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Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us about Human Social Evolution
How did we become the linguistic, cultured, and hugely successful apes that we are? Our closest relatives--the other mentally complex and socially skilled primates--offer tantalizing clues. In Tree of Origin nine of the world's top primate experts read these clues and compose the most extensive picture to date of what the behavior of monkeys and apes can tell us about our own evolution as a species.It has been nearly fifteen years since a single volume addressed the issue of human evolution from a primate perspective, and in that time we have witnessed explosive growth in research on the subject. Tree of Origin gives us the latest news about bonobos, the "make love not war" apes who behave so dramatically unlike chimpanzees. We learn about the tool traditions and social customs that set each ape community apart. We see how DNA analysis is revolutionizing our understanding of paternity, intergroup migration, and reproductive success. And we confront intriguing discoveries about primate hunting behavior, politics, cognition, diet, and the evolution of language and intelligence that challenge claims of human uniqueness in new and subtle ways.Tree of Origin provides the clearest glimpse yet of the apelike ancestor who left the forest and began the long journey toward modern humanity.
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First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Frans de Waal
47 books1,739 followersFrans de Waal has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. The author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, among many other works, he is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University’s Psychology Department and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 2, 2013
4.5 stars, really; 5 stars for the concepts and analysis; less half a star for a few chapters that can't seem to shake off the academic writing style. This book is full of fascinating ideas on human evolution viewed through the lens of behavioral primatology: how human language relates to the communication of primates and other animals, how culture is manifested in primate societies; how the study of living primates and monkeys can inform the understanding of ancient hominids. Each chapter was written by a different author, and contributors were asked to "write in an accessible, jargon-free style." Some authors succeed at that better than others, and some chapters were a bit of a slog. But the content is always interesting, and as a whole, the book provides a strong evaluation of what we can understand about our ancestors, and how much there still is to learn.
March 2, 2018
This is an anthology put together by Frans de Waal as the result of a 1997 conference on Human Evolution. De Waal asked that the authors write in a speculative mode about human evolution, and that they stick to a jargon-free style. The articles here are not original research papers — they are written for a less specialized audience. And, as a non-specialist, I found it very readable and fascinating.
The study of hominid evolution is remarkably speculative, even given de Waal’s direction to the authors. There is of course evidence to draw on. Fossil evidence (fossilized remains of human ancestors, tooth marks or cut marks on fossilized bones of other animals, remains of tools, etc.) can vary from conclusive to suggestive. We never know, when the evidence is scant, whether we are looking at outliers or norms.
Evidence drawn from observations of our closest relatives — great apes, especially chimpanzees and bonobos — can be incredibly suggestive. But it is not always easy to distinguish traits and behaviors that are distinctive to those species’ own evolutionary track rather than shared with our own.
The speculative nature of the study invites, as here, researchers to take up a variety of perspectives from which to offer hypotheses to answer such questions as why human-sized brains evolved, how early bipedal apes or pre-humans survived, what social groupings emerged among australopithecines and others of our ancestors, . . . Researchers look at what these hominids ate, what foods their teeth were optimized for, what their skeletal features can tell us about how fast or far they could travel, etc., all as clues to answering those critical evolutionary questions.
One very interesting perspective is that of cooking. When cooking emerged among our ancestors isn’t known, but it appears to be relatively recent, maybe 250,000 years ago (for which we have evidence of earthen ovens in use). Cooking could have changed almost everything. Diets at the time were primarily vegetarian, and, for that matter, meat still comprises a small part of apes’ diets. A diet of raw plants required large jaws, teeth, and a large gut for digestion. Post-Australopithecines, our most direct ancestors, by contrast, have remarkably small guts, teeth, and jaws.
A higher ratio of energy taken in from food relative to the energy spent to digest it could have freed energy for other uses — foraging over larger areas, or cognitive activity.
Cooking also could have introduced important social changes. Food gathering, along with mating, is a strong component of social life for apes and human ancestors. Cooking would have introduced a new element — a time delay between finding and consuming food. Raw foods would be gathered for cooking, maybe in another place and at a later time. It would need to be protected from theft from other animals, and a more explicit distribution would need to be devised at the cooking site.
You can see how this one change — cooking food — could enable or set in motion many other changes, either direct changes in behaviors or more long term opportunities for adaptive, evolutionary changes.
And cooking is just one perspective the authors take up. Other discussions address the evolution of “culture” in chimpanzees and other species besides our own, the role of hunting and meat-eating, the effect of group size on intelligence and behavior, and the evolution of brain size.
Conclusions are tentative. Conclusions may always have significant uncertainties. Researchers just can’t directly access enough evidence. We don’t, for example, have a definitive fossil example of the hypothesized common ancestor to chimpanzees and humans.
But understanding where we came from and looking in the mirror at our current close relatives are both instructive about ourselves and just plain entertaining. Having read several of de Waal’s works, especially the classic Chimpanzee Politics, has given me a new eye for watching and enjoying humans like myself.
The study of hominid evolution is remarkably speculative, even given de Waal’s direction to the authors. There is of course evidence to draw on. Fossil evidence (fossilized remains of human ancestors, tooth marks or cut marks on fossilized bones of other animals, remains of tools, etc.) can vary from conclusive to suggestive. We never know, when the evidence is scant, whether we are looking at outliers or norms.
Evidence drawn from observations of our closest relatives — great apes, especially chimpanzees and bonobos — can be incredibly suggestive. But it is not always easy to distinguish traits and behaviors that are distinctive to those species’ own evolutionary track rather than shared with our own.
The speculative nature of the study invites, as here, researchers to take up a variety of perspectives from which to offer hypotheses to answer such questions as why human-sized brains evolved, how early bipedal apes or pre-humans survived, what social groupings emerged among australopithecines and others of our ancestors, . . . Researchers look at what these hominids ate, what foods their teeth were optimized for, what their skeletal features can tell us about how fast or far they could travel, etc., all as clues to answering those critical evolutionary questions.
One very interesting perspective is that of cooking. When cooking emerged among our ancestors isn’t known, but it appears to be relatively recent, maybe 250,000 years ago (for which we have evidence of earthen ovens in use). Cooking could have changed almost everything. Diets at the time were primarily vegetarian, and, for that matter, meat still comprises a small part of apes’ diets. A diet of raw plants required large jaws, teeth, and a large gut for digestion. Post-Australopithecines, our most direct ancestors, by contrast, have remarkably small guts, teeth, and jaws.
A higher ratio of energy taken in from food relative to the energy spent to digest it could have freed energy for other uses — foraging over larger areas, or cognitive activity.
Cooking also could have introduced important social changes. Food gathering, along with mating, is a strong component of social life for apes and human ancestors. Cooking would have introduced a new element — a time delay between finding and consuming food. Raw foods would be gathered for cooking, maybe in another place and at a later time. It would need to be protected from theft from other animals, and a more explicit distribution would need to be devised at the cooking site.
You can see how this one change — cooking food — could enable or set in motion many other changes, either direct changes in behaviors or more long term opportunities for adaptive, evolutionary changes.
And cooking is just one perspective the authors take up. Other discussions address the evolution of “culture” in chimpanzees and other species besides our own, the role of hunting and meat-eating, the effect of group size on intelligence and behavior, and the evolution of brain size.
Conclusions are tentative. Conclusions may always have significant uncertainties. Researchers just can’t directly access enough evidence. We don’t, for example, have a definitive fossil example of the hypothesized common ancestor to chimpanzees and humans.
But understanding where we came from and looking in the mirror at our current close relatives are both instructive about ourselves and just plain entertaining. Having read several of de Waal’s works, especially the classic Chimpanzee Politics, has given me a new eye for watching and enjoying humans like myself.
April 8, 2017
Ideas that snap, crackle, and pop!
I checked this book out of the local library many weeks ago, having come across it via a desultory shelf scan. I was so engrossed by the book, I kept renewing it, then returned it to the library and bought my own copy.
Each chapter got my synapses firing with interesting information about how the evolution of human culture might be inferred from primate behaviors and primate and human physiology. I scribbled numerous notes that started with "I wonder if ... " or "Is it possible that ...", using the data from the authors as jumping-off points.
For example, before I read the book, I'd been wondering if it'd be possible to identify and track back as far as possible in time a collection of aphorisms that all cultures shared, such as "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," to see what might be learned about our cultural evolution - and how closely our "culture" was actually tied to our physiological hard-wiring. Lo and behold, one of the articles in Tree of Origin appears to offer a heart-through-stomach theory for how humans came to pair off as couples.
The discussion about the size of our neocortex (neocortices?) and its relationship to the size of social groups we can "manage" expanded another line of thinking on my part about what might really be at the roots of what we call racism and of our propensity toward bloody conflict. It's possible that one core cause is our brains' maximum capacity for social complexity, rather than "just" a learned behavior that one can discard through an intellectual process.
The book reminded me of Desmond Morris' books, The Human Ape and The Human Zoo, both of which I also found fascinating.
Now that I own this book, I can re-read it and mark it up as I wish!
I checked this book out of the local library many weeks ago, having come across it via a desultory shelf scan. I was so engrossed by the book, I kept renewing it, then returned it to the library and bought my own copy.
Each chapter got my synapses firing with interesting information about how the evolution of human culture might be inferred from primate behaviors and primate and human physiology. I scribbled numerous notes that started with "I wonder if ... " or "Is it possible that ...", using the data from the authors as jumping-off points.
For example, before I read the book, I'd been wondering if it'd be possible to identify and track back as far as possible in time a collection of aphorisms that all cultures shared, such as "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach," to see what might be learned about our cultural evolution - and how closely our "culture" was actually tied to our physiological hard-wiring. Lo and behold, one of the articles in Tree of Origin appears to offer a heart-through-stomach theory for how humans came to pair off as couples.
The discussion about the size of our neocortex (neocortices?) and its relationship to the size of social groups we can "manage" expanded another line of thinking on my part about what might really be at the roots of what we call racism and of our propensity toward bloody conflict. It's possible that one core cause is our brains' maximum capacity for social complexity, rather than "just" a learned behavior that one can discard through an intellectual process.
The book reminded me of Desmond Morris' books, The Human Ape and The Human Zoo, both of which I also found fascinating.
Now that I own this book, I can re-read it and mark it up as I wish!
October 24, 2021
Tree of Origin, edited by Frans B. M. de Waal, is a collection of 9 essays from top primate experts in the world. Covering many aspects of primate behavior these essays provide clues to our own human evolution including social and cultural evolution. A wide range of thought from bonobo to chimpanzee behavior is included, the varying tool traditions and social customs for each species, and what the latest DNA technology tells us as well. There are essays on diet, evolution of language, culture, intelligence, hunting behavior, sexual behavior, cognition, and politics.
The book is interesting both from a human evolutionary perspective, but also just as a review of how our primate cousins live. Bringing all the essays together in this one survey book provides a comprehensive view of current (2001/2002) primate knowledge and how that helps illuminate and inform human behavior and evolution.
The book is interesting both from a human evolutionary perspective, but also just as a review of how our primate cousins live. Bringing all the essays together in this one survey book provides a comprehensive view of current (2001/2002) primate knowledge and how that helps illuminate and inform human behavior and evolution.
July 14, 2022
This book was phenomenal… Although the final two chapters kinda bored me because well I read too much on the subject… But still, I never get truly bored and it gives my life so much meaning...
Now... Many passages made me laugh so badly:
“Occasionally the role of sex in relation to food is taken one step further, a
step that brings bonobos very close indeed to humans. It has been speculated
by anthropologists such as Owen Lovejoy and Helen Fisher that the
reason for the partial separation between sex and reproduction in our species
is that sex serves to cement mutually profitable relationships between
men and women. The human female's capacity to mate throughout her cycle,
and her strong sex drive, make it possible to exchange sex for male
commitment and paternal care, thus tying men and women together in the
nuclear family. Instead of a conscious strategy; this arrangement is thought
of as favored by natural selection for the simple reason that it allows
women to raise more offspring than they could on their own. Although
bonobos clearly do not establish the exclusive heterosexual bonds characteristic
of our species, their behavior does fit important elements of this
model: female bonobos show extended receptivity (voluntarily engage in
sex during much of their menstrual cycle) and use sex to obtain male favors.
Thus, a female who does not dominate a particular male still can rely
on sex as a weapon.
At the San Diego Zoo I observed that if Loretta was in a sexually attractive
state (which she was during a large portion of her cycle) she would
not hesitate to approach the adult male Vernon if he possessed food. She
would present herself to Vernon, mate with him, and make high-pitched
food calls while taking over his entire bundle of branches and leaves. She
would hardly give Vernon a chance to pull out a branch for himself, sometimes
grabbing the food out of his hands in the midst of intercourse. This
was quite a contrast with periods in which Loretta had no genital swelling;
then she would wait until Vernon was ready to share”.
She took his branch, LOL, omg…
And some that depressed me, so badly:
“When males control meat or any other highly valued resource, opportunities abound for use of the resource as a manipulative tool. Robin Dunbar and others have proposed that the increase in the size of the brain's neocortex came as a result of the advantages of social intelligence, the ability to
navigate the icebergs of one's political network to obtain selfish benefits such as status and mating success. Even those acts that appear to be altruistic and performed to increase harmony among individuals occur mainly when they enhance one's own social situation as well. Richard Byrne observed that those primate species that engage in what we consider to be high-level forms of social strategizing such as deceit ("tactical deception") are also those taxa that possess the largest brains. Social, Machiavellian intelligence is currently the explanation for human brain evolution with the most support.”
You have to read it if you are interested in the subject! Anyway, primatology is fascinating and I am so sad I did not study biology or psychology or anthropology…
Now... Many passages made me laugh so badly:
“Occasionally the role of sex in relation to food is taken one step further, a
step that brings bonobos very close indeed to humans. It has been speculated
by anthropologists such as Owen Lovejoy and Helen Fisher that the
reason for the partial separation between sex and reproduction in our species
is that sex serves to cement mutually profitable relationships between
men and women. The human female's capacity to mate throughout her cycle,
and her strong sex drive, make it possible to exchange sex for male
commitment and paternal care, thus tying men and women together in the
nuclear family. Instead of a conscious strategy; this arrangement is thought
of as favored by natural selection for the simple reason that it allows
women to raise more offspring than they could on their own. Although
bonobos clearly do not establish the exclusive heterosexual bonds characteristic
of our species, their behavior does fit important elements of this
model: female bonobos show extended receptivity (voluntarily engage in
sex during much of their menstrual cycle) and use sex to obtain male favors.
Thus, a female who does not dominate a particular male still can rely
on sex as a weapon.
At the San Diego Zoo I observed that if Loretta was in a sexually attractive
state (which she was during a large portion of her cycle) she would
not hesitate to approach the adult male Vernon if he possessed food. She
would present herself to Vernon, mate with him, and make high-pitched
food calls while taking over his entire bundle of branches and leaves. She
would hardly give Vernon a chance to pull out a branch for himself, sometimes
grabbing the food out of his hands in the midst of intercourse. This
was quite a contrast with periods in which Loretta had no genital swelling;
then she would wait until Vernon was ready to share”.
She took his branch, LOL, omg…
And some that depressed me, so badly:
“When males control meat or any other highly valued resource, opportunities abound for use of the resource as a manipulative tool. Robin Dunbar and others have proposed that the increase in the size of the brain's neocortex came as a result of the advantages of social intelligence, the ability to
navigate the icebergs of one's political network to obtain selfish benefits such as status and mating success. Even those acts that appear to be altruistic and performed to increase harmony among individuals occur mainly when they enhance one's own social situation as well. Richard Byrne observed that those primate species that engage in what we consider to be high-level forms of social strategizing such as deceit ("tactical deception") are also those taxa that possess the largest brains. Social, Machiavellian intelligence is currently the explanation for human brain evolution with the most support.”
You have to read it if you are interested in the subject! Anyway, primatology is fascinating and I am so sad I did not study biology or psychology or anthropology…
July 23, 2025
four stars bc i reallyyyy liked the chapter about language. some of them completely blew. the ones that didn’t were fine. set my expectations real high by reading the language one first. last essay made me question why i’m an anthro major. sometimes anthropology feels like the friend that’s too woke
December 28, 2022
Seriously good overview of areas where primatology may contribute to understanding human origins and development. Broad survey in the form of articles on individual topics (language, socializing, etc.)
May 9, 2020
gak ngerti ini ngomongin apa. hahaha.
February 20, 2022
This is a wonderful series of essays that covers many aspects of human evolution through comparative analysis of some of our closest living relatives.
February 12, 2009
To say I didn't want to read this book is an understatement, but required by a professor. While I do not agree with the theories put out in this book, I did learn the basis of arguments I'm opposed to as a Christian. It was a challenge for me but will keep it in my collection of books for future reference if ever needed for background work in this area of thought.
January 21, 2016
Nice collection of papers showing how humans developed from apes.
July 25, 2008
Some really good and interesting essays
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews