Anthropology › Section D · Evolution, primates, and early hominins › Topic D.5
What is a primate?
Humans belong to the order Primates, along with more than 500 other living species, from mouse lemurs to gorillas. Knowing what makes a primate, and how our relatives live, is the baseline against which anthropologists ask what is distinctive about being human.
In this topic
- Why study our relatives?
- Hands, eyes and noses
- Big brains and slow lives
- Why primates evolved these traits
- Worked example: is it a primate?
- Strepsirrhines and haplorhines
- Monkeys and apes
- Behaviour and culture
- Chimpanzees, bonobos and conservation
- Worked example: a trait that changed jobs
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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