Hopefully this won’t come as too much of a surprise, but you better sit down just in case … humans (including you and I) are animals. Humans are the mammalian relatives of dogs, cats, porpoises, chipmunks and walruses. More specifically, we share a common ancestor with the great apes with whom we also share much of our DNA (98.4% of our DNA is identical to that found in chimpanzees). If it weren’t for a few important differences found in the remaining 1.6% (from which we’ve evolved language and tool use) we could very well be classified as a third chimpanzee (along with the common and pygmy varieties).

Because we are animals, many of the behaviors found in humans can also be found in the animal kingdom. Certain animal species form bonded pairs, care for their offspring, act aggressively towards strangers, and feature a social hierarchy, just as humans do. Although animal corollaries exist, Diamond argues that there are two behaviors common in humans that are found to a much lesser degree in the animal world, those being: the killing of members of our own species and the tendency to destroy our environment.

These are the two topics that Jared Diamond (noted author, polymath, and UCLA professor) seeks to explore in The Rise And Fall Of The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal:
-tWhat are the genetic, physical, cognitive, behavioral and evolutionary differences that make humans both unique and similar to other animal species?
-tWhat is it about humans that make them predisposed to destroy each other and the ecosystems upon which they rely for survival?
Evolution lies at the heart of each of these questions and Diamond explores the evolutionary pressures that led to these human characteristics.

Diamond has a nice writing style that makes these concepts interesting and understandable without oversimplifying the subject matter. Anyone who is interested in human evolution will find the book to be of interest. He also introduces two important topics (that of: why cultures develop at different rates, and why cultures collapse) that he fleshes out in more detail his later excellent books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse respectively.

Diamond is pessimistic as to humanity’s ability to exist in harmony with nature and this conclusion is supported by the historic record. Whenever humans are introduced into a new environment, extinctions of large animals invariably results. Moas, giant sloths, mammoths and the dodo disappeared in the geological blink of an eye upon encountering the most destructive of earth’s species … and the trend has only accelerated as the human population has ballooned. It’s really only a matter of time before a cascade of negative environmental consequences begins from which collapse is the inevitable result. Perhaps it’s already underway.

With regards to the book I will raise two points:
1.tIt’s worth keeping in mind that many of the ideas Diamond presents are speculative. Neither skin color, language, nor sexual behavior leave evidence in the fossil record. Thus when Diamond discusses the evolution of these characteristics, he is presenting a hypothesis for which no direct evidence exists. He can draw correlations with other species that we are able to study directly, but ultimately these questions have yet to be conclusively answered (and may never be).
2.tThe book was originally published in 1997 and this 3rd edition was published in 2006, but like with other fast moving scientific fields, that of anthropology has proceeded beyond Diamond’s knowledge at the time of his writing. By way of a few examples, his description of hominid evolution fails to mention Homo floresiensis, Homo denisova or Homo naledi. Genome sequencing was not a mature technology in 1997 so he also was not aware that Neanderthal-derived DNA accounts for an estimated 1–4% of the Eurasian genome and others.

I like it. It's really inspiring. Many arguments in the book changed what I used to believe in human beings. We are different from the animal but the differences aren't that huge.

Claims that if a human lost their voice and grew a lot of hair and stopped walking upright we would basically be indistinguishable from a chimp? even though no chimp has been able to learn natural language or have the inner comprehension that a human 3-year-old can? wtf? Seems like if you've read Guns Germs and Steel and know some basic evolutionary biology and psychology you're already familiar with everything here.

This came out in 1992, Diamond was doing his research in the 80s, so a lot of this is outdated. Not Diamond's fault I only got to it in 2019, but it made for a less interesting read. More academic and less stimulating for me than Guns, Germs and Steel (one of my top 5 books of all time).

This marvelous book was written in 1992, so it seems I am reading my Jared Diamond books out of order; this is the first book he wrote, and the third I have read (having read Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1999) in January of 2000, and having read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005) just this February). As a precursor to some of the themes that he took up in the other books, it’s a fun read; and it’s a fun read on its own, in that it regards Homo Sapiens as genetically being closer to chimpanzees than to anything else; and as there are two existing species of chimpanzee already (common chimpanzees and pygmy chimpanzees), that would make us the third species of chimpanzee. (In the interests of full disclosure, I am a reasonable devout Roman Catholic who believes in the theory of evolution, in that evolution seems to be the most logical means for God to have given us both being and free will.)

The book is separated into five distinct parts. Part One is titled Just Another Species of Big Mammal, and the author presents his theory that what caused Homo Sapiens to quit being just another type of chimpanzee was the evolutionary gift of speech, which gave us not just an endless present, but a future and a past. Part Two is titled An Animal With A Strange Life Cycle, and covers sex (four chapters) and death (one chapter), which proves that sex is about four times more interesting than sex. (The one Jared Diamond book I have not yet read is Why Is Sex Fun? (1997).) Part Three is titled Uniquely Human, and covers language, art, agriculture (which the author regards as a mixed blessing, and mostly negative), and dangerous addictions. Part Four is World Conquerors, on the fact that our species is spread all over the globe, demonstrates how one can use world language history to backtrack to a proposed Indo-European language, that essentially overtook almost all other languages in Eurasia. Part Five is titled Reversing Our Progress Overnight, and covers the topics of how we got where we are ecologically, and pretty well establishes that unless forethought is taken, our species natural response to natural resources is to exploit said resources to the vanishing point.

However, we are not just murderous conquerors of the Earth and of each other. While language and our brains and technology have brought us so far, due to language we also have a past; and surely we have the capacity to learn from the past, and to try to halt overexploitation of the Earth before we ourselves render ourselves extinct.

What is distinct to our species, the third chimpanzee, distinct ways we affect the environment, and the threats we create for the whole ecosystem.

I enjoyed this book, but it's obvious that quite a bit of the scientific information is a little out of date. Gene sequencing and our understanding of DNA is very different now than it was in 1992 when this book was published. That being said, the anthropological studies are fascinating (as always with Jared Diamond) and I did find some value in reading this book. I'd recommend that most people just go with the slightly later Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies if they want to read something by Diamond.

Idk if y'all knew this, but humans evolved from a common ancestor with chimpanzees.

It's impossible to write a fair review of the contents of a 20+-year-old popular science book. There are more up to date, and just as easily accessible, books you could read on the subjects Diamond addressed. As for style, it's generally well-written as Diamond's books always are.

My advice: if you see this one on a "free, take what you want" bookshelf, leave it there. It's like n clipping of a magazine article from the early 90s. It's just not going to be as awesome and life-altering now as you thought it was then.

There's a lot of better stuff out there if you're interested in popular science discussions of any of the topics he addresses. We've learned a LOT in 20 years, which kind of makes this book irrelevant. I think even Diamond would have to agree.

An excellent read.
Jared Diamond gives a broad overview of the history of homo sapiens, its biological and cultural origins..
He focuses on the human history, traces its evolutionary origins and treats topics such as the rise and fall of civilizations, the role of language, domestication of animals and plants, ecology, geography, extinctions of other species and the role humans played in all these domains.
A must-read for members of the species.

Manusia harus percaya dan mengerti soal evolusi, agar bisa rendah hati soal hidup. Suka banget, gimana Jared Diamond, menyebut manusia di buku ini sebagai simpanse ketiga, karena kenyataannya manusia dan simpanse berbagi 98% kode dna yg sama. Yang membedakan kita, ada hasil evolusi manusia, yaitu manusia bisa berkomunikasi satu-sama lain dengan menggunakan bahasa. Sedangkan hewan tidak. Selebihnya, tingkah laku manusia, tentu mirip dengan saudara jauh kita, simpanse.

Kenapa penting tahu asal usul manusia? Kalo kata Jared Diamond yang menulis buku ini tahun 90'an (sekitar 30 tahun lalu), yaitu untuk mempertahankan kehidupan manusia di bumi. Sebagai perusak utama habitat di bumi, dan juga berhasil menghilangkan berbagai spesies yang pernah ada di muka bumi ini. Mengetahui asal usul hidup kita, manusia, seharusnya bisa mengajarkan untuk kita tetap rendah hati dan tidak merasa lebih tinggi dibandingkan makhluk hidup lain di muka bumi ini.

This book was ok, just a bit different than I expected. With a name like The Third Chimpanzee and the initial chapter about the minimal genetic differences between ourselves and chimps, I thought he would actually talk about the distinction a little more - like how can chimps be *almost* human but not quite human, and how did humans become more advanced. I had a difficult time following the main thread, I kept thinking, "Wait, what to woodpeckers have to do with humans?" I suppose his argument was that there is some precedent in the animal kingdom for some of our particularly human traits, but as many other reviewers have said, some of his connections seemed a little far fetched and dubious. Granted, my grasp of evolution is sort of tenuous, but I didn't quite see how some of the traits seen in peacocks or woodpeckers could be connected to humans, yet these same traits are nowhere to be found in other primates.

I think he wanted it to be a bigger book than it was. In truth, it could have been at least 500 pages and might have been better. Toward the end he started to take a lot of liberty with connecting things together without giving much scientific backup, and it seemed like maybe he was trying to rush through and get in all his theories without taking up too many pages. Oh and how about in the epilogue where he suddenly in passing suggests that Neandertals were exterminated by Cro-Magnons via genocide?? Boy that certainly came out of nowhere!

There are a lot of things he seemed to ignore that I would've been interested to hear about. Like he kept focusing on the idea of nuclear weapons, but what about the rest of technology? I think in picking up this book, my interest was in the concept of how we could have gone so many thousands of years with the most rudimentary technology, and in the past century it seems like we've been expanding that knowledge exponentially. Where do we go from here? I like the idea that there never really was some magical golden age when all humans lived in harmony with the earth, but he doesn't at all address the difference between what a million Native Americans in the entire new world were capable of vs. 300 million people in the US alone. When I picked up the book I didn't realize it was written in 1992, and I feel like there have been so many developments since then that would be interesting to have addressed - life in a post-9/11 world, oil spills, the green movement, etc.

Wow! Long review. Anyway, to sum up, while being nowhere near comprehensive, this book was a good jumping off point for me, and opened up a lot of questions that I'd like to look into elsewhere. Maybe I should have been an anthropology major!