Asked whether any single word would serve as a prescription for lall one's life, Confucius proposed 'Reciprocity'. Jesus said it in a few more words: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' They weren't the first. A 'black-haired, big-jawed, knuckle-walking species, that ate seasonally available soft, ripe rainforest fruits' probably had a similar code of conduct. That was our ancestor of some six to eight million years ago, also the grandparent of our two closest modern cousins: bonobos and chimpanzees. Knuckle-walking and the like have been inherited today by chimps, bonobos and a more distant relative, the gorilla. This ancestor must also have had (in some form or other) three traits shared by all of its present-day descendants: intelligence, co-operation, and the rudiments of culture.

LRB 20 September 2001 | PDF Download