Definitions of Culture

There is currently a great debate over the nature of culture, and by extension, whether aspects of behavior shown by nonhuman primates can be called evidence of culture. There are two basic schools of thought on the topic. One group argues that culture is by definition human,, while a second group believes that examples of social learning by apes and monkeys are proof of distinct simian cultures. The gulf between these two camps is caused by problematic definitions. Definitions are crucial to language and reasoning, but also to science (Babbie, 1986, p. 93). The debate over ape culture will not be resolved until a unified definition of culture is accepted within the scientific community.

Recently, a number of books have been published describing what the authors= call primate culture. These studies argue that evidence that certain types of apes and monkeys not only learn as individuals, but also pass learned behavior to their fellows, and that this is proof that these species have a culture. Taking this position

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