Human languages differ in which spatial frame they habitually use. We survey these differences and present a study investigating whether this linguistic difference influences spatial cognition. We compared humans whose languages differ in their spatial relational frames with apes - Pongo, Gorilla, and Pan - on a nonlinguistic spatial task. The same spatial frame was used by all three great ape genera, as well as 4-year-olds in both languages. Older children and adults diverged, using the frame consistent with their language. This suggests that young humans share with apes an inherited primate basis for spatial frames, but that this preference can be overridden by language and culture in humans.