Chip Walter

Last Ape Standing is the story of us, homo sapiens, and how we survived against all odds, why we, of all the hominoids who stood up on their own two feet and walked out of the trees and onto the savannah, became the last ape standing.

According to author Chip Walter, this outcome was never assured. In fact, many of the things that came together to make us, well, us could also have led us to the same end as all of the other hominoids who walked this planet - 27 at last count, four of which show more were discovered as Walter was writing this book.

Walter lays out our journey from a small group of gracile hominoids in eastern Africa, through our journey out of Africa to populate almost every niche and cranny of this planet with the exception of Antarctica, to our present and, perhaps, final stage. He also speculates on what the future holds for us, whether, in the end, our very success will be our downfall and, if so, what or whom will replace us.

Walter relays our story in a highly cogent, highly readable, and surprisingly entertaining way. If you have ever wondered what made us the amazing creature we are, the only one with the capacity to even contemplate the question of our own existence, this book has some fascinating answers for you and perhaps even more questions to stimulate the huge brain evolution has graced us with. show less

Next school year I am going to be co-teaching a class on the science and science fiction of life-extension technologies (e.g., cryonics, mind uploading, and so on); this is one of the books we are thinking of assigning. The book covers a number of Silicon Valley-associated figures who are working on how to cure aging; it's framed by a discussion of Alcor and cryonic preservation of corpses, but Walter's main focus is on those people who are trying to stop interventions like that from every show more being necessary in the first place.

To me, the most interesting part was Walter's thesis about why research into these technologies have take off now; basically, he argues that the baby boomers are the first generation to see most people actually die of aging, and they're also the first generation where you can see a doctor and get cured of most things, thanks to widespread vaccination and the use of antibiotics. So they would also be the first generation to think of aging itself as a problem that can be medically solved, as opposed to an inevitability.

The focus of the book is on the people funding and doing this research; I found this kind of interesting, but maybe not interesting enough in proportion to the amount of time spent on the bios of a bunch of (frequently obnoxious sounding) venture capitalists. He also discusses some of the science behind it all. If there's a weakness to this book, it's that it's all a bit breathless and credulous; it felt to me like it was repeating these people's talking points instead of, say, interrogating them. I would have appreciated an outside scientific voice in the narrative, someone who could say if these people were actually pursuing viable lines of research, or if it was all an incredibly expensive vanity project.

It's very well researched (Walter did a lot of original interviews) and it gives you a lot to chew on, but I do wish the book had done some of this chewing for you, so to speak. (Okay, that's a bad metaphor.) I don't know enough about the science to know if I should believe in these technologies as they are presented. But maybe that's asking too much for what is clearly meant to be an easy-read pop science book. I think it will be very useful to teach, and with some good framing, I think our students will get a lot out of it. show less

Absolutely wild, fantastic, almost unimaginable. Walter takes complex topics and makes them easy to understand and even easier to read. I loved every second of this book, and the ethical quandaries I now must ponder are immense....

An interesting and very readable book about the known origins and evolution of human ancestors. Many newer discoveries and theories about their possible significance added to this book for me, as some of the discoveries I was completely unaware of.