shi compare chimpanzee tool-use and mate-rial-use between two nearby populations ofchimpanzees in West Africa. Boesch appliesthree approaches to investigate the causesof behavioral variation among chimpanzeepopulations: the ecological, transmissionmechanism, and regional innovation ap-proaches.

The evolution of cognitive capacity is an-other major theme. Byrne argues that goril-las are not dull compared to chimpanzees ororangutans because gorilla feeding and so-cial strategies provide enough complexity toact as selective factors for cognitive capaci-ties. Langer proposes that heterochronic evo-lution in the ontogeny of cognitive domainsexplains differences in the cognitive capaci-ties of monkeys, apes, and humans. Parkerevaluates evidence for not only the evolutionof imitation, but also the evolution of teach-ing. Call and Tomasello review the effects ofartificial environments on ape cognitive de-velopment to argue that apes exhibit differ-ent skills as a function of human contact.

A central question for anthropologists,and an underlying theme in several contrib-uted chapters, is how and when we canapply the term ‘‘culture’’ to nonhuman apes.Culture and ‘‘culture’’ appear in several pa-pers, three times in titles. The papers byBoesch, Parker, and Russon take up thechallenge of formulating comparative defini-tions of culture. Russon also proposes anexplanation for why only chimpanzees, andpossibly bonobos, show regional culturesdespite the similar cognitive abilities of allthe great apes.

This volume keenly reflects the rapidlyexpanding research on cognitive capacityamong nonhuman primates. The paperscover a wide range of topics, yet no paper isout of place or redundant. Readers oftenpick and choose the papers to read in editedvolumes. This is one edited volume that theymay find themselves reading entirely.

DAVID S. SPRAGUE

Institute of History and AnthropologyUniversity of TsukubaTsukuba, Japan

DEMONIC MALES: APES AND THE ORIGINS OF

HUMAN VIOLENCE. By Richard Wranghamand Dale Peterson. Boston: Houghton Mif-flin. 1996. 350 pp. ISBN 0-395-69001-3.$24.95 (cloth).

Demonic Males. It is difficult to imagine atitle more deliberately provocative than thisfor a book that situates the origins andpersistence of human violence in an evolu-tionary context. The compelling prose bringsreaders into the lives of ruthless, power-hungry apes, simultaneously capturing theimagination and prickling the spine. But itisn’t the blood, gore, or sinister strategizingthat cause the discomfort. Rather, it is theidea that yet another distinguishing hall-mark of humanity, that of our own savagery,is really not so special after all. And with thedark side of our nature so firmly rooted inour primate past comes the chilling prospectthat mastering it may be just beyond ourcontrol.

Clues to how we might have taken adifferent evolutionary track, or might stillyet do so, are equally unsettling. If onlyfemale hominids could have bonded withone another like female bonobos, then we,too, might have the power to exert a calminginfluence on the aggressive tendencies thatthe males of our species have unwittinglyinherited. If only modern women could befirm about rejecting lucrative sexual ex-changes with resource-controlling men, thenwe could possibly eliminate the winningadvantages that male status strivers havemanaged to gain in the evolutionary game.

The problem, of course, is that humanfemales are every bit as much a product ofour biological ancestry as the males wechoose as mates. If female hominids didn’tbond with one another, it was because theadvantages of doing so must have beenovershadowed by the disadvantages, just asfor contemporary chimpanzees depicted inthis volume, where the distribution of fe-

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male food resources requires them to forageon their own and precludes opportunities forestablishing reliable alliances with otherfemales. The question then becomes whether,with our heightened self-awareness, we canself-consciously override what millions ofyears of evolutionary history have appar-ently prepared us to be.

The comparative approach of looking toother nonhuman primates for insights intohuman behavior has historical roots. Trac-ing these roots to primates as geneticallysimilar to us as chimpanzees is an obviouscourse for those seeking to identify appropri-ate candidates for comparative analyses.Nonetheless, the implication that somehowhuman females could solve the problem ofmale violence and aggression seems unjustin a world where, more often than not,women are the unarmed and unlanded mem-bers of our species. But science isn’t aboutfinding the answers we necessarily want tohear and if comparisons between humansand chimpanzees lead to the connectionsabout male violence and aggression devel-oped in this book, then we must consider theways in which humans could be different.

Questions like these provide fast-burningfuel for stimulating debates in seminars anddiscussions about primate and human con-tinuums. They are aided by the powerfulnatural history accounts, from chimpanzeesto hyenas, detailed in this book. Readersalready familiar with the scientific litera-ture on the species depicted will find fewflaws with the portrayals they encounter

here. Demonic Males never claims to repre-sent a complete selection of primate behav-ioral variation, so readers looking for moreextended comparative examples should notbe disappointed to find that primates suchas lemurs, in which females bond together todominate males, and the callitrichids, inwhich females have turned male competi-tion on its head by enlisting males in theburden of infant care and thus realigningmale reproductive strategies to coincide withtheir own, have been left out. Similarly,Demonic Males does not delve deeply intothe underlying mechanisms that regulatebehavioral variation, so readers interestedin understanding the basis of sex differencesin aggression at this level will need to con-sult the primary literature cited.

Remembering that this is a book aboutaggressive tendencies of both the chimpan-zee and human variety, and that it coura-geously tackles head-on some of the mostfundamental questions about the primatecontinuum to which humans belong, shouldestablish its place among other classics onanthropology reading lists for a long time tocome. Wrangham and Peterson offer a com-parative perspective from which to thinkabout our past, and from which to contem-plate—and choose—our future. Ultimately,it is the challenge to make this choice thatmakes Demonic Males such a provocativebook, and so worth reading. The availabilityof a paperback edition makes it even better.

KAREN B. STRIER

Department of AnthropologyUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonMadison, Wisconsin

HUMAN EVOLUTION IN CHINA: A METRIC DE-SCRIPTION OF THE FOSSILS AND A REVIEW OF

THE SITES. By Xinxhi Wu and Frank E.Poirier. New York: Oxford UniversityPress. 1995. 317 pp. ISBN 0-19-507432-7.$65.00 (cloth).

The publication of this book marks thehopeful beginning of a new era of interna-

tional cooperation among students of homi-noid and hominid evolution in China. Thisthorough account lists all the known sites tohave yielded hominid or hominoid fossilspecimens. The relevant fossils are de-scribed for each site entry and, where avail-able, summaries of the stratigraphy, archae-ology, and associated fauna are included.These entries are organized into chapters

253BOOK REVIEWS

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