Arrived at the age of 87, the British Jane Goodall is undoubtedly the most famous primatologist in the world and in 50 years has addressed all generations. It was she who in the 1960s, at the age of 26, decided to go live with chimpanzees, in the jungle in Tanzania, to study them, observe their daily life and teach us that what we thought was truly human, like the use of tools, is theirs too. What tempers our exceptional character compared to other animals.
Her discoveries have changed our outlook on the animal world and it is this journey that she recounts in a book which comes out on October 20 at Flammarion. The Book of Hope. Hope for what? To believe that despite the disappearances of species, despite the ever-growing list of animals threatened with extinction, despite the destruction of their ecosystems, an alliance between humans and the rest of life is still possible.
“We humans have derailed somewhere, we can send probes to Mars or talk to each other via Zoom but we are destroying our habitat (…) there seems to be a disconnection between the brain and the human heart.”
Jane Goodall, primatologistin the newspaper “La Croix”
“If you don’t think your actions can make a difference, she said to the magazine Time, vou sink into indifference, and if young people in particular lose hope, then there, yes, that will be the end. “To thwart this possible resignation, Jane Goodall has therefore gone for thirty years from scientist to lecturer, multiplying interventions everywhere, in schools, companies, to remind that we share 98.6% of our DNA with great apes, tell everything that links us to them, to other animals, to all life in general. “We humans, she confides to the newspaper The cross, notWe have derailed somewhere, we can send probes to Mars or talk to each other via Zoom but we are destroying our habitat … there seems to be a disconnection between the brain and the human heart. “And that is nothing new.
TIME’s new cover: The enduring hope of Jane Goodall https://t.co/wkyEosD1Ya pic.twitter.com/vwzke31vt4
– TIME (@TIME) September 30, 2021
Born in 1934, Jane Goodall likes to recall that in matters of human madness, she lived through the Second World War, the Blitz, the bombings in London, the dead… but also the speeches of Churchill, resistance and victory. She also saw the sequel, the threat of a world nuclear war then the return to reason and appeasement. So she wants to believe that the current climate, social and environmental crisis can be resolved, that we can act in time. Two weeks before the start of the COP26 in Glasgow, it is undoubtedly for this rare optimism that it is making the front pages of dozens of newspapers around the world these days, from the American magazine Time British Daily Telegraph, Passing by The cross, here in France.