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 one looks at humans as animals and compares them to our wild counterparts. It looks at evolution, culture, genocide, language, sex, art, and more. It also looks at how we are affecting the planet and other species.

This might be my favourite Diamond book. I think the closer look at other species is what did that for me. I listened to the audio.

I will show below why I think Jared doesn't know what he is talking about, why he is an abysmal science writer, and why he is as much of a drama queen as Gladwell.

Firstly, most people would put this book on the "evolutionary biology" shelf. So Jared better know something about evolution and biology. He does. But not nearly enough. For example, I noticed at least five times where he had used group selection, by which a gene propagates because it's beneficial to the group rather than to the individual, to explain some evolved traits. It's quite wrong. I get it that it's easy to fall for this unless being constantly on the guard. But he fell for it more than five times. Maybe he didn't get it how natural selection really works after all. Considering the book was published in the 90s, when group theory had been out of favor for decades and was becoming pretty much as laughable as Lamarckism. Oh Jared, quo vadis?

Secondly, he is a really annoying smart alec. It was the worst when he used Zahavi's handicap principle to explain drug addictions of people. The theory could work very well for why peacocks have big showy tails and male deers have big antlers. But it's really stretching to say that people are showing off their health when doing hard drugs. When I was reading it, page after page, I was like this was so implausible there's no way he actually believed what he wrote. And lo and behold, he proved me correct himself! On the last page of that not so short of a chapter, he admitted his explanations didn't really work for our case and that's actually what made us uniquely human. Then why have you just wasted dozens of good pages on this nonsense. This is a ridiculous level of pedantry. To have the balls to waste the reader's time and trees like this on an irrelevant theory that obviously does not explain the question proposed. He devoted about 90% of the chapter to this non-answer.

And later, he literally flipped out when listing the risks we were running when beaming radio signals to potential alien overlords out there. I think it's a valid concern and caution is warranted. But I don't think the concern could only be conveyed to the reader by showing your lid literally flying off as you are tying and head banging on desk and all. Did you forget to take your pills again, Jared?

Obviously, this is all my opinion, but I judge Jared to be a frivolous pulp science writer. Avoid if you want true intellectual stimulation.

The Third Chimpanzee seemed to be a late addition to my book collection. I have read the other books by Diamond that elaborate on specific topics discussed previously in The Third Chimpanzee, and it is only now that I had the chance to finish the book.

I was reading this book on a short flight connecting Bangkok and Chiang Mai, when the Irish guy sitting next to me said to me, “Excuse me, but is that a book by Jared Diamond? I saw the name but I’m not sure about the title…” Thus began one of the strangest conversations in my life about the human race. He came from Ireland, ‘the only European nation that probably has never colonized other nations – well, because we were colonized…’ while I came from Indonesia, one of the cradles of the Homo genus and where Diamond did some of his research. I said to him though that I hadn’t yet finished reading The Third Chimpanzee, so I couldn’t give any opinion yet about the book. We forgot to exchange contact details, so I had no idea how to tell it to him now.

Well, I would tell him: this book is amazing!

Talking about the human race – the human species, to be biologically correct – is like walking on a mine field. One slip of a tongue, or one misunderstood line, and people may label you as a racist. But people like Diamond aren’t racist – they’re not here to tell us that whitemen are genetically more superior, thus able to stomp across the world and defeat other peoples, other cultures. They believe that by learning more about the human species, we can get to the roots of our hatred and misery and find more effective ways to stop us from destroying ourselves and Nature.

The Third Chimpanzee sets to find out what makes us unique, just as each species there ever was, is, and will be is unique; what makes us human. And on its way, it made me cry with its gripping tales of the crimes we have done to our fellow human beings – especially in the chapter about genocide. It also opened my eyes about the connection between agriculture and some of our miseries now. This book cut into my heart and cut it further into pieces, and reassembled it, even more determined than ever to get up and do something for fellow humans and Nature.

I was lucky I had found Diamond.

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us were talking about the origins of our species, Homo sapiens and I was astonished at how little my friends and I knew about our ancestors. Going back to the roots of our development can provide a lot of insights into our present. So after scouting around for some recommendations, I picked up this brilliant book to learn more about our past, present, and future.

The book begins with the deviation of homo sapiens and our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, and the bonobos from our common ancestor, the great ape, about 3 million years ago. The book then proceeds to trace our evolution through hallmark human characteristics and how these characteristics might eventually spell disaster for our species. The author Jared Diamond draws a lot of his observations from his frequent trips to the Pacific Islands, that until recently were isolated pockets of land with no contact to the outside world. These observations span the domains of biology, anthropology, culture, history, and language. It is hard to gain an unbiased outsider’s perspective of the evolution of our species, and the author attempts to do this from time to time by invoking a neutral alien observer who would comment on our development. Since this book was written in 1991, a part of the book that is based on conjecture about the genetics of human evolution. These theories have primarily been proved/disproved ever since sequencing technologies have evolved rapidly.

I also couldn’t help but notice how natural selection has played a significant role not only in genetic evolution but also in cultural development. The author remarks how genetic differences between humans 40,000 years ago and now are very minimal. The author argues, that if humans of 40,000 years ago were to be born today, they would be able to use the latest technology with dexterity. The author in his chapters of sexuality and the human life cycle very wonderfully brings out how this cultural evolution has superseded genetic evolution in various aspects of our lifecycle such as our choice for a mate, concealed ovulation, clandestine copulation. The traits mentioned above, have been carried forward over generations because they enable us to perform more efficiently.

It was a revelation to see how the modern plagues of society, xenophobia, violence, environmental destruction, etc. are rooted deeply in our evolutionary history. We, humans, were responsible not only for the extermination of large species such as the woolly mammoths, sabertooths and giant sloths that roamed the planet until recently. We were also responsible for the extinction of a part of our OWN species, such as the Tasmanian aboriginals, all 50,000 of whom were killed by colonists. The list of species we have driven to extinction is a lot larger than I would have ever imagined. So it doesn’t come as a surprise that we continue to act in our evolutionarily wired ways and continue to decimate our environment and species around us. But being rooted deep in our evolutionary history doesn’t warrant justifying such acts. To quote the author, “The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.” We were oblivious to the damage we were causing to the environment a few centuries ago, but now we are aware of the consequences and aware of the fact that these consequences are much more substantial due to our large population. The period of “willful bliss” will soon transform into a period of "irrevocable despair" if we continue to use lack of awareness as a pretext to cause environmental damage further.

The last few chapters of the book, take on an apocalyptic tone and very rightly so. Even though the author profoundly believes our end is near, if we don’t reform our ways, he remains “cautiously optimistic” in the epilogue of the book. A lot of the events that helped our species flourish throughout the planet were mere coincidences, and we’re collectively abusing that luck. Reading about our origins was deeply humbling and puts all the other "problems" that pique our capitalistic, material world today into perspective. I would highly recommend this book to EVERYONE, irrespective of age, interests, and beliefs.

::انطباع عام::
=========
رائع بكل معنى الكلمة. لا أستطيع كتابة مراجعة وافية عن هذا العمل الجبار لجاريد دايموند، الذي أتشوف لقراءة كتابه الحائز على البولتيزر: أسلحة، جراثيم، وفولاذ : مصائر المجتمعات البشرية. هذا الرجل موسوعة. وطريقة كتابته تجمع بين المعلومات الغزيرة والأسلوب الفياض بالجمال. ربما يجعلك تعشق المواضيع البيولوجية ويستحث فضولك للبحث أكثر وأكثر في دهاليز هذا العالم خصوصًا عندما تتحد البيولوجيا مع الأنثروبولوجيا.
طبعًا لن أكون قد أفسدت الاستعارة في العنوان على من يريد قراءة الكتاب لو قلت من المقصود بالشمبانزي الثالث! ولكن للمفاجأة، إنها ليست استعارة؛ وربما يكون سقوط هذا الشمبانزي من نذائر تشاؤم صاحب الكتاب أو خوفه لكي نتدارك أنفسنا قبل السقوط الحقيقي.
جدير بالذكر، أشيد بترجمة زياد العامر الرائعة ذات الأسلوب العلمي الرصين، وكذلك للإخراج المتميز من دار التكوين خصوصًا غلاف الكتاب الذي يدل على عبقرية مصممه في استخدام أيقونة صورية فوق حرف الطاء، وخلفية الوجوه السيلوليتية الثلاث التي تمثل الشمبانزي الشائع، والشمبانزي القزم، والشمبانزي الثالث.
***
::في سطور::
========
1_ الشمبانزي الثالث: تطور الحيوان البشري ومستقبله هو كتاب صدر عام 1991 للمؤلف الأكاديمي والعلمي جاريد دايموند، يعرض فيه المؤلف المفاهيم المتعلقة بالأصول الحيوانية للسلوك البشري. كما يتبع الكتاب سلسلة من المقالات التي نشرها دايموند إذ يفحص الأدلة وتفسيرها في المعالجات السابقة للأنواع ذات الصلة، بما في ذلك الخصائص الثقافية أو السمات التي غالبًا ما تعتبر فريدة من نوعها للبشر. تم إصدار الكتاب في المملكة المتحدة بعنوان بديل: صعود وسقوط الشمبانزي الثالث: كيف يؤثر تراثنا الحيواني على الطريقة التي نعيش بها بينما نشر في الولايات المتحدة تحت عنوان الشمبانزي الثالث: تطور الحيوان البشري ومستقبله. نشر دايموند نسخة معدلة للشباب بعنوان الشمبانزي الثالث للشباب.

2_ يطرح دياموند القضية حول كيفية سيطرة الإنسان العاقل على أقرب أقاربه، مثل الشمبانزي، ولماذا تمكنت مجموعة من البشر (أوراسيا) من السيطرة على مجموعات أخرى (الشعوب الأصلية في الأمريكتين). وفي الإجابة على هذه الأسئلة، يطبق دياموند مجموعة متنوعة من الحجج البيولوجية والأنثروبولوجية لرفض وجهات النظر التقليدية التي تقول إن الشعوب المهيمنة جاءت من سلالة وراثية متفوقة، ويزعم بدلاً من ذلك أن الشعوب التي هيمنت على الآخرين فعلت ذلك بسبب المزايا الأداتية الموجودة في بيئتها المحلية والتي سمحت لها بتطوير أعداد أكبر من السكان، ومناعة أوسع ضد الأمراض، وتقنيات متفوقة للزراعة والحرب.

3_ كما يدرس الكتاب كيف يتم حل عدم التماثل في سلوك التزاوج بين الذكور والإناث من خلال الهياكل الاجتماعية المختلفة عبر الثقافات، وكيف أن الاتصال الأول بين الحضارات غير المتكافئة يؤدي دائمًا تقريبًا إلى الإبادة الجماعية. وينتهي الكتاب بالإشارة إلى أن التقدم التكنولوجي قد يتسبب في تدهور البيئة على نطاق يؤدي بالنوع كله إلى الانقراض.
***
::الكتاب::
=======
1_ الجزء الأول: مجرد نوع كبير من الثدييات
يشير عنوان الكتاب إلى مدى التشابه التصنيفي بين الشمبانزي والبشر، حيث تختلف جيناتهم بنسبة 1.6% فقط، في حين يختلف الشمبانزي والغوريلا بنسبة 2.3%. وبالتالي فإن أقرب أقرباء الشمبانزي ليس القردة الأخرى التي يتم تصنيفها معها، بل البشر. في الواقع، فإن الاختلاف بين الشمبانزي والإنسان أصغر من بعض المسافات داخل النوع: على سبيل المثال، حتى الطيور ذات الصلة الوثيقة مثل طيور الأخيضر ذات العيون الحمراء والبيضاء تختلف بنسبة 2.9%. بناءً على الاختلافات الجينية، يجب التعامل مع البشر كنوع ثالث من الشمبانزي (بعد الشمبانزي الشائع والبونوبو). أو ربما يجب أن يكون الاسم العلمي للشمبانزي هو هومو تروغلودايتس بدلاً من بان تروغلودايتس. يلاحظ دايموند في كتابه أن هذا من شأنه أن يوفر غذاءً للفكر للأشخاص الذين يمرون بهذا الجانب من قضبان القفص بحديقة الحيوان الذي يحمل علامة (هومو).

2_ الجزء الثاني: حيوان ذو دورة حياة غريبة
يتناول هذا الجزء التباين الجنسي بين الثدييات، وخاصة البشر، وآليات الانتقاء الجنسي. ويتناول كيف أن الإناث في مختلف الأنواع أكثر حرصًا على اختيار شريكهن من الذكور (فهن يستثمرن قدرًا أعظم من الطاقة في كل نسل). وهذا يحدد قدرًا كبيرًا من السلوك البشري: كيف نختار شريكاتنا، وكيف ننظم المجتمع وأنظمة رعاية النسل، الأمر الذي يؤدي إلى نشوء هياكل اجتماعية مختلفة في ثقافات مثل بابوا غينيا الجديدة، وكيرالا. ويتناول أيضًا قضايا طول العمر ــ فالجيل السابق يموت لأن ساعته البيولوجية تغلق عملية التمثيل الغذائي والإصلاح من أجل تحويل الاستثمار من الفرد الوالد إلى استثمار النسل.

3_ الجزء الثالث: البشر المتفردون
يمتد هذا الجزء ليشمل تأثيرات الانتقاء الجنسي في اللغة والفن والصيد والزراعة، من خلال فكرة الإشارات الصادقة ـ الإشارات الجنسية التي تكلف أيضًا من يوجهها. ويستند هذا إلى تفسير جاذبية المخدرات وتعاطيها. كما يناقش إمكانية الاتصال بحضارة ذكية خارج كوكب الأرض (ويعتقد دايموند أن هذا من شأنه أن يكون كارثة).

4_ الجزء الرابع: غزاة العالم
إن هذا السؤال يطرح نفسه الآن: لماذا تمكن الأوراسيون من غزو الثقافات الأخرى؟ إن إجابة دياموند هي أن هذا يرجع جزئيًا إلى تخطيط القارة الأوراسية من الشرق إلى الغرب، والذي سمح بتبني حزم ناجحة من الاستئناس الزراعي والحيواني (مزيج من بعض النباتات والحيوانات المستأنسة) في مناطق أبعد شرقًا أو غربًا. ومن ناحية أخرى، كان توسيع حزم الاستئناس على طول المحور الشمالي الجنوبي ــ كما هو في حالة القارتين الأميركية والأفريقية ــ أكثر صعوبة بسبب الاختلالات المناخية الشديدة. كما أن الاتصال الطويل الأمد بالحيوانات المستأنسة في المجتمعات الزراعية يسمح بمقاومة أكبر للأمراض، وهو سبب آخر يجعل الاتصال بين الثقافات المنفصلة جغرافيًا ــ معظمها مجتمعات زراعية مقابل مجتمعات الصيد والجمع ــ يؤدي غالبًا إلى انقراض هذه المجتمعات من خلال العدوى المدمرة. ويتم فحص عملية الاتصال الأول بين الحضارات المختلفة من خلال أوصاف سكان المرتفعات في بابوا غينيا الجديدة، الذين زاروا المنطقة لأول مرة قبل نصف قرن من الزمان. من الناحية التاريخية، يزعم دايموند أن مثل هذه الاتصالات بين السكان المختلفين على نطاق واسع كانت تؤدي في كثير من الأحيان إلى انقراض المجموعات مثل العديد من قبائل الهنود الحمر، والتسمانيين، إلخ. وهناك قائمة طويلة من الإبادات الجماعية في التاريخ. جدير بالذكر أن القضية حول سبب غزو بعض الحضارات لحضارات أخرى هو الموضوع الرئيسي لكتاب اللاحق أسلحة، جراثيم، وفولاذ : مصائر المجتمعات البشرية

5_ الجزء الخامس: النكوص في تطورنا بين عشية وضحاها
وهنا يتلخص الجدل في أن الحضارات تنشغل أحيانًا بمنافسات التفوق الداخلي، فتستنزف البيئة إلى الحد الذي قد لا تتعافى معه أبدًا. ومن الأمثلة على ذلك جزيرة إيستر وأطلال البتراء، وكلاهما نتيجة لإزالة الغابات مما أدى إلى التصحر. جدير بالذكر أن القضية حول سبب انهيار بعض الحضارات وبقاء حضارات أخرى هو الموضوع الرئيسي في كتاب دايموند: الانهيار : كيف تحقق المجتمعات الإخفاق أو النجاح
يتبصّر دايموند مدى قربنا من الكارثة التي قد تنجم عن تدمير بيئتنا العالمية، وكيف قد يكون من الممكن أن نشهد محرقة نووية في المستقبل. ويحذر من أن محرقة بيئية قد بدأت بالفعل، وأن إصلاح الضرر الذي لحق بها أصبح أكثر صعوبة. ورغم أن النهاية قاتمة إلى حد ما، فإن الخاتمة تذكرنا بشكل صارخ بكيفية تدمير حروبنا الداخلية في مجتمعنا العالمي الأوسع للوطن الوحيد الذي نملكه جميعًا.
*.*.*.*.*

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)

If you've read Guns, Germs and Steel or Collapse you know what to expect from Jared Diamond- a blizzard of fascinating facts, insights and theories that will spark tens of conversations among your like minded friends and colleagues.

Diamond is a master of spinning hard fact and intriguing theory into readable books, and he does so again in The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution & Future of the Human Animal,
exploring the link between humans and the beings we call apes (Diamond argues against such a distinction, and posits that humans are simply a third variety of chimpanzee) and the evolution of human bodies, minds and culture.

If you're in the mood for an interesting and informative info-dump you've come to the right book. Diamond explores high and low, illuminating research ranging from comparisons of genitalia size (There's reason why 'Hung like a Gorilla' is not a popular phrase) and the theories behind these differences, the possible reasons behind Homo Sapiens' sudden technological leap beyond our early origins and our cousins the Neanderthals, and finally a discussion of the threats to our existence that Diamond later devoted Collapse to. Diamond weaves his own experiences working with remote tribes in Papua New Guinea into the narrative and I that found this aspect of his storytelling balances the more fact heavy sections well.

I learned a great deal from this book about the evolution of my own body, and the ways that the human form could indicate social and behavioral traits to a neutral observer (Diamond uses the example of Aliens viewing our species for the first time). Diamond makes these learnings both accessible and interesting and I experienced a number of out-loud-wow-science exclamation moments while reading this book.

If you're at all interested in evolutionary theory and our genetic proximity to our forest-dwelling relatives, you should read this book. If you're still uncertain that we're related to chimpanzees and gorillas, you too, should read it (I guarantee you'll be convinced we should have been inviting Bonzo and Harambe to our family barbecues). If you're really, really certain we aren't related to 'apes' and you aren't interested in being convinced otherwise.... well, I suspect you aren't browsing this section of the library/bookstore anyway.

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

Original review: The audience called for an encore and Jared obliged. The rewind was not as much fun.

Update:

The Homosexual Chimpanzee?

However, this book has some great explanations on human sexuality but does not address one which I was not able to find a satisfactory explanation for, evolutionarily speaking: Homosexuality.

The following is an explanatory excerpt from The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins. I am adding this here for my own reference, but I am sure you will find it damn interesting too.

"Consider human male homosexuality as a more serious example. On the face of it, the existence of a substantial minority of men who prefer sexual relations with their own sex rather than with the opposite sex constitutes a problem for any simple Darwinian theory. The rather discursive title of a privately circulated homosexualist pamphlet, which the author was kind enough to send me, summarizes the problem: 'Why are there "gays" at all? Why hasn't evolution eliminated "gayness" millions of years ago?' The author, incidentally, thinks the problem so important that it seriously undermines the whole Darwinian view of life. Trivers (1974), Wilson (1975, 1978), and especially Weinrich (1976) have considered various versions of the possibility that homosexuals may, at some time in history, have been functionally equivalent to sterile workers, foregoing personal reproduction the better to care for other relatives. I do not find this idea particularly plausible (Ridley & Dawkins in press), certainly no more so than a 'sneaky male' hypothesis. According to this latter idea, homosexuality represents an 'alternative male tactic' for obtaining matings with females. In a society with harem defence by dominant males, a male who is known to be homosexual is more likely to be tolerated by a dominant male than a known heterosexual male, and an otherwise subordinate male may be able, by virtue of this, to obtain clandestine copulations with females.

But I raise the 'sneaky male' hypothesis not as a plausible possibility so much as a way of dramatizing how easy and inconclusive it is to dream up explanations of this kind (Lewontin, 1979, used the same didactic trick in discussing apparent homosexuality in Drosophila). The main point I wish to make is quite different and much more important. It is again the point about how we characterize the phenotypic feature that we are trying to explain.

Homosexuality is, of course, a problem for Darwinians only if there is a genetic component to the difference between homosexual and heterosexual individuals. While the evidence is controversial (Weinrich 1976), let us assume for the sake of argument that this is the case. Now the question arises, what does it mean to say there is a genetic component to the difference, in common parlance that there is a gene (or genes) 'for' homosexuality? It is a fundamental truism, of logic more than of genetics, that the phenotypic 'effect' of a gene is a concept that has meaning only if the context of environmental influences is specified, environment being understood to include all the other genes in the genome. A gene 'for' A in environment X may well turn out to be a gene for B in environment Y. It is simply meaningless to speak of an absolute, context-free, phenotypic effect of a given gene.

Even if there are genes which, in today's environment, produce a homosexual phenotype, this does not mean that in another environment, say that of our Pleistocene ancestors, they would have had the same phenotypic effect. A gene for homosexuality in our modern environment might have been a gene for something utterly different in the Pleistocene. So, we have the possibility of a special kind of 'time-lag effect' here. It may be that the phenotype which we are trying to explain did not even exist in some earlier environment, even though the gene did then exist."


Yes, this is inconclusive, but it does point out some interesting directions in which we can direct our evolutionary reasoning. Don't you think?

Brilliant with some flaws

After the spectacular success of UCLA geography Professor Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. (1997) and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or to Succeed (2005), Harper Perennial has reissued this splendid book originally published in 1992. I'm glad they did. In this ambitious work, Diamond attempts to define human nature in evolutionary terms and to warn us of the dangers ahead. He is particularly worried about the two clouds he sees as hanging over our heads, nuclear warfare and an environmental holocaust. (p. 350)

In the early chapters, Diamond examines our nature and shows how we are similar to and differ from the common chimpanzee and the bonobo (AKA "the pygmy chimp" or as lately seen on TV, "the sexy chimp"). His expertise is nothing less than stunning. Even though this book is nearly 15 years old, most of what he writes needs no update. In the later chapters he concentrates on a variety of themes, genocide, the "noble savage," environmental loss, species extinction, etc. Here we can see the tentative ideas that later became the books mentioned above.

In chapter one, Diamond compares the three chimps. In chapter two he documents the so-called "great leap forward" about 40,000 years ago in which humans became truly human as evidenced by cave art, better tools and the ability to improve upon previous tool design. He attributes this leap to the development of symbolic language. In chapters three through six, he examines human sexuality and reproduction. In chapter seven he explains why we grow old and die. Chapters eight and nine explore language and art and their expression in other animals. In chapter ten, "Agriculture's Mixed Blessings," one of the best chapters in the book, Diamond shows us that life as a hunter-gatherer was preferable to life as one of the early agriculturists. With agriculture came the possibility of civilization and everything that civilization brings, which includes--in addition to art, technology and the massive harnessing of energy--herd diseases, malnutrition from monoculture farming, overpopulation, and hard and long work hours for most people. Average human height actually decreased following the birth of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

In chapter eleven Diamond begins to stray from what he really knows to what he thinks he knows. He posits here that we drink and use "dangerous drugs" because of a macho need to show how fit we are. He takes Amotz Zahavi's famous handicap principle and applies it to the Marlboro man. But the advertising for cigarettes and alcohol that Diamond sees as appealing to fitness are better seen as appealing to a false sense of glamour or adventure. Actually we use drugs because they alter our consciousness or deaden it; and we continue to use them because we become psychologically dependent on them. A way of looking at drug use that is consistent with evolutionary principles is to see drug use as a relationship between species, between plant (producer of, e.g., nicotine, tetrahydrocannibinol) and human, or between yeast (alcohol) and human which has not yet reached a true symbiosis.

Another error that I think Diamond makes is his idea that intelligent species throughout the universe are unlikely. He uses the argument that intelligence arose only once on this planet and that if it was something that evolution could easily develop it would have arisen in other species, but hasn't. He even recalls an analogy that I've read elsewhere from woodpeckers. Noting that there are no native woodpeckers in Australia, it is postulated that although woodpecking is a fine subsistence niche, it requires such exacting skills that its evolution almost didn't happen on this planet. The same may be said for intelligence as an evolutionary skill. But the fact that woodpeckers already exist in the Americas and the Old World tends to preclude the evolution of other birds into woodpeckers. And who's to say what intelligent creatures might have evolved had we not come along (e.g., the Neanderthal)? And who's to say just how intelligent some dinosaurs were before they were wiped out? And who's to say what a colony of ants or bees ("swarm intelligence") may become after we are gone?

I also think Diamond is missing something when he declares that "advanced extraterrestrials who discovered us would surely treat us in the same" barbaric way we have treated other primates (or indeed other peoples). (p. 214) For one thing those little green men, considering the vastness of interstellar space, would have a hard time getting here, and any that did arrive here would be light years in advance of us not only technologically but probably morally as well.

A recurring theme throughout the book is the human propensity to kill and our hypocrisy about that killing. From the mastodons to the children of the Middle East, humans have always killed while maintaining that killing is evil. Diamond does a nice job of explaining just how this Orwellian doublethink works. The main mental trick is to see those we want to kill as different and separate from ourselves. The taboo against killing humans, Diamond reveals, is really just a taboo against killing members of our own family and tribe. Once we are able to see others as outsiders, we can demonize them and trivialize them, turn them into subhuman objects and get on with the slaughter. Diamond considers how those of us on the sidelines, those of us who have not demonized the victims, can let this happen. His conclusion is that human nature can stand only so much blood-splattered horror before we become numb to the killing and turn away.

Although Diamond waxes hopeful near the end of the book as he thinks of his children and grandchildren, the overall impression I got is that humans are probably not going to be able to prevent the twin nuclear and environmental holocausts to come.~

--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”

As I began reading The Third Chimpanzee, a little voice in my head told me that I should stop reading books by Jared Diamond. His subsequent three popular science books all have their origins in this one; I began with n  Guns, Germs, and Steeln and then read Collapse. So reading The Third Chimpanzee was sort of like getting a summary of those two books, plus the one I haven't read yet. Thus, I sought out to determine if the latter books suffered because they were too long an exploration of Diamond's ideas, or if they are superior to his original formulation of arguments concerning those three subjects. The shocking answer will soon be revealed!

Caveat: parts of this book are now dated, as it was written nearly twenty years ago. Hence, while I usually find Harper's "P.S." sections boring, this one was useful because it allowed Diamond to update us on some of the advances in science and historical discoveries since the book was first published.

My reaction to this book is probably the most mixed reaction I've had to any of Diamond's books thus far. As the aforementioned "P.S." author interview says, Diamond's life as a modern scientific polymath stems from a desire not to be confined to "one tiny slice of life's palette." He began as a physiological researcher and has since distinguished himself for writing on subjects like ornithology, anthropology, history, and geography, earning him the title of "biogeographer." I applaud Diamond for his varied interests and ability to apply those interests and synthesize an argument about human development from multiple disciplines. However, it's important that the reader remember that Diamond isn't a geneticist, astronomer, anthropologist, etc. And sometimes, he overreaches himself when attempting to apply his considerable life experience to his arguments. Oh, and he also tries to be witty and . . . well, once and a while it works, but most of the time his attempts at humour fall flat.

In Part One, Diamond begins by examining how we differ from our closest relatives. There's a fancy chart that shows the estimated dates of evolutionary divergence from common ancestors (gibbons and orangutans split off earlier, then gorillas, then chimpanzees and humans finally went their separate ways around 7 million years ago). Still, the human genome and chimp genome are 98 per cent similar, and Diamond argues that this is enough of a similarity that humanity should constitute the "third chimpanzee." He then postulates that the rise of complex spoken language was the cause of the anthropological "Great Leap Forward" that allowed humans to begin developing the behaviour required for societies to arise. This is the "teaser" part of the book, in which Diamond whets our appetite for details he'll later reveal. He also makes a one-off attempt to plead for the cessation of medical experimentation on chimpanzees, implying that because we are—in his view—of the same genus, it's just as bad as experimenting on humans. Regardless of one's views on the subject, Diamond raises an interesting point . . . and then doesn't return to it at any subsequent moment in the book.

Next, Diamond looks at humans' anomalous "life cycle" compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, particularly primates. Humans are the only primates in which the women go through menopause and cease being fertile. Chimpanzee males have larger testicles than human males because chimpanzee males mate so frequently they need the extra sperm, but most couplings last only seconds! I've always been interested in how our different sexual characteristics have helped humanity rise to its present status on the planet, so I loved this part of the book. Furthermore, unlike some later parts, Diamond remains on firm ground when he seeks evolutionary explanations for human sexual behaviour.

That ground becomes progressively shakier in Part Three, perhaps the worst of the five parts to Diamond's book. Here, he examines aspects of human society that are uniquely developed—the two most notable examples are art and drug abuse. Unfortunately, Diamond over-extends his attempts to explain these behaviours purely from an evolutionary perspective. Is this because evolution can't solely explain them? Or is this merely a failure on Diamond's part as thinker? It's a little of both, in my opinion: Diamond is great at synthesizing disparate sources of information to create a compelling thesis; unfortunately, as he does so, he tends to get somewhat reductionist in his perspective. While his argument is not wrong, it is at the very least incomplete, which still makes it flawed.

I was annoyed when, in the chapter on extraterrestrial life, Diamond began to explain why it's not necessarily likely that an advanced species would develop radio:

You might object that I'm being too stringent in looking for early precursors of radios themselves, when I should instead look for just the two qualities necessary to make radios: intelligence and mechanical dexterity. But the situation there is little more encouraging. Based on the very recent evolutionary experience of our own species, we arrogantly assume intelligence and dexterity to be the best way of taking over the world, and to have evolved inevitably.

Now, I actually agree with the latter part of that quotation. The fact that, on Earth, so far humans are the only form of life to have developed what we term "intelligence" indicates it may not be the only path to global domination. After all, prior to their extinction, the dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and they were certainly dumb by our standards. Still, Diamond is short-sighted; he wrongly assumes that intelligence or dexterity are prerequisites to leveraging radio. They're prerequisites in the invention and construction of mechanical radio transmitters and receivers, sure. "Radio" itself is a medium; radio waves constitute part of the electromagnetic spectrum of radiation. Just as many species have independently evolved eyes to see visual light (and some species can see into other spectrums), what's to stop a species on another planet from evolving a radio transceiver organ? Perhaps the absence of any such creature on Earth would make such an evolutionary development unlikely, at least on Earth-like planets. However, not every habitable planet has to be exactly Earth-like. Maybe there exists conditions on another planet where the evolution of biological radio makes sense. This is a totally hypothetical, spontaneous scenario, but I hope it demonstrates my problem with Diamond's reasoning. In an effort to produce the best arguments possible, he often generalizes or focuses too narrowly on subjects beyond his best areas of knowledge.

In Parts Four and Five, Diamond explores the seeds of the ideas that would turn into two of his later books, Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. Since I've already read these books, I have to admit I skimmed a great deal of these sections. The chapter on language was interesting, but I had already learned much the same from the more recent n  Before the Dawnn. If you read a great deal of anthropological non-fiction, you too may find these sections less-than-fascinating. The one exception is Chapter 17, "The Golden Age That Never Was."

Thank you, Mr. Diamond, for that chapter. It irks me to no end when I hear someone talk about the "good ol' days" of human society, some sort of pastoral paradise where everyone was happy and we experienced no strife. The idea that simpler times were better times is a myth, one that Diamond thoroughly discredits in this chapter. He shows us that people, for the most part, have perpetrated the same sort of acts in the past as we see happening now—the difference is one of degree. Modern technology allows us to expand the scale and speed with which we create problems, making us more efficient at marshalling chaos. Unfortunately, Pandora's box has been opened, and there's no going back. Diamond comes to the same conclusion and so focuses on what hope we might have for the future of our spaces, however slim.

As with Collapse, Diamond broadcasts a message of cautious optimism. We may be able to survive, provided we as a society "choose" to begin living in a way that's more sustainable. He's vague on the details, claiming that his book is "an analysis" of our problems rather than a laundry-list of potential solutions. The solutions, he maintains, are already well-known; we just have to choose to implement them. While that sort of rhetoric isn't very appealing to me, I understand Diamond's difficulty in writing prescriptions. Nevertheless, that call for optimism is less effective in such an unhelpful context.

Right from the start of The Third Chimpanzee, Diamond was up front about his mad love for New Guinea and its peoples and his opinion that it's somehow a microcosm for the development of society. Those who have read my review of Guns, Germs, and Steel know how I got tired of hearing that line. Paradoxically, the New Guineans feature more heavily in this book, but I found their inclusion both more tolerable and more interesting. I actually learned things about New Guinea that made me exclaim, "Oh, that's cool!" rather than roll my eyes and snort, "Right, OK Diamond. Whatever you say." My experience with The Third Chimpanzee has therefore provoked the least amount of sarcasm from me regarding Jared Diamond's writing. It is both the best and the worst of his work: where it is flawed, it is more flawed; where it is useful, it is far more useful. If you read one Jared Diamond book, this should be the one.

And there's the rub. It's difficult to write popular science books. There's a fine line between intelligent and esoteric, between academically rigorous and overly-complicated. Diamond has undertaken a challenge, and for that I respect him; at least he isn't writing puff pieces. For the majority of people, The Third Chimpanzee is worthy of dinner table conversation or book group discussion; it's a great starting point in the quest to read anthropological non-fiction. It is not the culmination of that quest, but a stepping stone along the way to more rigorous, more intense non-fiction on this subject. And that's all it can be.