Long before language gave us words for courage or solidarity, our ancestors may have already known how to reach out and touch one another before walking into difficulty. Researchers at Durham University have found that chimpanzees and bonobos — humanity's closest living relatives — engage in deliberate physical contact, embracing and touching, in the moments before conflict or competition arises. Observed at sanctuaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, this behavior suggests that the instinct to draw close when tension mounts is not a cultural invention but an inheritance, one t