There are two types of books on evolution: hard and soft. Soft evolutions books are more moderate and less preachy on the nature of evolution, it has the nonchalant and professional attitude a scientist or a scholar have. On the other hand, authors of hard evolution books wrote on top a pedestal, believing that their field of study has an eventual moral over-arching conclusion.

Being a someone who professed a religion, I certainly am aware with the abyss between evolution and creationism. But I certainly don’t see my rivals as someone who are intellectually or even morally inferior than me. I just want to have a good read on how we arrived to the current level of civilisation, step by step from the very beginning. Facts from anthropology and evolutionary biology certainly does not inherently include moral preachings as part of the package, they are essentially different in nature. A good scholar, I think is somebody who can separate objectivity and subjective aesthetic feelings.

For an example, there is a clear difference between a paleontologist who discovered a humanoid fossil with a crusader kept repeating at every occasion how we are no different than the apes. And from the book itself, what I learned is that while humans is different from all aspects (a large aspects of things that define us a human could be seen in other species such as birds rather than our supposedly cousin, the apes) from the apes, the author still drew a conclusion that we are the same because the genetic differences is only 1 percent.

When an anti-vac presented to me all pseudo-researches he read and trying to get me to acknowledge him to have the knowledge of a legitimate medical professional, the only conclusion I can get is that he could be anything except a medical professional. The only similarity he has with a medical professional is that both of them are humans. But nothing can stop me from thinking that he is the farthest person from being a doctor. The anti-vac eat the same food (but perhaps under a more restricted range of food he consumed), and has the same physiological processes as the doctor. But then, when I went to the zoo and saw the chimps have the same things. Despite the anti-vac intelligence, I still can safely conclude that he and the chimps are different, despite having the same physiological process (and perhaps not too much of a difference in intellect, anyway).

So, the author must supply me a legit argument that is specific in relating humans and apes. He recounted that a chimp can now vocalise at least 4 specific words and its meanings, but how’s that any different in demonstrating associative function with a chicken who learned Pavlovian reinforcement techniques? Are we descended from chickens, then? Of yeah I forgot, according to them, we separated from chickens a number of millions ago, so maybe we’re part chickens too? Maybe, I guess? By adopting this kind of thinking, without any concrete proof (such as intermediary fossils), the hardcore evolutionists are no different from the Freudian psychotherapists who can easily won an argument by saying that his opponents have some kind of repression. You have something against me? Your mother must have spanked you a tad too much. You have something against evolution? Then you must be inherently intellectually inferior.

Then where do we draw the line between the anti-vac, the doctor and the chimps? And between the (I assume) homo sapiens evolutionists? You cannot simply draw a hypothetical scenario where the Martians visited the Earth and saw homo sapiens in the cage next to his ape cousins and weaved a story about the Martians could not tell any difference between them except the sparse hair, the upright posture, the linguistic ability, the civilisational attributes that men have (which essentially almost everything exclusive to man) and expect me to accept. (But the author really started the book with a fairytale, gosh, I thought it was only the religious who likes “fairytales”!) The author has to furnish positive proof, not mere molecular clock. Molecular clock could only show that all organisms in Earth are derived from molecules brought from stars et cetera, not directly proving that we essentially derived from apes. What’s stopping us from saying that we are descended from meteors anyway if that’s the case?

Positive biological proofs, in terms of intermediary species must be furnished to prove his points. His argument is that despite everything that separates men from apes, we belonged to the same ancestors because of our genetic similarities. The level of faith the author clung to this axiom stands not too much different from the religious people he despised. Again, biological proof must be furnished which I guess he has none. The only proof he could muster to remain firm in his stance is his ironical leap of faith and also in the aesthetics realm, where he somehow got a kick contemplating on how he was once a horse or something like that. But hey, we live in a progressive society. Whatever that rocks your boat, man.

Thus end my rambling. The rest of the book was quite good minus the Rousseau-esque lamentation of the men in nature and his environmentalist stance. I just crafted the above paragraphs in the same dismissing and shallow argument the evolutionists threw to the creationists. Both size refused to study the opposite’s teaching, only to demean them with aggrandised arguments, which cheerfully reminded to me the author bringing up New Guineans’ massive phalocarp to intimidate other people.

The book covered an ambition scope: from explaining men’s natural propensities by observing animals to the theory of recent explosions of technology and warfare post-agricultural revolutions. The part where the author tried to delineate man’s natural instincts such as reproduction and arts, while very informative, failed to convince me that man originated from apes. The author after all, effectively pointed out that the almost-universal social monogamy (with occasional premarital sex) practiced by human being is more similar to the practices of animals such as the albatross and grey wolves instead of the love-fest practiced by promiscuous chimps and bonobos. The author, ironically and indirectly has proven that the natural faculties of men reflected that of nature; that man itself is a microcosm, an individual containing the universe within.

Regarding the difference between the civilisations in the Old and New World, the author insisted that the reasons were geographical rather than genetic. Resources set by geographical factors were the driving factors that propels the civilisations of the Old World. For an instance, despite numerous choices of animals, we are limited to only a handful of animals successfully domesticated. These short lists of animals are mostly unique to the Old World, and those animals were successfully domesticated only because they satisfy strict conditions. Thus, the failure of the Aborigines to invade other countries while riding on kangaroos was not because they were intellectually inferior, it was simply because their geography did not provide them with suitable animal for breeding. The rest of the book consists of succinct summary of his other works such as Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse.

Were you a visitor to Earth from outer space, you'd want a handbook about the dominant kind of life on the planet. The Third Chimpanzee would be perfect for you!

Jared Diamond has published several books, all of them a pleasure to read. In this one he first presents the themes that he develops in the others. You hear about the factors that favored Europeans in their rise to domination of other people which is greatly expanded upon in Guns, Germs and Steel. You also learn of the common human social characteristic of continuing to follow the same path even when it leads to the destruction of a way of life, which is greatly expanded upon in Collapse.

The Third Chimpanzee takes a wide view of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, explaining where we came from (having a common ancestor with the chimps), our patterns of social and sexual behavior contrasted with other animals, the most important being language. He writes of our place in the universe, and why we may be alone though others might have gone before elsewhere. Intelligence brings the ability to manipulate the physical world in dangerous ways and responsibility does not necessarily develop with brain power.

Upon finishing the book, the reader can't help but acknowledge that humans are not the perfection of life on earth, but rather are creatures with positive and negative qualities that, because of our explosive population growth, must be controlled if we are to survive. A bountiful earth has given us the illusion that there are no limits, but the lives most of us spend in completely artificial creations, our cities, keep the changes our consumption makes in the natural world from notice. Diamond wants us to think of ourselves based on our real behavior and the consequences to be expected from it, not upon lofty mythological tales of what it is to be a human with a divine sanction to do as we please.

The most intriguing topic is our sudden great leap forward about 40,000 years ago, long after our large brain had evolved. Diamond believes it was the development of language that allowed us to plan with each other and to pass knowledge from one generation to the next that did the trick, but how did that come about? Other animals are intelligent but lack the physical apparatus to speak as we do. Another amazing fact is that since humanity emerged in Africa a million years ago, until about 15,000 years ago there was not a single human being living in North or South America.

It has been more than 20 years since this book was first published. I had read it then and put it on the shelf to read again. This second reading was not a disappointment, it has aged very well, but leaves me curious to find out what further information has been found since 1991.

Jared Diamond has an amazing talent for connecting facts one after the other, leading to surprising insights. His books are full of things that make you go “Hmm.” In The Third Chimpanzee the reader will learn of humanity’s evolutionary past and the social and cultural adaptations that led to the modern world.

We start with a common ape-like ancestor from whom both humans and chimpanzees/bonobos diverged some 3,000,000 years ago, and progress through the various human ancestors until we arrive at homo sapiens. Spoken language precipitated what Diamond calls The Great Leap Forward, from which point mankind’s evolution would proceed along cultural rather than biological lines. We learn interesting facts about human reproduction, some of which are still not clearly understood, about things like why ovulation in human females produces no outward physical changes in their appearance, why they are fertile for only a few days each month, why sex is done in private, and why women experience menopause. Individually, these are just facts that we all know, but most of us never thought about linking them together into into a narrative that explains how biology and cultural selection reinforce one another. Remove any one of these characteristics and modern society would probably be very different.

Language is a remarkable subject, and, once again, Diamond provides interesting observations. For instance vervet monkeys have a small number of words for different kinds of threats. That these are truly words, not just vocalizations like prairie dogs make, is shown by the fact that they can use them to purposely deceive rival troops.

Diamond has some good observations about the transition of humans from hunter gatherers to pastoralists and farmers. The transition from a nomadic to a settled lifestyle was not necessarily a healthy choice. Archaeological evidence show that hunter gatherers worked less than farmers, were healthier, and lived a more egalitarian lifestyle. Yuval Noah Harari, in his recent book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, expands on this topic in greater detail and with more recent scholarship. For those with an interest in political history, according to Marx this is also the point in humanity’s past when things began to go wrong, when communities moved from what he theorized was primitive communism into the next stage of society: slavery (to be followed by feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and finally, communism again. Needless to say, it didn’t quite work out that way.)

The author makes a point about the domestication of plants that he would develop more fully in Guns, Germs, and Steel, and it is one of the key concepts that he would use to try to answer the question: why did science and technology develop in the West rather than somewhere else? Why did the Europeans sail to South America rather than the Aztecs sailing to and conquering Europe? One reason was that Europe and Asia found their dominant societies oriented on an east-west axis, while in South American it was north-south. The east-west one allowed plants to move easily across the continent, introducing better nourishment and leading to larger populations. North-south would require long and painstaking generations acclimatizing plants from cooler environments to equatorial heat, and back again to cooler climates in order for them to make it to the Northern Hemisphere. The accident of east-west geography granted European and Asian societies an advantage that none of the other cultures could overcome.

Finally, Diamond ends his book with a prescient look at humanity’s impact on the world. We have wiped out many many species and there is no reason to believe we will show greater caution in the future than we did in the past.

The book was published in 1991 based on earlier research, so, while it is still interesting and informative, science has moved on and some of what he says is out of date. With that in mind, however, this is an excellent book for someone looking for an understanding of human social, biological, and cultural evolution.

If one has recently read Guns, Germs and Steel and also Collapse from Jared Diamond, one will instantly recognize a lot of the themes that both books cover here in The Third Chimpanzee. One will then realize that The 3rd Chimp was published years before both of these more well-known books, so it will come as no surprise that a lot of these themes were more fleshed out in each subsequent book. As it is, The 3rd Chimp covers a lot of ground, from early human evolution to broad coverage of a lot of topics in Anthropology to Diamonds well founded concerns about habitat & species destruction at the hands of homo sapiens. It’s a good book throughout but if you’ve already come across his more well-known books it might not be an essential read.

I was unimpressed as I had read so many other books on the same, or on similar topics, nevertheless, this book can serve well as good framing for those interested in anthropology in its lens of human evolution.

The one idea I saw discussed here which is often neglected is the idea of human cultural elements existing within animals. That is really freaking cool and I would love to see a book handle that topic in more depth. If you have any recommendations lemme know.

I recommend this for those who liked books like sapians, the selfish gene, the moral animal and books of the kind, this will help you gain some more depth in your understanding of humanity.

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.

Começando pelo mais óbvio, este livro tem 30 anos. Para um livro de divulgação científica, 30 anos é muito tempo. Certamente não era no tempo de Newton e de Galileu, mas em pleno século XXI, é natural que 30 anos façam a diferença, e neste caso fazem. Não de forma dramática porque são sobre detalhes secundários, mas retiram algo ao raciocínio original de Jared Diamond.

No entanto eu queria ler este livro porque tinha uma expectativa de que ía ser um "pica-miolo", ou seja, um livro que apresenta uma perspectiva nova sobre a humanidade. Tal como Guns, Germs and Steel do mesmo autor ou Sapiens, de Yuval Noah Harari, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee debruça-se sobre a história da humanidade a partir uma lente particular: a da nossa posição no reino animal, mais especificamente entre os primatas onde somos o mais antigo dos 3 chimpanzés.

E neste contexto o livro não desilude. É uma pérola na exploração do que faz o Homo Sapiens ser Homo Sapiens, desmistificando quer o que consideramos ser único e não é, como é o caso da agricultura, arte e linguagem, e detalhando algumas ilusões que temos sobre a história da humanidade. No entanto deve ser lido não no seu intuito original de divulgação científica, mas mais como um livro de filosofia da ciência e da história, onde, acredito, continuará actual por muitos e longos anos.

The most engaging of Jared Diamonds books, and also his first. Many of the ideas he initially explores in these chapters become expanded upon in his later books. I found the chapter lengths to be less intimidating and more broadly appealing than later books. A great and provocative read!

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…

I read this the first time more than 25 years ago. At least, possibly more time ago even than that.

Then it was a 4 star read going on 4.5 stars. It just isn't anymore. Some parts of it are excellent but dated. Some parts are beyond dated- they no longer are considered viable theory. Some sections are pure hogwash, although stated in a strongly logical and respectful tone. This is primarily his whole universe "picture" to life and intelligent life, in particular. The issue of compatible numbers of environments posit that could produce life outside of our solar system. That's just plain wrong, IMHO. The probabilities figures on that have been turned upside down since this book was published.

Most of the early homo species stuff is 4 or 4.5 stars. But this is a field that has been tremendously altered by DNA and other particular physical forensics and anthropology studies of forms and chemical sciences in the last 10 to 15 years, IMHO.

Also there is another wider tangent he takes here that is likable to read, but most probably is not numerically or nuance width assumption correct. He knows a lot, don't get me wrong. He is a superb observer and seeking, an excellent scientist. But he also clearly did not know all he did not know when he wrote this. His picture was actually too narrow to make assumptions as wide to the outcomes he has here, IMHO.

But it's really worth a read if you never understood early homo forms or had not seen/understood where that field was when earlier tracking homo progressions in geographic movement was base. And especially a call out for the excellent parsing of homo sapiens women's menopause development appears here. That's a particular phase of life that rarely, rarely exhibits in any animal or mammal life form and he has a superb chapter here about evolution favor for this feature.

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!

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