, a Baoulé family who lived near the park boundary, were very supportive of us living in the middle of the forest and “working” with wild chimpanzees. The Sangbés came to live there because it had become impossible to sustain themselves in their home village, which was located in the progressively drying savannah region in the middle of Côte d’Ivoire. Rains were much more abundant close to the large Taï forest and they felt privileged to be able to grow cocoa, yams, bananas, and Raphia trees, which are used to make Bangui wine. Their hospitality remains one of our greatest memories of life deep in traditional Africa.
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