The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live [Paperback]

Jared Diamond (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2003

More than 98 percent of human genes are shared with two species of chimpanzee. The 'third' chimpanzee is man. Jared Diamond surveys out life-cycle, culture, sexuality and destructive urges both towards ourselves and the planet to explore the ways in which we are uniquely human yet still influenced by our animal origins.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jared Diamond is Professor of Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Trained in physiology, he later took up the study of ecology and has made fundamental contributions to both disciplines. He is among the worlds leading zoologists and experts on birds. He has made many trips to the mountains of New Guinea to study their unique birds, rediscovered their long-lost bowerbird, and advises New Guinea governments on conservation. As well as writing technical articles in his many fields of interest, Jared Diamond writes regularly for popular science journals. He is married, and has twin sons.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Books (July 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099913801
• ISBN-13: 978-0099913801
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #358,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began his scientific career in physiology and expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeography. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Among Dr. Diamond's many awards are the National Medal of Science, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Japan's Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Prize honoring the Scientist as Poet, presented by Rockefeller University. He has published more than two hundred articles and several books including the New York Times bestseller "Guns, Germs, and Steel," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interest-Shaping, September 1, 2005

By 

Jonny Harman "dreamconsciousness.com" (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live (Paperback)

After reading Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" I became hooked on the subject of global history and evolution. Consequently, I couldn't wait to get my hands on "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee". Diamond's writing is not only extremely interesting, it is interest-shaping, and I was not disappointed with this second highly compulsive read. For those who have read GG&S, I can say that both books compliment one another nicely. The Rise & Fall covers similar themes - expanding on many, and opening the way for GG&S to cover many others. Anyone who enjoyed one book will surely enjoy the other.

To begin with, Diamond first examines the fact that we share more than 98 per cent of our genes with chimps, and so he concludes that by the rules of zoology we are in fact a third species of chimp. He then proceeds with his thesis, setting out to examine what it is in our genes that accounts for our dramatic rise and makes us so exceptionally different to chimps and all other animals. Much of his discussion examines the following proposition: There must be animal precedents in the things that we like to feel make us human (including tools, art, language, and plant and animal domestication) - as well as in some less positive things (murder, genocide, habitat destruction) - for such a small difference in genes to have gone such a long way. Accordingly, there is much to fascinate people who enjoy reading about some of the wonderful oddities and curiosities belonging to the human and animal kingdom, as Diamond considers the precedents and precursors of these attributes in animals, and then traces their rise in Cro-Magnon man. In the final chapters he then puts all this together to give a chilling prognosis of the way we may soon prove our own undoing, but although this is inevitably less scientific and more conjecture than the preceding chapters, Diamond is careful to observe where fact does become opinion (and where theories are not necessarily widely accepted), and so I felt that his conclusion was quite relevant.

I have said that his writing is extremely interesting. Another thing that I like about his work is the fact that he draws a lot from his own adventures in Papua New Guinea; that he writes from a broad intellectual base (referring to many sciences and their findings as he puts a massive puzzle together to construct very plausible arguments); but at the same time he is not above using even childish humour ('fart' comes from the Proto-Indo-European word, 'perd', one reads). People who like reading about the origins of Homo sapiens will also perhaps be fascinated by an in-depth discussion on the relative phallus size of the various apes (cleavage size is covered too), and on the implications pertaining to our own place along the scale. In short, I found "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee" to be another highly interesting, factual, educational and compulsive read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hysterical but many insights., October 31, 2011

By 

Vincent Poirier (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live (Paperback)

Jared Diamond once in a while goes off the deep end. He wants us to stop sending signals to outer space for fear that more advanced alien civilizations might notice us and then come over and destroy us. Just like we Europeans destroyed the native Inca and Aztec empires, he points out.

Much of the time though, he offers readers deep insights into our own behaviour, especially into traits we used to think as distinctly human but in fact finding their origin in our animal ancestors. Our predilection for smoking or indulging in expensive paraphernalia or going for dangerous activities are much like the peacock's tail or fighting among male stags. They signal to prospective mates our superior health, so superior that we can afford to smoke or fight among ourselves. If we have enough resources for a fast car, we certainly will be able to provide for our mate and offspring.

Diamond also shows us that we are not unique in killing other members of our species just for the fun of it. Genocide is common among apes, where bands stalk and destroy neighbouring groups for no apparent reason. They are not competing for food or for living space but somehow they feel the urge to go to war. And they can be pretty vicious with one another, sometimes torturing a victim as they murder him.

Still, despite the insights, it's hard to agree with Diamond's pessimistic outlook for the future of the human race. He disregards purely human achievements such as our concepts of abstract justice, our social machinery, and an economic environment that allows us to adapt our resources to our needs. Diamond moans that we are depleting the earth of oil without realizing that because of how we have evolved into merchant societies, we'll easily find something else.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An early forray into humans and their behavior, June 27, 2011

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live (Paperback)

I had read the Jared Diamond's books Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition quite some while ago and was thoroughly impressed with the author's incisive look at humans in the natural world, particularly their effect on the other members of Earth's biota and on one another. The former book is an absolute classic and makes such thorough sense of what occurred in and after the 15th century that it should be required reading in most history courses. These and the present book are often cited in works by other authors, and since I had not read The Third Chimpanzee, I thought it was about time.

There is a lot of very interesting information in the book. Though some of it I had read before in other contexts, here what are fragments of data in other books are arranged in a way that their importance to the whole picture of human history can be more easily understood and appreciated. The author definitely has a handle on the wider perspective. As a naturalist and professor of physiology, he sees humanity as "Homo sapiens," and animal much like other animals.

I had read about the concept and content of "Indo-European" languages years ago when studying ancient history. It was known even in the late 19th and early 20th century that the shared words of various languages probably belonged to the parent, but I was still very intrigued by the more recent ideas about the primary homeland of the speakers of the early language, their lifestyle and their degree of connectedness with modern languages and people. Diamond is quite honest, however, about what professional researchers in the field of linguistics think about these efforts, which is not much.

What surprised me the most about language, however, was the degree to which other animals also "speak" in their own way. I suspect anyone with a pet comes to realize their capacity to communicate with their owners on subjects of interest to them! Animal art is also something I'd heard of before--I knew that the Phoenix Zoo had an elephant that painted--but as the author states, the artists in this case live in captivity, are subject to human contact, and have very little else to do. I worked as a volunteer at the Minnesota Zoo for a year and often wondered how the animals kept from going completely insane in such a small fragment of what would have been their ranges in the wild. Perhaps participating in "art therapy," especially for the brighter inmates was a good outlet for a mental life no longer devoted to the rigorous activity necessary to ensuring safety and nutrition. As the author points out, observations in the wild have yet to observe these same animals participating in art projects---though he indicates elephants in the wild do make designs in the dust with their trunks.

The book is also a little depressing. Unlike Clive Finlayson's book The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived, which suggested simple chance put paid to the Neanderthals rather than aggression from our own species, Diamond--and many others--seems inclined to lay the whole affair at our doorstep. Similarly he convicts us of destroying the megafauna of North America. In fact, he, like Bryan Sykes, Adam's Curse: A Future without Men, seems to see humans as thoroughly destructive animals. From the evidence of our current world, I'd have to agree. In The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind Roger Lewin and Richard Leakey liken the spread of humans throughout the world as a cancerous, terminal disease of the biosphere and opine as to whether the rise of intelligent life isn't the end stage of the disease. While Dr. Diamond does not seem quite this negative, I suspect he might agree to some extent.