Copyright © 2017 by Wil C. Fry.
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Author: Jared Diamond
Year: 1992 (mine was 2006 paperback)
Genre: Science, Evolution
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN 978-0-06-084550-6 (trade paperback)
Wikipedia page
Author’s Wikipedia page
Summary
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Royal Society Prize For Science Books in 1992, The Third Chimpanzee was Jared Diamond’s first publication outside scholarly journals. The theme is helpfully stated on an otherwise blank page just prior to the table of contents:
“How the human species changed, within a short time, from just another species of big mammal to a world conqueror; and how we acquired the capacity to reverse all the progress overnight.”Diamond further expounds in the prologue and early chapters that humans share more than 98% of our DNA with two other species, the “pygmy chimpanzees” of Zaire (today referred to as the bonobo) and the common chimp of the rest of tropical Africa. Diamond argues that zoologists from outer space would immediately classify humans as a third species of chimpanzee. (Scientists continue to debate whether chimps and humans should both belong to the genus homo instead of the pan genus, due to extreme similarities in genetics and physiology.) Yet we are arguably separated from chimps by a vast chasm of abilities — control of fire and atomic explosions, complex language and flushing toilets, space flight and emojis.
“We underwent some small changes with big consequences rather quickly and recently in our evolutionary history... What were those few key ingredients that made us human?”Throughout the book, Diamond argues that many of the qualities usually cited as “unique” in humans actually have primitive precursors in our animal relatives — including language, agriculture, tool usage, and more.— pg. 3, Prologue
What I Liked Least About It
Most of the book was enjoyable and informative — exactly what I was looking for. But one downside when writing popular science books is that scientific knowledge is accumulating at an unprecedented pace. There are places where Diamond is forced to guess or extrapolate, but just a few years later science answered for certain.
For example, on page 53, Diamond guesses that Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) did not interbreed with Cro-Magnons (Homo sapiens sapiens), but admits it is “unclear”. Two decades later, scientists discovered that Cro-Magnon humans had indeed mated with Neanderthal humans, and that Neanderthal DNA lives on in many of us today — everyone outside sub-Saharan Africa.
This isn’t a fault of Diamond’s; it’s just how the world of science works. Fortunately, the author was very clear to differentiate between (1) his guesses and extrapolations and (2) known scientific facts.
What I Liked Most About It
Due to my own educational path skipping entirely the subject of human evolution, I tend to find any books about this topic fascinating. I also tend to enjoy any well-written, well-researched nonfiction, and this book fit that descriptor too.
Diamond skillfully weaves stories of his own extensive time in New Guinea, the most linguistically diverse area in the world, into the larger narrative of humans’ similarities/differences to/from chimpanzees.
Though much of the book’s last section is pessimistic — dealing with human society’s penchant for environmental destruction, genocide, and causing mass extinctions — Diamond manages to add a bit of hope at the end.
“There are many grounds for pessimism. Even if every human now alive were to die tomorrow, the damage that we have already inflicted on our environment would ensure that its degradation will continue for decades...
“We don’t need novel, still-to-be invented technologies to solve our problems. We just need more governments to do many more of the same obvious things that some governments are already doing in some cases. Nor is it true that the average citizen is powerless... If we learn from our past that I have traced, our own future may yet prove brighter than that of the other two chimpanzees.”— pg. 365 & 368, Epilogue
Other Notes
1. Diamond lists many sources at the end, but doesn’t cite them in the text. Personally, I think I prefer the other method: using superscript numerals in the text to refer to numbered sources in the back — because even if I don’t flip to the end to check the source, I can at least know which phrases are backed by listed sources. On the other hand, it makes for smoother reading to exclude the endnote numbers from the text.
2. I have already read (and reviewed) Diamond’s later book Guns, Germs, And Steel, so it caught my eye immediately when this book referred to that topic at length in Chapter 14 (“Accidental Conquerors”). Clearly, the author didn’t realize at the time that he was about to write an entire book on this topic. Perhaps after the success of this first book, he used this chapter as a blueprint for his next one. In this chapter, he makes the same points and draws the same conclusions that required much more space in Guns, Germs, And Steel five years later.
3. I was fascinated by studies cited in Chapter 5 (“How We Pick Our Mates And Sex Partners”) that showed how similar most husbands and wives are to each other in nearly every quantifiable category: religion, ethnic background, race, socioeconomic status, age, political views, measures of personality and intelligence, etc. I was surprised to learn that even very odd characteristics tend to match up between spouses: breadth of nose, length of earlobe, circumference of wrist, distance between eyes, and lung volume!
My own marriage is an outlier — doesn’t fit into the general findings of these studies. My wife and I do not share a race, religion, age, or ethnic background. We didn’t share political views when we first met. We do, however, have similar wrist circumferences.
4. Part Five (“Reversing Our Progress Overnight”, Chapters 17-19) focuses almost exclusively on humanity’s role in causing mass extinctions of Earth’s life forms. I was fascinated to read Diamond’s take on it, but also highly recommend the 2014 book by Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (I reviewed it in 2015), which won the Pulitzer Prize and is entirely about the Anthropocene — the epoch characterized by humanity’s significant impact on our planet.
Conclusion
The Third Chimpanzee is written in language accessible to the common person (it doesn’t require a science degree). It’s fast-paced and informative. It’s enjoyable and thought-provoking.
It’s worth your time.
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