Behavior May Suggest We're Not Only Human

Over the past two centuries, people have had to disabuse themselves about various ideologies asserting that humans are fundamentally different from other animals. Biologists have shown that our arms and legs and organs have long evolutionary histories. Beliefs about the uniqueness of human behavior might well be the last bastion of our superiority complex, but research by Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal and many others suggests that even this redoubt may be crumbling.

"I have done studies of reconciliation and coalition strategies in chimpanzees," de Waal said. "Business managers tell me that reminds them so much of what people do."

The idea that human behavior—not just our physical bodies—may have long evolutionary antecedents raises complicated questions about human agency and about how much of what we do and think is hard-wired. It is one thing to say we have eyes because our ancestors had eyes, but should we also credit our evolutionary predecessors for our highly complex social and political arrangements?

Read full story in The Washington Post.