Apart from language, the manufacture and use of tools is often used to differentiate humans from animals. For instance, in his book The Cultured Chimpanzee (2004), the primatologist William McGrew explains that one common argument laid against the concept of ape culture is that they have never built and launched a space craft. However, he counters that most humans haven’t done this either. It...

Animism is sometimes considered the earliest form of human religion. But what about before we started to think in terms of us vs. them (humans vs. animals), before we left the forests and evolved into our present forms? I'm currently reading The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology (2004) by William C. McGrew. The chapter on social culture mentions a very strange practice of male chimpanzees that borders...

I'm interested in writing a book that collects folklore about monkey, apes, and prosimians (e.g., lemurs) from all over the world, including Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. I will give brief backgrounds on the species involved, as well as describing the cultures from which the folklore comes from. There will also be sections on the evolution and migration of primates...

The Jesuit Jean-Paul Gozani visited the Kaifeng Jewish community in the early 18th century. He reported what he saw and heard in a letter to his superior. The letter serves as an interesting example of the west's contemporary negative view of foreign culture and religion.

...

The Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon (c. 1100) was a communication written by six elders of the Karaite Jewish community of Ascalon, Israel and sent to their coreligionists in Alexandria, Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem in 1099. It is important to the study of the first crusade because it dates only 9 months after the siege, making it one of the earliest primary sources on the subject (most European accounts date...