Can I just believe in the evolution of say, the Indo-European linguistic group, but not human evolution? I liked the language part of the book, but I have read better stuff on the subject elsewhere.

I hope there is tolerance in the future for alternate beliefs.
What say you, true belevers?

I so like other books Jared Diamond has written I listened to this one his first, written in 1991. I can see where the ideas he develops in later works come from. In this book he looks at Homosapian’s as though we were another species of Ape (which we are). The arguments were their own and could not easily be put into a comfortable box. At some points he is highly romantic in the Rousseauian sense, and later explicitly rejects such romanticism about our ancestors.

His writing around evolutionary psychology of human sexuality has not changed much or been bettered since he wrote this. They still hold water and seem the best explanation of how we choose our sexual partners. He identifies the discrete estrus leading to female choice in sexual selection of mates as the mechanism to spur rapid evolution, along with the development of speech, art, co-operative hunting.

We (Homosapians) commit genocide and evolutionary behaviour naturally. Not committing mass murder and learning to live within our environment is a learned behaviour and a product of civilisation. This is where Diamond is most Hobbesian. We are far from Roussesu’s noble savage. It agrees with Freud’s hypothesis expressed in Civilisation and it’s Discontents that the purpose of civilisation is not to bring utopia and happiness to all, but to protect ourselves from the worst aspects of ourselves. Diamond is not optimistic and give several examples of genocide and ecological destruction. If we do not understand our nature, we will not develop our tools to transcend ourselves, and save ourselves from ourselves (more about this when I review A Natural History of Rape: Biological Basics of Sexual Coercion – Randy Thornhill & Craig Palmer). Our ability to transcend our own nature is a vital imperative in our age of nuclear weapons and global pandemics.

The book of Jared Diamond (Pulitzer Prize (1998)) made me think deep about Darwin's theory of evolution and human development.

The novel gives a lot of unusual but real examples, such as; animals that breed another animals; animals that make alcohol; etc.. The book explains what is the meaning of the sexual and natural selections (in the evolutionary sense); why the human evolution has reached today's technological level; what are the social interactions between the primates (for example, are there soulmates?); what are the simple (not unusual) scientific reasons behind some of the mass-extinctions on Earth. The book tells us a story about the amazing worlds, tribes, and societies in New Guinea and describes quite a lot of interesting and curious facts and conclusions interrelated with the evolution of the species.

The Third Chimpanzee (1991) is a book that is easy to read (for its scientific level) and it is a real pleasure to read it.

So close to the chimpanzee, so far evolved from them in a negative way: genocides, war and extermination of species.

Most significant read if you want to understand where we are coming from and how we have handled other and our own species.

Not sure if this ever comes right!

How did humans evolve from one out of many large animals to aquire language, art, music, to become aware of its own history and place in the universe? Jared Diamond tells an exciting, coherent and relatively accurate story in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee - How our animal heritage affect the way we live.

A book that tries to tell a story that spans several million years will have to be very selective. Especially when it draws data from fields such as biology, archeology, linguistics, genetics, human psychology, ecology, etc The author obviously has cut a few corners but it doesn´t really matter. There is a section at the end of the book with further reading for those that want to read more about the subjects at hand. This book is a must read for those that want to learn more about our human origins.

Brief synopsis
There are five parts to this book. It starts off with Just another species of big mammal, a short description about our evolutionary history from several million years ago up until right before agriculture was discovered about 10 000 years ago.

The second part, An animal with a strange lifecycle, deals with what makes us different from the other primates. Changes in life-cycles were crucial to the development of language and other aspects of modern human activity. We are talking about monogamy, infidelity, sexual selection, why humans have hidden ovulation and menopause (come on! what is up with that?)

Part three continues with discussions about the development of language, art, agriculture, drug use and whether we are alone in the universe or not. I found the part about language especially intriguing. It turns out that the linguistics experts have reconstructed alot of PIE (Proto-Indo-European), a language that hasn´t been spoken for thousands of years. This part also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of agriculture, which was very interesting. Because I always figured that there was no real negative side to agriculture. Well it turns out that agriculture gives you alot of calories, but the diet will be less varied. This makes you more affected by caries and malnourishment. Not to mention that you are more affected by droughts. Most diseases could not have spread if we didn´t live in large concentrations that agriculture permits.

The fourth part of the book is called World Conquerors. As soon as people have entered areas that previously hadn´t been discovered it usually spelled disaster for a majority of the species living there. This has led to the extinction of many many species of animals, birds, reptiles etc. Too many to count. Islands like Mauritius, Madagaskar, Crete, Hawaii, New Zealand and numerous other islands in the Pacific have lost an incredible amount of wildlife when humans arrived. "Dead as a Dodo" has even become an expression. The discovery of the american continent(asians crossing the Bering Straits about 12-14 000 years ago, not that italian sailor dude) also coincided with an entire fauna of large mammals getting extinct. So far I had heard about most of this before, but the really chilling part of the book shows that we not only conquers nature, but we also conquer each other. Through the spreading of disease, interbreeding, and even genocide. I remember from biology class in high school that most animals have the hardest competition with members of their own species. Because they fit the exact same niche they compete for the same partners and resources. Other species also fight each other and you could even say that some species have conflicts with neighbor groups. Lions, hyenas, and chimpanzees are among the species where small scale warfare has been observed. We humans are no exception.

Xenophobia is a natural instinct and it is made much worse by our capacity for mass murder and genocide. This chapter lists all kinds of genocide through out history, from ancient times up until the 20th century. Jared Diamond discusses at length how seemingly normal people can take part in genocide. They are not necessarily crazy or different from any one of us. We all have the potential for violence. According to Diamond there are three major principles to how normal people justifies in taking part in genocide. A usefully elastic definition of "self defense", possessing the "right" religion, race or political belief and finally a different ethical code for animals. And by reducing other people to the same level as animal permits you to treat them much worse. All three rationalizations were used both in the USA and in Australia in reducing the number of natives. Not only by civilians but also by military and the government. This is also completely common to see in wartime propaganda. This part of the book is coldly rational and it all makes sense. Even if it is completely terrifying. I chill went through my spine when he discussed what the world looked like in the early 1990s. And what areas we should watch out for when it comes to genocide. He lists areas like Northern Ireland, New Caledonia, Sri Lanka, the middle east and last but not least Yugoslavia. Several of these places have experienced if not an all out genocide, definetly mass murder. Just the other day Radovan Karadzic was sentenced in Haag for his actions during the genocide in Screbenica. In trying to understand how genocide is possible we are able to minimize the chances of it happening. Globalisation of media and the understanding that we are all the same species are among the factors that will hopefully reduce violence. And according to Steven Pinker and his book The Better Angels of our Nature, this is exactly what has happened. I will have to read that book some other time.

Reversing our progress overnight is the title for the fifth and last part of the book and it deals with the myth that species live in constant balance with each other and the environment. This is normally not true, maybe only true for short periods of time. Species migrate and whenever a predator expands into an area where the prey is not able to defend themselves disaster is usually spelled for the unlucky ones. This should be no secret as we know of many examples when rats, goats, snakes, cats etc have wiped out some indigenous species. This is especially true when predators are generalists and not dependent on any one single type of prey. The same principle applies to humans, and have done so numerous times in the past. There are countless examples after the (re)discovery of the american continent, but there are also several earlier ones. such as the extinction of the Moas from New Zealand. There are also strong indications that humans eradicated a lot of large mammals like mammoths, horses and other large herbivores from the american continent. It is obviously much harder to prove since it happened more than 10 000 years ago, but the author makes a very convincing case nonetheless.

Jared Diamond is a very interesting author, lecturer and science educator. He started out his career by studying the physiology of the gallbladder. He studied at both Harvard and Cambridge and in 1968 he became a professor in physiology at UCLA medical school.
Ever since his childhood he had very diverse interests. Everything from learning languages, to geography, to birds and astronomy. He started writing articles for a magazine in the late 1970s, and he could finally explore his other interests. By chance he won a scholarship from the MacArthur Foundation in 1985 and this encouraged him to focus his writing for the public. He started writing The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, in 1985 and finished it in 1990. The book was published in 1992 and it turned out to be a great success. He has later expanded on the topics and published them in other books such as Why is Sex fun (1997), Guns, Germs and Steel (1997), Collapse; How societies choose to fail or succeed (2005).
It is seems quite obvious that his later books are expansions of chapters and topics found in this book. I´ve previously read Guns, Germs and Steel, and Why Sex is Fun, whereas the book Collapse is still sitting at the book shelf. I can definitively recommend the first two books. Especially Guns Germs and Steel. It is a great read. I might write a review of that later some time.

Conclusion
I really like Jared Diamonds work. He connects ancient evolutionary history with modern world events, and by doing that he demonstrates that knowledge of the natural world is crucial. If we do not understand where we are coming from how will we be able to make the best decisions? He is a great science educator and a skilled storyteller, both in writing and in the documentaries he has made. Several of his lectures, documentaries, TED Talks can be found on Youtube. I suggest you check them out. You can also buy The Third Chimpanzee at Amazon, or any other book store, or why not stop by your local library and borrow it there?

Memorable Quote:
"Along with drinking a strychnine cocktail, poking an adult rhinoceros or Cape buffalo with a spear ranks as one of the most effective means of suicide that I know."

In this book Jared diamond tells us how closely related humans are to chimpanzees and what makes us different. The book is easy to read and includes interesting stories. I found it more relatable and engaging than Guns, Germs and Steel

What a rude awakening to read this book, published 30 years ago, and to see how little progress we have made towards allaying Diamond‘s fears. That we will bring upon our own demise, undoing the enormous progress we’ve made over the past million years in a geologic instant, due to environmental destruction and xenophobic catastrophic war.

Classic human anthropology book, which covers a large breath of topics about human development, including the development of features that make us unique: art, language, Culture, war, genocide, xenophobia. Harrari’s Sapiens covers nothing new - it’s all in here (and backed with more research). He covers the subjects of Guns Germs and Steel and Collapse in abbreviated terms, which makes sense as this was his first blockbuster book.

This is an incredibly informative book, rich in research in the style of Steven Pinker, but far more pessimistic than say Better Angels of our Nature. The two are consistent in their assertion that humans have always been prone to environmental destruction and over-depletion of resources. Rousseau’s “Nobel savage” is a fallacy. Indigenous people have driven countless animals to extinction around the world for 10s of 1000s of years - including throughout the Americas, Polynesia, and of course Eurasia. We have already seen what happens to lands that we over cultivate, time and time again. Is it not strange that we learn about “Fertile Crescent”, the first site of agriculture, but seemingly ignore the fact that this area is now a desert? Why is that not taught in schools?

Highly recommend this book. But not if you’re looking for something uplifting…

Where do we come from? Why do we think we are the best on the planet? Could we still be the best if we had proof of living beings in other planets? What happened to evolution in certain aspects of our lives like language? All these are question that have been answered by Jared in this book. You will think scientifically, Historically, and linguistically when you read this book.

Jared Diamond's broad overview of human history and evolution offers intelligent evolutionary explanations for everything from menopause to aging to smoking and peacock feathers. On the way, he introduces readers to his ideas on environmental responsibility and geography that form the basis of this other two books, 'Collapse' and 'Guns, Germs, and Steel', respectively.

General Themes:
-Differences can be used to mark evolutionary divergence.
-Aging is an evolutionary accident, not a 'natural process'.
-Human history is a function of geographical happenstance.
-Agriculture isn't necessarily better than hunting and gathering.
-Men do stupid things to impress women because it shows they can do stupid things and still survive and are therefore extra fit.
-A systems biology approach is essential to synthetic biology (all interactions, energy supplies, and byproducts must be considered).
-Isolation breeds weakness and susceptibility to extinction; interaction, competition, and traveling breed adaptability and longevity.

What I Learned:
-Conundrum: Apes are smarter than retards; can we cage retards?
-Distinguishing features of primates vs. mammals:
-flat fingernails vs. claws
-gripping hands
-opposable thumbs
-freely hanging penis vs. attached to abdomen
-A Greek physician recognized our similarity to monkeys in 2nd century
-Species divergence can be measured through differences in a common molecule.
-DNA hybridization method: mix DNAs, measure lowering of melting point, 1 degree Celsius ~ 1% difference
-Bird taxonomy can be very tough due to highly restricted evolution and heavy convergence.
-Humans and apes are more related than apes and monkeys.
-'Silent mutations' are those with no effect on an organism.
-Key evolutionary changes from man to ape:
1.walking upright (4MYA)
2.robustus (big-headed vegan)/Africans (smaller carnivore) split
3.stone tools
-Neanderthals weren't cavemen; caves just best preserved their remains.
-Cro-Magnon history:
-40kya tools enable CM to expand (better hunting)
-20kya sewing allows them to occupy Russia/Siberia
-develop long distance trade and art
-higher life expectancy leads to more tribal wisdom (no books)
-just as capable as modern humans (ex: 1950s 'Stone Age' New Guineans today have pilots, computers, and a modern govt)
-Neanderthals' monoculture vs. CM's innovative and diverse culture
-Speech abilities of CM enabled success and prevented interbreeding with Neanderthals.
-PARADIGM SHIFT: man and his tools are a single evolved system, corollary: human infancy = extended gestation (not complete system until infant learns to use tools)
-Reasons human females may have evolved concealed ovulation and constant attractiveness:
1. prevent man war
2. bind man to woman
3. get meal from men
4. keep man paranoid
5. confuse paternity to gain many male helpers
-Correlation coefficients:
+1: perfect matching by degree
0: completely random
-1: perfect matching by reverse degree
-Couples:
+.9: religion, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic, age
+.4: personality traits (extroversion, neatness), intelligence
+.2: physical characteristics
-Attraction to similar physical characteristics perhaps influenced by expose to the women we spend the most time with as children (spouse resembles mother and sisters who resemble self)
-EXPERIMENT: create time-weighted (by exposure) mashup of prominent females from childhood, have the person assess the beauty of mashup, compare to spouse (if applicable)
-Principle of Optimal Intermediate Similarity: preference for spouses resembling those we are exposed to in youth
-1st cousin > 2nd cousin > nth cousin > sister (close but not that close)
-REASON: any gene that increased preference for those resembling family would increase the survival of that gene, affinities for family members would be evolutionarily discouraged by recessive genetic diseases
-Why do we age?
-We have limited energy to use.
-Biological investment in repair is unwise when tragedy occurs early.
-life span = f(danger)
-Women have longer life spans because men were exposed to more danger and so invested less in evolving repair mechanisms.
-A systems biology approach is essential to synthetic biology.
-Where will a new part get its energy? space?
-Where will its byproducts go?
-Menopause: optimization of child birth
-stop having kids before you die doing it
-don't die before your other kids are raised
-each successive child is a danger
-EXPERIMENT: looking at average child births before menopause, determine which % death rate of women giving birth would produce that optimal # of births and compare
-Repercussions for gerontology:
-no single of small group of causes for aging
-no system had pressure to create perpetual repair
-My Aging Evolution Theory:
1. Healthy population
2. Predator reduces lifespan to 50
3. Selective pressures shift energy to birth and survival
4. Aging occurs
5. Aged are even more likely to succumb to predators
6. Life span reinforced
-Possible selective pressure for the perpetuation of aging: the sacrifice of older members of a tribe to predators to satiate them and increase survival of children (without the old and sick, children are the easiest targets for predators)
-PARADIGM SHIFT: gerontology should focus on how cells deteriorate in general and determine which repair mechanisms would be useful (cells evolved from some original mother cell and best repair mechanisms are probably similar)
-Vervets use langage to purposefully communicate specific events (playback studies confirmed)
-different calls for eagle, snake, leopard
-more calls around friends
-none when alone
-used as deception during battle
-no playback studies performed on apes
-large territories
-captives from different areas (different languages)
-Neo-Melanesian language of Papua New Guinea distinguishes between we's that include or disclude the listener
-pidgin: 2nd language for colonists and workers or workers from different places (mostly nouns, adjectives, and verbs and lack ability to express complex ideas)
-creole: pidgin adopted as main language (far more complex and full)
-ants invented plant/animal domestication
-cultivate preferred fungi as food (leaf cutters, others)
-domesticated aphids: lack defense, secrete honeydew from anus (evolved special anatomy to hold the drop in place), secretion encouraged by antenna rubbing (like milking a cow), cared for in colonies in winter, taken to plants in spring
-Agriculture:
-powerful meme, questionable benefit
-transient pop growth
-creates inequality, susceptibility to famine, tons of work, warfare, less varied diet
-also creates tons of malnourished people that can fight off a few healthy hunter-gatherers for land
-PARADIGM SHIFT: agriculture creates inequality and many unhealthy people while hunting and gathering creates equality and a few healthy people
-Smoking, peacock feathers, and other hindrance displays to females:
-demonstrate superiority
-"I'm hindered and still survive as well as the other guy"
-prevents 'cheating' by others (they'll be hindered and die)
-Increasing cultural homogeneity may be the price we pay for survival in the nuclear age
-To be domesticated, a species must:
-have submissive instinct toward dominant others from herd living
-minimal tolerance of strangers (not gazelle)
-Corn: transexual teosinte
-East-West axis of Eurasia easier to traverse and diffuse crops than North-South American axis (why Eurasians won the human race against Indians)
-2 ways to date a PIE mother language:
1. assume constant rates of divergence and calculate where two languages would converge in the past
2. observe words for inventions with known dates and the 1st to differ in all languages marks divergence
-British settles wiped out 5000 Tasmanians in 1st half of 19th century
-fought over dug-up body of last man (1869) believed to be man-ape link
-Aboriginal genocide modeled after Tasmanian roving police forces
-after WWII, Algerian celebration led to race riots and 103 dead French, French retaliated by killing 1500-50k Algerians
-Jewish scapegoat genocides:
-14th century Christians: bubonic plague
-early 20th century Russia: political problems
-post-WWII Ukrainians: Bolshevist threat
-Nazis: WWI defeat
-giant flightless birds and insects evolved in New Zealand without predators and were wiped out by Maori and rats
-Easter Island:
-statues transported and erected using logs
-lush island over forested and leads to warrior society that knocks over rival statues in barren wasteland
-ecological destruction occurs during:
-colonization of unfamiliar area
-adoption of new technology for which the power is not appreciated
-advancement along a new frontier (with the possibility of outrunning destruction)
-highly centralized rulers (who care only for their own wellbeing)

It is useful to reflect on the basic message. Around 6 million years ago we split from our nearest ape like ancestors, but today chimpanzees are more closely related to us than they are to monkeys.
Then in what ways are we different and what effects has this led to?
Why do some gorillas have six wives and Elephant seals 48. Why do female chimps display ovulation and sexual availability but human females hide it. Why are chimp balls four times as large as human but men still have the largest penis size.

This book is full of interesting topics and information about the origin of our species and why we have developed in our individual way. Written in 1991 we now have the hindsight of 30 years of further scientific discovery. We now know for example, that Neanderthal DNA did infact merge heavily within the human genome. But the basic message is perhaps much more powerful in reflection - we must change our ways or we reign devastation beyond what any of us can imagine.

The chapter on human language and the theory of the Indo-European spread was particularly interesting. When horses are domesticated and the wheel is invented, human society spreads.
The chapter on human genocide is perhaps the most valuable reminder of our chimp like tendency to xenophobic division of the classes 'us and them'. This has led to endless murder and destruction.
Human destruction of the environment is not limited to our modern era. The Clovis invaders of the Americans did it, the Maori did it, the Indonesian invaders of Madagascar did it. Petra suffered a catastrophic ecological breakdown as did ancient Greece and the Petra Kingdom of what is now Jordan.

When we consider that we have destroyed much of the beauty of our unique planet and murder, massacre and eradication unbeknown to justice has been the norm, we are still empowered to ask why, and still try to seek a better world. Education is a key and never before has the world had more of an opportunity to learn and to communicate. Let's have hope and to strive more than ever for our brave salvation.

It is hard to believe that humans have the same ancetor with chimps especially when you're from a religious society where creationism have to explain everything  . But evidence of progression of our bodies throughout 7 millions years of evolution from ape-like creatures, to bipedal erectus, hunters gatherers in the Safana, slowly to sapiens able to make sophisticated tools, domesticate animals and hybridyse plants, communicate through language and writing and art, are not just a beautiful story to tell but happens to be true.
It was an easy mission to understand the biological process of humain evolution and the implication of our origin in every aspect of our social behaviour. The first chapters were softly comprehensible. But as long as I went through the book, things were getting harder.
The rise of verbal communication and the diversity of human language were the most overwhelming parts. I have never been good at history or geography but Jared made it worth to try. Now I can say that every spoken word have a story of at least 40 000 years, and that the first spoken word was the lane to the rise of culture and technology. The latter, which progress is astonishingly fast, will lead our fall. Vanishing, as diamond said, is the peril that humanity going to pay for beeing so cruel with its origin: animals and nature
Finally, I heard someone said :""الانسان حيوان اذا اقتعت بذلك فانت قرد و ان لم تقتنع فانت حمار" :D

a bit dated, but informative and sobering