That’s pretty much it. I searched, but I didn’t find anything that addressed my exact question.
It’s frequently said that chimps have the intelligence of a 3 year old human. But some 3 year olds are smarter than others, just like some animals are smarter than others of the same species. So why haven’t we come across a chimp with the intelligence of a 10 year old? Like…still pretty dumb, but able to fully use and comprehend written language. Is it likely that this “Hawking chimp” has already existed, but since we don’t put forth much effort educating (most) apes we just haven’t noticed? Or is there something else going on, maybe some genetic barrier preventing them from ever truly achieving sapience? I’m not expecting an ape to write an essay on Tolstoy, but it seems like as smart as we know these animals to be we should’ve found one that could read and comprehend, for instance, The Hungry Caterpillar as written in plain english.
In: Biology
You should check out the book Humankind by Rutger Bregman.
He’s got a whole section about the evolution of humans and why we are more emotionally intelligent than the chimpanzee, and then goes onto explain how our cultural ancestry is more closely related to that of the bonobo.
He makes the really compelling argument that we’ve been looking at our evolution wrong.
It’s not survival of the fittest, it’s *survival of the friendliest*
We evolved to work together as a team, learning from one another, mirroring one another, and it’s often the most friendliest of us that gets to reproduce (you don’t learn dad jokes when you become a dad, you become a dad because you make dad jokes and she thought you were cute and fun to be with)
It’s a great read either way and has given me the hope that I needed for humanity. That in spite of what our television and media has been telling us, that alone won’t stop our genetic growth towards being a kinder and gentler species.
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