Jared Diamond'un okuduğum ikinci kitabıydı. İçeriğini gördükçe ilk olarak bunu okumayı seçmeyi yeğlerdim. Yazarın diğer kitaplarında geniş olarak açıkladığı konular bu kitapta yüzeysel olmayan bir açıklıkla tanıtılmış. Bu basamağı geçtikten sonre yazarın Tüfek,mikrop ve çelik, Seks neden eğlencelidir ve Çöküş gibi kitaplarına geçilebilir.

-Kitap genel olarak insan evrimi ile ilgili de olsa aynı gezegeni paylaştiğımiz ve birlikte evrildiğimiz diğer canlılara da yer veriyor ve konuyu sıkıcı olmayan bir nedensellik çerçevesinde anlamamızı sağlıyor. Eşeysel seçilim ve evrimsel psikoloji konusu ile ilgili ek okuma olarak NTV yayınlaından çıkan Sevişen Beyin kitabını okumanızı da tavsiye ederim.

Diamond hiç beklenmedik sürprizlerle insan doğasını ve bilimi kesinlikle eğlenceli hale getiren ve beyni yormayan bir anlatıma sahip.

The Third Chimpanzee is meant to show that humans may be able to preserve the environment and avoid mutual destruction through awareness of our true nature, which is something that we don’t spend much time exploring. This book is meant to remedy that. I don’t need to be convinced that humans are a type of chimpanzee, but Jared Diamond has some convincing evidence that I hadn’t known. For one thing, in addition to humans being more closely related to chimpanzees than to any other species, chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas or any other apes. Jared Diamond also makes a compelling case against using chimpanzees for medical experiments or keeping them in zoos.
The book has introductory teasers at the beginning of the sections, asking the reader to think about intriguing questions. The answers given vary from no one has any idea to nicely crafted theories of how evolution progressed. Here are just a few tidbits from the book. The progress of human civilization has been very slow. It is documented only through items that have been preserved, which leaves gaps in what we know about early ape/human lives. Neanderthals, in contrast to humans, had a culture that did not vary from place to place or change over time. The life history of humans is remarkably different from that of all other mammals in number of offspring, menopause and length of life. Agriculture has been a mixed blessing, supporting more people than hunting and gathering, but requiring more work and leading to epidemics as more people were able to live closely enough together to facilitate the spread of disease.
There is a lot in this book that I didn’t know, both facts and studied considerations. I’m not sure the components of the book are tightly tied into the basic premise, but it is well worth reading for the perspective that Jared Diamond can provide.
Audio Version

A provocative look at mankind's evolution from the "ape status" to the complex creature we call human. By standards of other animals, our powerful civilization appears unique. So do many of our behaviors, including our sexual habits and the ways we select mates. Yet in many respects we are merely another species of ape -our genes are more than 98% identical to those of chimpanzees.

To be read before "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "The Collapse".
Not bad, but if read after the aforementioned books of the same author, it seems a bit "poor". Fine book nevertheless.
Thanks Jared!

…Small bands [of “uncontacted” peoples]…continue to turn up. But at some point within the early twenty-first century, we can expect the last first contact, and the end of the last separate experiment at designing human society…that last first contact won’t mean the end of cultural diversity…but the shift from isolated groups to global population does mean a drastic loss of [some types] of diversity. That loss is to be mourned…

Reading this ARC copy of Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee (for young people) was an interesting and informative read. Having read other works by Diamond I was a little worried about the level that this book might be written and while the text is simple it is hardly simplistic. This YA adaption reflects well on Diamond and its adapter Rebecca Stefoff. Like many of Diamond’s other works this title is a manifesto of sorts of what has gone awry in our environment and how it might be corrected that is unburdened by the day-to-day politics (both academic and legislative/electoral) that tend to get in the way of any sort of reasoned discussion about climate and environmental change. The work is challenging, balanced and engaging and pitched perfectly for YA readers. To prove that last point I will add that I left this copy sitting out on the coffee table at our house and my middle school son picked it up to read and asked if he could have it when I was finished. My copy goes to him tonight and I am looking forward to talking about it with him. Perhaps The Third Chimpanzee (for young people) will help him and his generation better understand the state of our world (and the sad condition of our closest kin in the animal world) and guide them to fix the mess we are in.

If I could have a brain transplant, I'd choose to have Jared Diamond's. Loved the whole book! If you have a curious bent, it will blow the doors of your mind wide open. Loved loved loved the disquisition on the Kurgan hypothesis - brilliant to find out where the two disparate languages that I speak came from!

This book was both very interesting and entertaining. It precedes Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel. It ties in pretty well with some other books I've recently read including The Sixth Extinction and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and even Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History.

It's a little out-of-date. For example, our ancestor Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals co-existed approximately 100,000 years ago. New research shows that many modern humans contain a little Neanderthal DNA showing that there was interbreeding, whereas Diamond was pretty sure that there was basically no interbreeding.

The title of this book comes from the fact that chimpanzees and pygmy chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than chimps are to gorillas. Thus, especially from the perspective of chimps, humans are a third chimp.

Fun topics include the emergence of language in humans, male penis and testes size, sexual selection, adultery, racial variation due to sexual selection not natural selection, aging, menopause as an adaptive solution to childbirth, the arts, agriculture and animal domestication, drug use, the question of intelligent alien life, genocide, and extinction. Whoo. It didn't always feel like it was well-organized or related but it was all very interesting.

Personally, I don't think the menopause explanation makes a lot of sense. It seems like if you weren't well-suited to give birth to your partner's baby, a first or second birth would kill you. At the rate of a baby every 4 years from ages 16-40, you'd be up to 6 births before menopause. Instead, menopause seems to make grandmothers more available to tend to their grandchildren instead of having more babies of their own (think prehistoric Michelle Duggars).

Another great book from Jared Diamond. I found this to be just as engaging as Guns, Germs, and Steel, and also an easier read. I find that his books have so much information that it is helpful for me to outline them as I go. Here are my favorite bullet points from The Third Chimpanzee. Not at all a comprehensive outline, but may be of interest to some people.



Chapter 1
- Our ancestors diverged from other apes around 7 million years ago.
- We share 98.4% of DNA with common chimps.
- Chimps are more closely related to humans than to gorillas. We are really a third kind of chimp.

Chapter 2
- We descended from Cro-Magnons, not Neanderthals.
- Hunter-gatherers were probably poor hunters.
- Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals co-existed 100,000 years ago (from 130,000 years ago until 40,000 years ago).
- The Great Leap Forward occurred 40,000 years ago with the emergence of spoken language. Progress no longer depended on genetic evolution but cultural evolution.

Chapter 3
- Across primate species, degree of polygyny is correlated with sexual dimorphism in body size and other physical features, and also testis size of males.
- Humans have exceptionally large penises and breasts for our body sizes.

Chapter 4
- Roughly 10% of babies are adulterously conceived.
- Unlike most mammals, human ovulation is concealed and sex is done in private.
- Also unlike most mammals, humans have sex all the time and it's purpose is largely social rather than merely for reproduction.

Chapter 5
- Couples tend to have a high degree of correlation (+.9) in religion, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, age, and political views; (+.4) for personality and IQ; (+.2) for physical traits; (+.61) for middle finger length.
- Incest taboo is probably genetic rather than cultural. We avoid people we grew up with between birth and 6 years, but then as adults we seek out partners similar to those people.

Chapter 6
- Racial variation can be explained only partly by natural selection (correlation between skin pigmentation and latitude - which is nevertheless noisy); but it is also probably due largely to sexual selection which results from the mating preferences reviewed in the previous chapter.

Chapter 7
- Body is like a car. Scheduled maintenance and unscheduled repair. When do you scrap it? When everything breaks at once. But it's not a conscious decision to scrap it. The evolutionary reasoning is this: the body is only as strong as the weakest part. So given that it's going to fail, it's ideal/optimal if they all fail at the same time.
- If you are likely to get in a crash that totals the car in the near future, then it's not worth investing in a lot of repair and maintenance.
- Rate of aging across species is correlated with age of first reproduction.
- Turtles live long because it's worth repairing their bodies because they have good protection (shell) and so are unlikely to die a sudden violent death.
- Menopause is a solution to the risk taking behavior of having more kids. Human childbirth is particularly dangerous. Having a fourth kid could kill the mom and put the other three at risk.

Chapter 8
- Most sophisticated animal "language" studied to date is the vocalizations of vervet monkeys.
- Vervets have at least ten "words": "leopard", "snake", "unfamiliar human", etc. They are truly words, not just stimulus-response grunts, because they sometimes use them in a lie to confuse rival troops.
- There is no correlation between linguistic and social complexity. (Really?)
- Children in a community of pidgin-speaking parents spontaneously add grammar to make the next generation a full creole language.
- Chomsky said we have universal grammar, with switches that can be set for different word orders and specifics; Bickerton went further to say those switches have a default value (a default word order that emerges spontaneously unless overridden by the linguistic environment).
- Babies start to say single words; then at two they can make multi-word phrases; then at four they can make complete sentences. That stage may have enabled the Great Leap Forward.

Chapter 9
- First human (Cro-Magnon) art emerged around the Great Leap Forward 40,000 years ago in the form of cave paintings and flutes.
- Bowerbirds use their art to woo mates. It is as if women put each of their suitors in sequence through a weight-lifting contest, sewing contest, chess tournament, eye test, and boxing tournament, and finally went to bed with the winner.
- In humans, dance and music and poetry are common preludes to sex.
- In summary, art is about sex. And now that we have lots of free time, our art can get very elaborate and serve other functions (such as aesthetics) as well.

Chapter 10
- No other primate practices agriculture. Closest thing is ants, which grow fungus and use insects such as aphids like cattle, drinking their honeydew.
- Hunter-gatherers are taller, work as many hours or fewer than farmers, have healthier bones, fewer diseases, fewer cavities, have a more diverse diet, are better nourished, are less susceptible to famine because of the diverse diet, and have lower rates of mortality at every age.
- Today just three plants - wheat, rice, and corn - provide more than 50% of calories consumed by the human species.
- American and European civilized society are elites, and their lives are better in large part because of oil and other resources. The elite became healthier, but at the expense of the majority who became worse off.
- Agriculture allowed for specialists and for class divisions.
- Agriculture allowed for birth intervals to shorten from 4 years to 2 years, and increased calories per unit area of land tenfold, thus dramatically increasing population density.
- Agriculture was not a conscious choice. It spread largely because it could support a population density 10x of hunter-gatherers, and 10 malnourished warriors can still beat 1 healthy bushman.

Chapter 11
- We drink and use drugs as a sexual advertisement that says, look how much of a handicap I can give myself and still be superior. Like birds of paradise with long tails that make it susceptible to attack. It says, look how long and heavy my tail is but I can still get away from predators.
- but in humans drugs and alcohol are addicting and also genuinely harm the user.

Chapter 12
- An important consideration in guessing whether intelligent life exists elsewhere is the degree of convergent evolution (inevitably).
- Woodpeckers exploited an extremely rewarding niche, but only evolved once. On the other hand, eyes and flight evolved multiple times independently.

Chapter 13
- Europe has about 50 languages, but New Guinea has one hundredth of the population but 1,000 languages.
- New Guinea included lots of small societies completely isolated from one another by the terrain.
- We are becoming culturally homogenized; there are very few places where alternative models for society can exist.

Chapter 14
- Of the many plants and animals available as candidates for domestication, only a few are actually domesticable, and those happened to be in Europe and the Near East.
- In addition to that head start, the east-west axis of Eurasia allowed the spread of farming more easily than the north-south axis of the Americas did.
- Rise of civilization brought disease and the people evolved immunity; but not hunter-gatherers.

Chapter 15
- Language evolves over time, and languages diverge to become mutually unintelligible when a group becomes isolated, just like speciation.
- Glottochronology is like a genetic clock; languages replace 20% of their words every one thousand years, but it's noisy.
- Invention of wheel about 3,000 BC (or about 5,000 years ago).
- Domestication of horses about 4,000 BC (6,000 years ago).
- Indo-European languages probably had a common ancestor around 3,000 BC north of the Black Sea. The package of agriculture and technology there allowed rapid waves of expansion, then another expansion into the Americas, and now half the world speaks Indo-European languages.

Chapter 16
- Chimps are xenophobic. They recognize members of other bands and treat them differently. They practice genocide.
- Many species practice murder, and some genocide.
- Stalin and Hitler were better at genocide because of technology, communications, and high population density.
- Humans practice a dual standard of behavior: strong inhibitions about killing one of "us", but a green light to kill "them".
- Our early American heroes were outspoken supporters of Native American genocide.

Chapter 17
- Tells the story of three ancient civilizations that collapsed due to environmental exhaustion: Easter Island, Anasazi, and Petra.
- Humans basically live in harmony with nature when conditions are stable, but sudden changes such as acquisition of a new technology or discovery of a new island realizes conditions for species extermination and environmental collapse.
- "While courses in the history of civilization often dwell on kings and barbarian invasions, deforestation and erosion may in the long run have been more important shapers of human history."

Chapter 18
- To get to the Americas, you gotta cross Siberia, then Bering Straight, then coast-to-coast ice sheet of Canada. Humans crossed the latter during an opening 12,000 years ago.
- Those early people are called Clovis people. They reached Tierra del Fuego within 1,000 years.
- Clovis people probably killed all the large mammals except bison.
- The Clovis culture then rapidly changed to the Folsom culture about 11,000 years ago, with different spear tips optimized for bison.

Chapter 19
- Four mechanisms of species extermination: overhunting, species introduction, habitat destruction, and ripple effects.
- "Dismissing the extinction crisis on the grounds that extinction is natural would be just like dismissing genocide on the grounds that death is the natural fate of all humans."

Oh boy. Where do I begin. This book took weeks to get through. Even accounting for busy-ness and laziness, it was tough to push through this labirynthine work. There were times when I was frustrated - wanting to fling this book right through my window - and to let the gaping crack on the window remain as a testament to my rage. Because he can drone on and on redundantly at times. Or maybe he is worried about not stressing on certain points enough.

What is not in doubt is his level of multi-disciplinary knowledge. History, geography, linguistics, politics, biology and more. This results in a systems approach - linking together multiple facets of an issue to present a cohesive theory, of which he has many.

Sometimes, it can be genuinely amazing. Sometimes it's hard work. I have never felt so slowed down by a book, so maybe that added to unnecessary frustration. You have to process each paragraph, as most of them are choke full of information - which can range from geography to a linguistic theory to a biological mechanism or even a psychological one. That being said, the rationales that follows these insights and information are easy to follow.

All in all, a book that is a world in itself, while acting as a stepping off point for further reading. He's imperious throughout, but he's also humble in his final words for each chapter.

Of course, the implications and conclusions about humanity can keep you staring blankly at a wall in your next party, even while your drink lays forgotten.

Just kidding. It's an honest book, never veering off into unwarranted cynicism, despite the subject matter at hand. I look forward to the next Jared Diamond brain pilates session. After all, this is one of his older works.

PS: What also works is the story of the man himself. An accomplished polymath, he's lived with the many prehistoric tribes in New Guinea (which we learn is one of the last remaining pristine microcosms of our prehistoric past). When you combine this innate intellect with the fact that he's also considered as one of the top 100 public intellectuals - it adds to the feeling that you are listening to one of the best unified theories on this planet

We are all 98% chimp. By that I mean that we share 98% of our genes with our closest animal ancestors. Diamond patiently explains what that means and explores what makes us human.

People say that humanity is differentiated by the use of tools and language, but also by murder and genocide. Actually the animal kingdom has examples of rudimentary tools, complex language, murder and genocide. Perhaps it is the degree to which we indulge that makes us human - no bonobo or aardvaark has a red button where, by pushing it, they could obliterate whole cities.

No penguin or gazelle lives in as diverse a range of habitats as humanity, nor do they bend nature to its will in quite the same way as we do.

So what does make us human. Diamond makes the case that language of increasing complexity and abstractness (this is a word?) is the prime suspect.

An interesting book, and thought provoking. I marked it down because I did not find this as compelling as the other books I have read by him. Perhaps this is because he invokes many of the same themes as other books, and I have lost the thrill of the new as far as Diamond is concerned.

By bizarre coincidence Diamond was on Desert Island Disks on BBC R4 on Friday. Must catch up with this.

Leer a Diamond siempre es una experiencia atractiva. Aquí se enfoca en indagar cuál es la singularidad de lo humano en relación con el resto de las especies, y otra vez esa búsqueda redunda en un interesantísimo texto. Acaso a veces alguna digresión se extienda demasiado, o cuestiones menores aparecen demasiado desarrolladas, pero el balance es sumamente positivo. La prosa fluye, los temas son desafiantes y cada libro del autor es una invitación a seguir leyéndolo. No es poco.

Unlike Guns, Germs and Steel, this book seems to me to have no central thesis, Jared wanted to talk about everything that make us human (Genes, sex, war, art, language, ...).

He tried to trace every human behavior to its animal origins:
Humans have a language? Vervet monkeys too.
Humans use drugs ? Just like peacocks.
Humans commit genocides? Chimps too.
Humans make art? Elephants too.

Except the vervet monkey language which may be valid (an earlier stage of our own language), I guess that the other animal origins of human traits are just speculations)

The last 3 chapters of the book are a warning message about the status of our environement. He said that the current extinction rate of animal species is higher than normal (natural rate), and that by killig animals and clearing trees we put our lives and the lives of the next generation at risk.
In this I agree with Jared 100%.

The best chapter I read was the one on genocide, I was shocked reading about the history of genocides, we have a bloody history and we are a blood-thirsty species.

Not much to add from other reviewers, this book is required reading for all young adults.