It is argued that the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were “nasty, brutish and short”, but the observations made by Jane Goodall in Gombe illuminate the complexities of the hunter-gather lifestyle of chimpanzees that can be compared to those of our predecessors. In her novel, In the Shadow of Man, her decade-long observations detail the key patterns in which the chimpanzee’s social interactions and structures, along with their ability to problem solving show the many similarities between human societal characteristics and the chimpanzee’s. Reinforcing that chimpanzee communities function and evolve with many of the same eccentricities as man, therefore, it is contradicting to summarize the lives of chimpanzee’s as simply “nasty, brutish …show more content…
Goodall’s time at Gombe she was able to extensively document the chimpanzee’s abilities to learn and problem solve. An important discovery she made during that time was the observed learning between mother and child. Case in point, the female chimpanzee Flo, her daughter, Fifi and her infant son, Flint. As Flint matured, he went from being carried securely at the breast to riding on his mother’s back (106). Dr. Goodall observed on several occasions Fifi’s attempts to have Flint ride on top of her back instead (106). This example of observed learning underlines the chimpanzee’s ability to clearly and logically process information and mimic actions. Observed learning is an essential way information is passed amongst humans and another shared trait with their human relative. The chimpanzee’s patterns of observed learning once more exemplifies the advanced abilities of these hunter-gathers as more than …show more content…
Being some of the more “astute” members of their troop Fifi and Figan were not unaware that the others knew of their expertise. Dr. Goodall noticed that the pair sometimes would ignore the others until they lost their patience, a valuable observation (142). The sibling’s deliberate action is not unlike something a person would do in a situation where they were unwilling to share. “The chimpanzee, with his capacity for primitive reasoning, exhibits a type of intelligence more like that of man than does any other mammal living today.” (239) The discoveries Goodall made about the skillfulness of the chimpanzees involving her banana boxes detail their ability to process information as well as pass knowledge. Both of which, are significant in our comparison between chimpanzee to man, furthermore, they shed light on the intricacies of the hunter-gather