But landmark work has shown that chimpanzees gesture in meaningful ways, too.
Take gestures, for example. Some are individual, but many are common to our language community and even to all humans. It is clear that language evolved as part of a communication system in which gesture also plays a role. But landmark work has shown that chimpanzees gesture in meaningful ways, too. Michael Tomasello, now emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and his colleagues have shown that all species of great apes will wait until they have another ape's attention before they signal, and they repeat gestures that do not get the response they want. Chimpanzees slap the ground or clap their hands to get attention—and just as a belligerent human might raise a fist, they roll their arms over their head (normally a prelude to an attack) as a warning to rivals.