How To Save The Great Apes: Give Them Reading and Writing

The great apes already have their own language. We don't need to give them that. They speak to each other, in the wild, as they go through their daily lives.

But they don't have reading and writing. They don't have a calendar, either, a way of recording and expressing time in years. (As far as I know.)

I want the great apes, the bonobos, the chimps, the gorillas, and any other apes that are able to do it - I want these apes to write and read their own histories. I want them to record their own culture in books. It will be written in ape language. It will have their myths, their memories, their genealogy, their history, their ideas, their names, everything, just like a human history book would have.

It will be just as boring, and just as necessary and important, as a human history book. It might be hard to read. It might be mundane. It might not be wise and full of insight. But still it is necessary.

I like to imagine that somewhere in the jungles, the scientists have built a room underground with the apes' books already in it, protected. I imagine they've been working with the apes all these years to get their history recorded. All those researchers spending years and years in the jungle observing them, I hope they're doing something useful. I'd like to imagine that's what they've been doing all this time. An ape-written history would be useful. Not just history, but whatever else the apes want to write. Ape fiction, ape how-to books, ape philosophy, ape myths. All of it.

We could also give them a money system. Of course, I'd want it to be a good one, like gold and silver. Not fiat money. The bonobos already understand how to use sex as a way of trading for favors and food, so they'll be the first to understand money. But I'm sure the other great apes can too. They understand language.

(Why 'they' wanted me to write about this today, I don't know. There's probably a reason. It's almost always a 'joke' of some kind. But me, I'm not joking, I'm serious. I literally want to see the (non-human) great apes' reading and writing.)