Why Do Physical Anthropologists Study Primates?

Question

I am taking a summer course in Anthropology 01. One of the primary questions proposed to us students by the Professor is why do physical anthropologists study primates?

Before I look begin reading the textbook, I'd like to know if anyone has their thoughts and ideas as to why they do? Thanks very much!

Answer 1

The Chimp is the closest living relative to homo sapien and although they have 48 Chromosomes & humans have 46, human chromosome #2 is an easily identifable fusion of 2 Chimp chromosomes. 98.3% of the human genes & chimp genes are the same (that is the last figure I heard quoted.)

Anyway the social development is very like that of humans & the identifed differences are very important to the anthropologists.

Answer 2

It's like asking why we study history when we live in the present.  Primates are the history of humans and help us understand how we evolved physically and culturally.  Thus we can gain a fuller understanding of what it means to be human (as compared to non-human primates) and look more closely at individual human cultures.

Answer 3

Several reasons -

1. Humans are primates - therefore our cousins and by studying them we learn a lot about our current form, how it got to be what it is, what our past relationship to other primates was (fossil record) etc.  They provide models that allow us to examine locomotion, food gathering  and many other physical aspects of humans and our ancestors

2.  Primates also provide great models for the development of human cultural systems.  Their social systems are very complex and contain examples of all such systems ever noted in humans, they provide models for altruism, procreative success, etc.

Answer 4

Anthropologists claim that a lot of primitive human behaviour such as rage, terratoriality, fear, mating, greed, etc., can be gleaned from the study of primates.

The human anatomy and the primate anatomy contain all the same elements of bone and tail (humans have a vestigial tail remnant that sometimes appears at birth).

So the non-human primate is a good basic subject for anthropological study.

Answer 5

You got good information from the previous post.  Primates are our closest living relative.  The difference between a Chimpanzee's DNA and ours is less than 2%.  If you like animals and learning about human development, you'll love this class.

Answer 6

i think its the issues from slavery days of false science where whites are still trying to show the link between man and primates so that they justify once again their facts that primates are direct descendents of africans and this would prove the superiority of whites. it still hasn't academically been defuncted and most whites do still believe these old thoughts because of white tradition and the benefits whites get out of denying that all people are the same except for outward appearances. blood tests etc .. doesn't prove race,hence blood transfusions from all colors of people can be used by an acceptable reciever.