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Article: Baboons, scholars, and parliamentarians.(intergenerational social culture)
- Article from:
- The Beaver: Exploring Canada's History
- Article date:
- August 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Canada's National History Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Reading Richard Dawkins or Stephen Gould often makes me wish that historical journalism had some of the richness of scope and ambition that today's best science writing displays. (You can make the same discovery in television. Consider History Television in relation to Discovery Channel, and despair.)
Lately some science writers seem intent on discovering history for themselves. Consider the work of the American field biologist Robert M. Sapolsky, who in his book A Primate's Memoir evokes the half a lifetime he has spent in close observation of a troop of Kenyan baboons. ("I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up," he writes. "I had always ...