Chimpanzees and Culture Change
By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 24 August 2006
These remarks were presented at SolFest
<http://www.solarliving.org/solfest2006.cfm> 2006, a sustainable living and
environmental education festival at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland,
California, August 19-20.
Many people have asked me how I got the idea for my
eco-thriller novel, Primal Tears, and what motivated me to write it. Primal
Tears is the story of Sage, a young female human-bonobo chimpanzee hybrid.
It all started back about ten years ago when I was reading
reports of our genetic closeness to the chimpanzees and learning that we
share 98-99% of the same genetic material. Jared Diamond and others say we
are so close to the chimps that taxonomically we should be put in the same
genus - humans are actually the third chimpanzee. The common chimp is called
Pan troglodytes, the bonobo chimp is called Pan paniscus, and so the human
chimp would be called Pan sapiens. Or we could induct our chimp cousins into
the Homo genus, in which case the names would be Homo troglodytes, Homo
paniscus and Homo sapiens.
I was motivated to write this book because in my work to save
ancient forests I constantly ran into the human chauvinist attitude that we
are superior to - not just different from but superior to - all other
species on this planet earth. This attitude is embodied in the Great Chain
of Being, where humans occupy a special level below the angels but above the
beasts.
The Great Chain of Being was a medieval construct that seems to
be based on the Bible, on the Genesis story of the Creation, in which God
gives Adam and Eve "dominion" over the beasts and "every living thing that
moves on the earth." The idea is deeply ingrained in our culture.
But what if we could prove that humans are not a separate rung
on the ladder? Here's where the idea for Primal Tears came from. Reading
those figures for genetic closeness, I realized that the gap between humans
and chimps was no greater than the gap between a horse and a donkey, or a
lion and a tiger, and yet those species have interbred and produced
offspring. Doing a little further research, I found that Carl Sagan had also
speculated about this. "For all we know," Sagan said in Dragons of Eden,
"occasional viable crosses between humans and chimpanzees are possible ..."
So there I was, working as the director of a grassroots forest
protection group in Oregon, entrenched in a daily battle of ideology: do we
humans have the right and even the duty to cut down 500-year-old trees to
make more and more houses for an ever increasing human population, or do
those trees have the right to exist for their own sake and for the sake of
the entire ecosystem of plants and animals that depend on them?
I was continually searching for ways to communicate a value
system that recognizes that we humans are a part of this planet. We are not
separate. We cannot survive without functioning ecosystems. But this Great
Chain of Being concept has given an awful lot of people the idea that we are
somehow exempt from environmental concerns. Economists are a big part of
this too. We can hear them now saying: "Peak oil can't be happening because
we are humans, damn it, this can't happen to us. The magic of the market
will save us."
And so I latched on to this idea of a human-chimpanzee cross. If
such a creature were produced, it would be convincing proof that humans are
animals, just another species in the genus Homo, subject to the same natural
laws. At one point, I even fantasized about doing the experiment on myself!
I could put a personal ad in the paper:
Female, age 40, seeks wild, swinger male for procreation
purposes, no commitments. Bonobo preferred but regular chimpanzee
acceptable.
I was out of luck, of course, because chimps don't read.
But people do, so I came to my senses and realized that instead of trying it
myself, I could write a book about this idea.
Primal Tears takes place in the Ecotopian landscape of Northern
California and Southern Oregon. The story opens when Sage's mother, Sarah,
is fired by her principal for teaching evolution to her 8th grade class. She
goes home and a friend tells her about a great ape research program that is
looking for women to act as surrogate mothers for endangered bonobo embryos.
They want to increase the captive breeding pool of these highly endangered
bonobo chimpanzees.
Sarah volunteers for the program, but something goes wrong and
it turns out that a bonobo sperm has impregnated one of her own eggs, and
her daughter, Sage, the human-bonobo hybrid, is born.
The rest of the novel follows Sage's adventures as, like all
teenagers, she copes with feeling different and worries about her
appearance. She launches a crusade to save her bonobo relatives that takes
her to the Congo, and as she grows older, she has to cope with her high
level of sexual desire.
One of the most interesting things about the bonobo chimpanzees
is the way in which they handle conflict. Common chimps are like us. When
there is conflict over a scarce resource, like food, they beat each other
up. But bonobos have a different approach. They are the "make love not war"
chimps. When tension arises in the group, they drop everything and start
having sex. Everybody. All at once. Later, after everyone has calmed down,
they share.
We humans also have the ability to share. We do it all the time.
Only now, as the world grows increasingly crowded, we are challenged to
share like never before. We must do everything in our power to keep from
descending into violence and war over scarce resources.
Another interesting thing about bonobos is that, even though
they have all that sex, they don't have too many babies. They don't
overpopulate their habitat. They don't lose a lot of their population to
predators, so they are regulating their births somehow. How do they do that?
Answering that question is a major theme in Primal Tears.
Finally, coming back to Genesis, I want to acknowledge that
there is more than one way to interpret the language found there.
In Genesis 1:28, God urges Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and
multiply" and "fill the earth." But what happens when the earth is full?
Nothing in the Bible says we are supposed to be fruitful and multiply
without end!
The concept of "dominion" is also open to interpretation. A
modern translation by Leslie Thatcher renders the words of Genesis 1:28 this
way:
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Develop as
human beings and become great; complete the earth and look after the fish of
the sea and the birds of the skies ..."
I think it is also worth noting that in the Genesis
story of the Great Flood, when God sets a rainbow in the sky, he says it is
the token of the covenant that He makes directly with "every living creature
of all flesh." The covenant is with all species, not just humans.
As we humans take seriously now the task of living sustainably
on the earth, we need to create and honor covenants with all flesh.
So, I recommend that you go and read Genesis again with these
different interpretations in mind. And you also might enjoy reading my
novel, Primal Tears.
________________________________
Kelpie Wilson <http://truthout.org/contactkw.php> is the t r u
t h o u t environment editor. A veteran forest protection activist and
mechanical engineer, she is the author of Primal Tears
<http://www.kelpiewilson.com/> , an eco-thriller novel published by North
Atlantic Books.
-------
Print This Story
<http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_082406J.shtml>
<http://www.truthout.org/imgs.site_01/2.mail.gif> E-mail This Story
<http://www.truthout.org/imgs.site_01/2.ClrSpc.indent_2.gif>
<http://www.truthout.org/imgs.site_01/2.ClrSpc.indent_2.gif>
