Learning from baboons

Shirley C. Strum has spent over 50 years studying wild baboons in Kenya. During that time, she has pioneered new ideas about baboons, about society, about nature, about science and about evolution. As she recounts in her new book Echoes of Our Origins: baboons, humans and nature, she was the first to suggest that baboon society is not based on male aggression and dominance, but that both males and females have effective non-aggressive alternatives. These “social strategies of competition and defence” rely on social relationships that create a “social contract” based on social sophistication, social intelligence, and collaboration, even without the benefits of human characteristics like symbols, language and culture.