Essay on Culture the Creator of Gulf between Human Beings and Primates – The Homo sapiens, the high minded type of primate has a clear edge over other primates for it has the facility of culture.
The emergence of culture at their level has created a tremendous gulf between the human society and the society of the rest of the primates.
The presence of culture together with the remaining traits of primate society at the level of the human beings made the human society a distinctive one. Strictly speaking this new kind of society is bio-socio-cultural. It can be briefly referred to as ‘socio-cultural or in simply as ‘human society’. (iii) Human Society OR Socio-Cultural System vs. Non-Human Society OR Bio-Social System
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According to Kingsley Davis, culture provides the sole explanation for the marked differences that we find between human societies on the one hand and non-human society, on the other. Hence he calls the human social system “socio-cultural system”. The mammals, including primates and human beings have established their supremacy over the non-mammalian social beings because of superior biological traits or qualities.
But from the sociological point of view, the uniqueness and the supremacy of human beings over all the other animals including primates are to be sought through the phenomenon of culture. The primates that represent the highest order mammals too have their own limitations in comparison with man.
Still, it is true that the human groups exhibit certain traits that are common to all primates. But any modification of these general traits takes place on a physiological basis in the case of primate group, but it takes place on a cultural basis in the case of human groups. The following explanation clarifies the dominant role of culture in the socio-cultural system.