The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991)

I recently commented that I want to be in a Jared Diamond/Simon Winchester talk sandwich, and that was before Diamond mentioned in this the early C20 discovery in a cave monastery in Chinese Turkestan of manuscripts that put the origin of the Proto Indo-European language into the Caucasus instead of the farther west previously hypothesized. I'm pretty sure that discovery is the same one Winchester refers to in The Man Who Loved China. So now I know what I'm going to investigate next.

From 1992, this book's scholarship is occasionally dated already. That's my fault for not reading it earlier. I do like his tone and accessibility. ( )

Three types of chimps: Common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), Bonobo (Pan paniscus), Humans (Homo sapiens). Should really be grouped together as the genus Homo.

Big game hunting leading to cooperation exaggerated when it comes to why humans developed as they did. If hunting important, rather because fighting between human groups enforced cooperation for defending oneself. But language most important of all, in communicating and preserving knowledge.

Good chapter on perils of agriculture. Humans chose cheap calories vs limiting population growth. Diamond clearly things that latter option would have been better, but it would have been nice if he had discussed that particular trade-off a little more.

First contact with modern world will soon end, and that will mean fewer experiments in how to organize human society.

Europe very linguistically homogenous.

Savage hunt for and killing of original inhabitants in Australia introduces the long history of human genocide. The difference now is that we have become powerful enough to extinct the human race.

Flirts with how traditional societies may have been better places to live, but does not come clearly out. Emphasizes the benefits of modern societies less than what he came to do in The world until yesterday. It is interesting how all the subsequent books Guns, Germs and Steel (1997), Collapse (2005) and The World Until Yesterday (2012) are contained as subchapters in this book. ( )

The beginning of this book was well written and fascinating to read. There were actually witty remarks that had me amused in parts, which you wouldn't expect from something so scientific. The explanations for how humans developed behaviors and the comparisons with chimps and other animals in order to help with those explanations were easy to associate with and really helped with the taking in of the information. The text didn't treat the readers like award winning scientists, but it didn't dumb everything up for the ignorant either.

By the last 100 pages of the book I became frustrated, however. As long as the book was actually doing what was expected of it and comparing us to chimps and explaining our evolution, I was content, but once it switched to how we were destroying our environment, it became less of "this is why we do what we do" to "this is how the demise of the world will come about." There wasn't even really a connection to humans beyond that we killed things. I'm not saying it wasn't well written, but it simply wasn't as mind-catching the way the first 200 pages were.

Definitely worth the read for the amazing revelations put forward about human nature and the ways of some animals. I know that I will forever have friends check the lengths of their middle fingers against their spouses from this point onward. ( )

Interesting stuff! I think I've still got this: my English teacher recommended it to me in the first year of Sixth Form, and I'm not sure I ever did finish it. But it was fascinating. ( )

Most of the content in this book was written up (a little better) in his other books Guns Germs and Steel and Collapse. This books felt like it was essentially a collection of elongated articles with a little more conversational/ less didactic tone than those books which had more of a thesis/argument approach. Most chapters were interesting by themselves and could probably stand alone just fine. They were strung together alright, but I didn't have too hard a time either putting the book down for a bit or picking right back up and reading large chunks very quickly. ( )