Reprint of "Almost Human" report in College

While I was attending UCSC in 1989 I wrote this report on a book I was reading. My attention had been caught by the fact that though Chimpanzees are on their way to extinction along with most of the great Apes like Humans(not that humans are going extinct) that Baboons were growing in numbers like Humans. So, I figured they must have traits in common with humans.

For example, some species do well around humans like Deer, raccoons, coyotes and sometimes wolves. However, people have a harder time getting along with Bear and Mountain lions but at least in some places like California and other places like Alaska and the West Coast they try. A big part of this is "natural habitat". Where I live I see deer all the time but I have also seen a dog who made the mistake of chasing a male deer with antlers within a few blocks of where I live. I could tell he had been thrown by the antlers because his flesh was torn off his ribs and hanging there. His 13 year old female owner was crying hysterically because she likely was going to be responsible for what happened to her dog when it chased the wrong male deer (a buck with horns).

So, Baboons being this close in behaviors where they can adapt more to humans when other apes might not was something I thought very interesting about them. Baboons keep their baboon identity rather than socializing with humans like Chimpanzees are known to do. So, baboons tend to keep to their own and stay wild.

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I also would like to share a part of a paper I wrote in college. It was an Anthropology college course. I was amazed by the similarity of Baboon society to humans of the last 10,000 years.

Basically I wrote a report on a study outlined in a book called Almost Human by Shirley C. Strum.

Begin quote: Dr. Shirley C. Strum left for Africa from UC Berkeley in 1972 to do graduate work in Kenya with Baboons. Her quest in her own words from p. 7 was, "---Robert Ardley--- told the lay public that modern humans were not far removed from our primeval days. A killer ape still lurked inside of each of us. Men and women were naturally different in abilities. Even if we wanted a society with greater sexual equality we might not be able to overcome millions of years of biology.

"What if he was right?" Worse still what if he was wrong and I believed him?---Like early humans, baboons have met the challenge of the savanna life like few other primates have. Watching baboons might help us understand the problems early humans may have faced through the solutions they have found."

When Dr. Strum was still an undergraduate, she was sold on Anthropology as a major. She saw that a holistic approach was the right approach because it looks at human problems and evolution from a variety of approaches simultaneously. She really liked this cross-cultural perspective. She saw no other systemic approach doing this as well as Anthropology. Dr. Strum first took a course in Cultural Anthropology and one course led to another. She says,"I felt linked not only to a few thousands years of art and culture but to millions of generations, to something bigger than I had ever imagined existed." un-nsa-tc-00542

During her research in Kenya she was surprised by many of her findings. Many of her logical preconceptions of baboon behavior were blown away by the facts. For example, her research led her to study Ray, an outsider male trying to move in and become part of the troop. Many of Ray's approaches were indirect. For many months he did not directly challenge the top male leadership for supremacy. Rather he kept his distance and slowly moved closer and closer over two months and eventually copulated with Naomi, a low status female. However, Dr. Strum could not figure out why the males of the troop did not put a stop to this behavior. Next Ray sought out one of the main matriarchal females but a big male named Sumner got jealous. Ray and Sumner fought but then neither claimed Peggy, the Matriarch as his sexual prize. Another lesser male claimed her instead. This confused Dr. Strum as it made no sense to her. I think that this has more to do with her not understanding males because it makes perfect sense to me. If I had been in a life or death struggle,even over a female, I certainly wouldn't be in the mood for anything but letting my adrenalin settle down to normal afterwards.

It seemed to Dr. Strum that baboons could adapt their behavior to many different kinds of environments whereas chimpanzees were close to extinction. What good did the chimpanzees' near humanness get them if they were going extinct?

If the numbers of primates are considered in total, baboons including subspecies are second only to man in primate population whereas all the great apes may be on their way to extinction.

Historic human societies also hearken back to societies where females only acquire status in relation to their association with a dominant male which Dr. Strum considered to be an almost direct parallel to early human tribal societies.And these human historic societies in this way directly parallel present day Baboon societies.

The males of the baboon species are like fighting machines and so male baboons compete for such things as females, food and status within a troop. Once males fought and achieved their rank lower ranking males tended to give way without protest. Those of higher rank got their rewards consistently without further protest. The system is much like human societies. It is maintained through threat and bluff. The threat and bluff system gives strength to the social fabric of baboons.

In contrast, females lives revolve around babies: having them, feeding them and raising them to be useful members of the troop. Female eyes were always turned toward the males. All females compete for the right to groom the dominant males as the dominant males protect them from outside predators and inter-troop quarrels. The dominant males were both guardians and protectors to all within the group.

Females are predictable. Their first loyalty is to their family. The mother is on top of the matriarchy followed by the children in reverse order of age. The female dominance hierarchy is strictly matriarchal. The matriarchal hierarchy is a contrast to the male dominance hierarchy. The male dominance hierarchy can shift from day to day or from hour to hour whereas the matriarchal hierarchy is linear and fairly rigid and only changes slightly when someone dies or is born. The sphere of influence of the males was found to be much more powerful but also much more narrow than Dr. Strum expected, whereas a dominant female's influence was fairly consistent on-going and on-growing. The dominant females, the matriarchs, ward off bullies within the troop and also protect the group from the dangers outside the troop. The matriarchs wield a great deal of influence both directly and indirectly.

A primate hand is a remarkable invention. It is one of several primary reasons that humans now do so well. As brain areas related to vision and manipulation increased in size, the human brain also increased in size.

From the back piece of the book George B. Schaller says this of Dr. Strum's work, "From her extended study (Dr. Shirley C. Strum) gained not just knowledge but understanding. She ceased being a scientific technician focused on a narrow aspect of baboon behavior and became a humanist who considered the philosophy, ethics, and science of her involvement with the animals--aspects that give this book unusual depth.... Books such as hers create an awareness that animals too have unique and complex societies as worthy of study and preservation as our own."

Although Chimpanzees are thought to be the closest link to man; baboon society is biologically much closer to humans, except for the use of tools, to our tribal beginnings. I think that the baboons will have much to teach the human race for many generations to come. Baboons may survive long after all the great apes have gone extinct in the wild because of their greater adaptability in the wild than any primate except man. Endquote of my college book report on "Almost Human" by Dr. Shirley C. Strum.

Written today: When I read this book, I was amazed by the similarity between modern and historic human society and the baboons. I think that more has not been made of this precisely because the similarities to human society are so striking.

There is one story that didn't make it into my report that was the most astonishing thing I learned in reading this book.

When the baboon troop,which lives mostly in one or two trees on the Savanah or flatlands, exhaust the food supply in that location they would have to move. The journey across open land to a new copse of trees is extremely dangerous. The trees provide some safety from lions and other big cats, though 5 or more alpha male baboons could drive off a single lion because of their fierceness and very sharp long teeth.

Anyway, as the group of 50 to 100 mostly related Baboons traveled through the flatlands and grasses to the next oasis or safe spot with trees, some of the older teenage males would likely be killed because they were at the outside of the circle and would get picked off during an attack, very much like corporals and privates in an army on the move. What amazed Dr. Strum was why older teenage males would put themselves in such a dangerous position for the good of the troop.

Eventually, after watching the troop over a long time, she was able to understand. If these older teenage males survived this dance with death they then had a chance at becoming one of the inner circle of alpha males or even the Alpha male himself at some point, since the whole troop witnessed their bravery at taking such a risk. They also positioned themselves to being able to mate with some of the alpha females if they survived.

This completely amazed me because it so directly resembles human tribal society for thousands of years as well as how even nations and armies reward those soldiers who are brave and move up the ranks. I felt grateful for the holistic study that Dr. Strum made while researching in the field for such an extensive period.

note: After I finished transcribing this college paper I wanted to know how many chimpanzees and Great apes were left and how many Baboons. Here is what I found:
http://books.google.com/books?id=-CvJnqkHaAYC&pg=PA319&lpg=PA319&dq=total+chimpanzee
+world+population&source

This is from Jane Goodall, a good source as of 2000 ad "The world human population would fill the rose bowl stadium some 60,000 times over;-------By contrast the most 'numerous' of the African Great Apes, the chimpanzee, might conceivably fit its total world population into two rose bowl stadiums. Experts may disagree on the rate , but they agree that the world chimpanzee population is declining dangerously, ultimately to a place of no return.The other three Great Apes species--gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos-- are rarer and if anything moving more rapidly to extinction. The total world population of gorillas, for instance, might fill the rose bowl staduim half way. The total world population of orangutans probobly would not. And the entire world population of bonobos, as an optimistic guess, might fill a third of that same stadium. end quote. at page 319 Visions of Caliban: On chimpanzees and people

http://www.princeton.edu/~baboon/demography.html This following is from the princeton site which is the Ambrosia Baboon Research Project

We know that fluctuations in birth and death rates have occurred, however, partly because the baboon groups have all shifted their home ranges at some point in the past decades. Such shifts usually result in an increase in both food and predation. Our current work involves investigating the effects of such fluctuations on the population growth rate. Analyses so far suggest that these fluctuations are very dramatic, so that while the pooled population growth rate has been 4% per year, growth rates over smaller periods of time, looking at single groups, may be as high as 8% per year and as low as -4% per year - from high growth to actual shrinkage. The implication of these fluctuations is that, while the baboon population may continue to grow if it remains on its current trajectory, it may also shrink and become vulnerable to extinction. Several bad years in a row, for instance, would accumulate in such a way that another crash could easily occur. We are currently in the process of trying to measure the possibilities - will the population continue to expand, or will it crash and return again to the edge of local extinction? end quote
  
I originally put this in a compilation I called:Enlightenment 
which was originally published here in 2008. 

Later in the 1990s I studied more about Network Engineering. However, before my ex-wife and I divorced in 1994 we had planned to go to India, Nepal and Tibet to do a Cultural Anthropology study of The Tibetan Culture so more could be preserved before China destroyed it all. Basically, most Tibetan Culture has had to leave Tibet to survive  to India, Nepal, Bhutan and other parts of the world otherwise people are often tortured or killed  or both in China if they don't give up their culture much like Native Americans were forced to become Christians from about 1900 until the 1950 and 1960s and to give up their native ways. So, today most Native Americans are Christians and believe in their Native American Religions too, especially on the Indian Reservations across America.