Meeting old friends of another kind...

During our visit in the Netherlands we made a visit to Burgers Zoo, one of the most beautiful zoos in Europe, in the town of Arnhem where I grew up. Here I could visit the chimpanzee colony, which was established 1972. In 1979-80 I spent more than a year with those chimps on a daily basis, working on an ethological project under the guidance of Frans de Waal (now one of the leading primatologists in the world, working in the US). Many of the chimps from that time are now gone, and a new generation grew up. But the oldes female from that time, named Mama, is still there 50 years of age, and her daughter Roos, who was very small then is now a mother herself. Also some other "old friends" were still around.

Chimp behaviour is fascinating. I can still spent the whole day just observing them. The chimps make one think about our own place in nature. Chimps and the other apes are the animals, physically most like ourselves. Even their behaviour reminds many times of humans. The way they have conflicts, their reconciliation (the aspect I worked on back then), their way of doing "politics", it seems so familiar to us. As we know today even their DNA is more than 95% identical with ours. Of course, chimps are our evolutionary cousins so to say. Paleontological evidence is abundant.

Still, there is this difference which is difficult to put our finger on. In spite of all those resemblances something makes us very different as well. Even if our bodies and our psyche remind of eachother, there is an aspect making human human. It might be that difference, that extra aspect which made the writer of Gen 1 use that unique word bara (create out of nothing) about the creation of man. It might be that which is said in Gen 2, that God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living being (nefesh, a living soul). Gods breath - the hebrew word is ruach and can as easily be translated Gods spirit. The text also says man was made of dust - materia, our physical roots are in the material creation (as the evolutionary model confirms). But our spiritual roots come from the Spirit of God. That is why a chimp is so very like ourselves, but so very different.

A meeting - again - with my chimpanzee friends sure give a lot to think of.