Transcend Dualism

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“The “primate model behaviour” favored by overly hierarchical and patriarchal writers on human-animal parallels “is based more on baboon, not the gibbon.” In contrast to the baboon, the Gibbon is closer to humans physically and on the primate evolutionary scale. “Our choice of a primate role model is clearly culturally determined,” She concludes:

“Who wants to be like the unaggressive, vegitarian, food-sharing gibbons, where farther is as much involved in child-rearing and mother is, and where everyong lives in small family groups, with little aggregation beyond that? Much better to match the baboons, who live in large, tightly knit groups carefully closed against outsider baboons, where everyone knows who is in charge and where the mother looks after the babies while father is out hunting and fishing.”

Baboons, are monkeys, despite the presumed similarity to humans. They branched off from humanoid evolution 20 million years ago. Our closest evolutionary cousins, the great apes, tend to demolish prejudices about hierarchy completely.”