The Soul of the Ape shows what a tremendous difference a polished edit can do for the conveyance of ideas. The work was put together by Robert Ardrey, Marais’ tireless exponent, from an unfinished manuscript found many years after the author’s suicide. This makes it hard to hold many of Marais’ ideas up to the light.
Why what Marais has to say about baboons might interest us
Marais’ isolated existence in a narrow kloof in South Africa’s Waterberg Plateau in the 1920s had two important consequences. The first was that, despite his rigorous scientific training, he remained untouched by the influence of scientific work being done elsewhere. The second was that his subjects, a large troop of Chacma baboons, were largely untainted by human contact – outside of their doings with Marais himself. Because of the location of Marais’ hut, the baboons had no choice but to pass the astute observer every morning on their way out in search for food, and every evening on their way back to the home cave. Marais was a gifted naturalist who was able to carry out a detailed study of primates under highly favourable conditions before ‘primate science’ existed. Continue reading The Soul of the Ape
