CULTURE: WHAT CAN ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND CHIMPANZEES TEACH US?

This article discusses the notion of culture, applied specifically to research on chimpanzee behaviour. Some primatologists assert that chimpanzees also have culture, based on the criteria of experience, transmission, tradition, and variability. These findings have a significant impact on longstanding assumptions held by scholars in sociocultural anthropology and the biosciences on the roles of nature and culture, not only for humans, but also for other species for whom collective life and intelligence are strategic resources for survival. The central question in this debate is the following: given recent findings on chimpanzee behaviour, is it possible to assert that there are chimpanzee cultures despite a century of sociocultural anthropological research privileging human cultures? This article seeks to answer this question, taking into account the debate about symbols and symbolic production among human and non-human primates.