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Could nonhuman great apes also have cultural evolutionary psychology?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Claudio Tennie*
Affiliation:
Department for Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen 72070, Germany. claudio.tennie@uni-tuebingen.dehttp://www.claudiotennie.de

Abstract

Attempted answers are given to (a) whether nonhuman great apes (apes) also have evolved imitation (answer: no); (b) whether humans can transmit imitation as a gadget to apes (answer: yes, partly); (c) whether human-to-ape transmission can kickstart subsequent and stable ape cultural evolutionary psychology (“CEP”; answer: unlikely); and (d) when CEP evolved in our lineage (answer: relatively late).

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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