Max Planck Research Group Cooperative Cultures

The Cooperative Cultures research group is dedicated to understanding the ecological and social underpinnings of cooperation and culture in hominids and beyond. We address fundamental questions about how environmental variability and out-group threat or tolerance shape both cooperative tendencies and the persistence and transmission of cultural traditions across populations and groups.

To this end, we use large longitudinal datasets on the ecology, demography, behaviour, and physiology of our two closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pantroglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). While these species share strong developmental, social, and cognitive similarities, bonobos are considered more tolerant to outsiders but less behaviourally diverse than chimpanzees. These contrasts create a natural system for examining the conditions that drive behavioural adaptations. Our multi-species, multi-population approach aims to get us closer to understanding how species can use cooperative behaviour and culture to adapt and thrive in changing environments, with strong implications to our understanding of human evolutionary history.