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Summary:
Jared Diamond states the theme of his book up-front: "How the human species changed, within a short time, from just another species of big mammal to a world conqueror; and how we acquired the capacity to reverse all that progress overnight." The Third Chimpanzee is, in many ways, a prequel to Diamond's prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns examines "the fates of human societies," this work surveys the longer sweep of human evolution, from our origin as just another chimpanzee a few million years ago. Diamond writes:
It's obvious that humans are unlike all animals. It's also obvious that we're a species of big mammal down to the minutest details of our anatomy and our molecules. That contradiction is the most fascinating feature of the human species.
The chapters in The Third Chimpanzee on the oddities of human reproductive biology were later expanded in Why Is Sex Fun? Here, they're linked to Diamond's views of human psychology and history.
Diamond is officially a physiologist at UCLA medical school, but he's also one of the best birdwatchers in the world. The current scientific consensus that "primitive" humans created ecological catastrophes in the Pacific islands, Australia, and the New World owes a great deal to his fieldwork and insight. In Diamond's view, the current global ecological crisis isn't due to modern technology per se, but to basic weaknesses in human nature. But, he says, "I'm cautiously optimistic. If we will learn from our past that I have traced, our own future may yet prove brighter than that of the other two chimpanzees." --Mary Ellen Curtin
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Connects the dots
Customer Rating:
The connection of the the evoutionary and phsychological charachteristics of human beings is worth the read. The evidance is lacking but more then made up for by circumstantial logic. There are few books that shed light on human charachteristics and such finds should not be skipped.
not pleased
Customer Rating:
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. I still have not recieved the book I PAID for.
Worth it for the first half
Customer Rating:
The first part, covering human evolution and biology, is fascinating. I especially enjoyed finding out that, compared to all other primates, I have an enormous penis. Have tried using this fact to impress women in bars with mixed results. Okay, not really mixed. No results.
The second part reads sortof like practice for Diamond's later, Pulitzer-winning "Guns, Germs and Steel"; he's starting to look into ideas that he fleshes out in more detail, and more convincingly, in that book. I wouldn't hold it against you if you skipped that part and moved right on to his later books.
As Chimpy as You Wanna Be
Customer Rating:
Dr. Diamond's first book for which he won nothing but the admiration of some pathetic, lifeless losers like yours truly. But he should have. It was excellent. True that Chimpanzee is the Salieri to Guns' Mozart, but what it lacks in breadth it makes up in simplicity and erudition. I breezed through this book with nary a trip to Wikipedia unlike GGS, which sent me there virtually every day. And yet I still learned a ton.
The chapter titled "The Golden Age That Never Was" was a delightful decimation of the position that simpler times harbored some kind of environmental respect that we have since lost. It's like he read Quinn's manuscript for Ishmael (see) and wrote this in protest. Diamond points out that the Native New Worlders, far from respecting nature, precipitated the largest wave of extinction in human history. Just how respectful is it to walk up to a 500lb flightless bird that doesn't run from you because it didn't have the benefit of evolving to be afraid of humans and club it over the head? Or to kill a wooly mammoth, feast for 2 days and then leave the rest to rot?
About as respectful as trading Manhattan Island for some beads. At least now the species-killers get to keep our gambling money. What did the giant ground sloth get?
Diamond is Brilliant
Customer Rating:
A good read for anyone who's interested in anthropology or evolution. One of Diamond's main points in this book is that humans are not so different from our biological cousins, the apes. In fact, he says, we are more genetically close to chimpanzees than some species of orangutans are to other species of orangutan. Not to spoil the story, but this is a good read!
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