The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal

Jared Diamond
Random House Audio
Jan 2006
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The Development of an Extraordinary Species.... We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet - having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art - while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins? In this fascinating, provocative, passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scientist Jared Diamond explores how the extraordinary human animal, in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world...and the means to irrevocably destroy it.
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Gun, Germs, and Steel: The Prequel - Read It !

Jared Diamond combines an almost limitless range of interests - including evolutionary biology, physiology, ornithology, geography, ancient history, anthropology, music, art, literature - and an equally prodigious number of gifts - not the least of which is his penetrating logic, extraordinary ideational fluency, pellucid writing style, and, thankfully, a marvelously open sense of humor. This has all come together in a remarkable trilogy of books culminating in the celebrated Guns, Germs, and Steel. Reading Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, you can clearly see his formidable mind (recognized by the MacArthur Foundation, which in our day and age of credentials and certifications, makes "genius" semi-official) at work, pushing his materials to the point where he needed to write GG&S to scratch a particular itch that arose in the researching and writing of Chimpanzee. We humans, Diamond observes at the outset of TTC, share 98 percent of our genetic material with two species of chimpanzees, making us, to an objective observer, merely a third species of chimp. But, oh, do the remaining two percent account for a load: speech, writing, art, culture, and a particularly human proclivity to destroy each other and the things we love, either via fratricidal, often genocidal, war or the degradation of our own environment. Having placed these observations on the table, Diamond then goes on, in gemlike chapters that stand alone as models in the scientific essay genre, to discuss animal and primate precursors of these particularly human behaviors, taking us through the bounty of human developments and the accompanying tragedies. He ends, however, on a hopeful note. Not only are we, as Nietzsche pointed out, "the ape that blushes," but also, as Diamond reminds us, the ape that chooses its own future. The net result of Diamond's learned exertions is to render us - me - feeling far more connected to "the animal kingdom," to offer compelling food for thought, and to answer the great q...

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About this book
Publisher Random House Audio
Published 2006
Readers 2