Darwinian realities versus cartesian delusions roger fouts central washington university as summarized by erin mckenna pacific. Verkkowashoe became famous in the late 1960s for being the first nonhuman to use a human language, namely, american sign language (asl). Verkkogardner and gardner (1969) attempted to overcome apes’ difficulties with speech by teaching a chimpanzee, washoe, some parts of american sign language. Verkkowashoe, claimed to be the first chimpanzee to learn sign language, died this week. Washoe was born in west africa in 1965. How shall anthropological linguistics assess the significance of the recent experiments with apes and language? The question is a momentous one.
