Customer Reviews

Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human

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Anybody with any interest in what it is that makes us human must read this book. Not only is it fascinating and important, but it's also a pleasure to read. It is intellectual, yet accessible; vastly informative, yet ultimately readable. The diversity of the subject matter and the direct relevance to each of us is compelling. The book derives its content by weaving culture, behavior, evolution, biology, anecdote, history and everyday experience. If you are interested in human nature and how it evolved, read this book. It's going to be a big part of my Christmas list.

Walter has taken the latest work from the great evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, and paleontologists and made it accessible to the rest of us. This is a thrilling account of the science behind the mystery of what makes us human.

I love this book! Chip Walter has made our evolution from apes to humans incredibly fascinating and readable. I particularly enjoyed learning about the development of our brains--a very piecemeal process that is explained very clearly.

My favorite little tidbit is the news that humans are born one year premature! Most mammals are able to do a lot more at birth than we can and all the reasons why we're not walking around pregnant for 21 months are given in the book.

I highly recommend this book.

If you're the type of person who, when you're reading a book, likes to turn to your spouse, friend, whatever and say "hey, did you know ... ?", you're going to love this book. I read lots of science books, and it's often hard to find something that I find both new and interesting enough to mention to a non-science junkie. Not here. Thumbs, Toes and Tears has all sorts of fascinating little tidbits mixed in among a very well written narrative. It pulls together all sorts of seemingly unrelated materials in order to tell an important story. It reminded me a bit of the old PBS series called "Connections' with James Burke, although without some of the strained connections that sometimes appeared on that show. Finally, the size of the book was good. It was long enough to tell the story in detail, but short and light enough that you could lie in bed and read it without injuring yourself if you dropped it by accident.

"Thumbs, Toes and Tears" surveys six general traits the author, Chip Walter, consideres uniquely human - a big toe, opposable thumb, larynx for speech plus three acts deeply intertwined with our past - laughing, crying and kissing. Included in the discussions are more mysterious aspects - our unique memory system, our intuitiveness, our ability to communicate by all sorts of visual and sensory systems and consciousness, that dark veil that tells us what we thing without telling us who we are.

Beyond the prose, examples, humor, facts and insights the reader is still startled to learn just how much we have discovered about ourselves and our brains - the real hero of the story. Each of these human attributes is presented with an overview, background and evolutionary history of the trait from its origins to modern times. What fascinates repeatedly are the ways in which one area overlaps or affects the next. Big toes lead to upright posture that in turns frees our hands for such things as tool making and unconscious movements that express our thoughts. Bipedalism allowed the voice box to straighten and produce noises that developed into language.

Thumbs, for example, were integral for tool-making. This stimulated the brain and accelerated the growth of communication. The author considers language the most important skill we acquired since it created culture. As profound as these are to our current current state, the last three are just as intrinsic. Can one imagine a culture without crying, laughter or kissing? We would think it alien and non-human.

Walter was at times too quick to introduce purpose into evolution. There is no purpose - women did not (as he assert) have kids to "help the race". They had no idea about a "human race" much less thought that having children would preserve it. In the same way, the toe did not develop for walking (how could "it" know?) - it was the end result of a series of complex forces that reinforced each other. The book is chock full of interesting facts presented in terms most laymen can comprehend. The differences between the male and female brain explained our actions - why men excel at Math and females in English.

The author points our repeatedly that we are the fusion of both ancient, evolutionary forces that harken back millions of years and modern ones created by our culture at an ever-accelerating pace. In this sense, the author asserts we are more than our genes, greater than the mere end product of a long chain of chance changes over time. The final chapter, CYBER SAPIENTS, suggests that for the first time, humans will not only aid but jumpstart evolution. The former mechanism of evolution - glacially slow, minute changes over eons will be replaced by tinkering with DNA - instant evolution. Will we replace ourselves with robots? Does evolution require biology? What does it mean to be human when one cannot tell the difference between a machine and a "person"? Great book

Chip Walter takes a compelling and thoughtful look at how physiological evolution has led us to the gift of self-awareness, emotion, and the ability to own our existence. A wonderful journey.

As a living relative of other primates on the planet earth, we human beings share many attributes with chimpanzees and other simians. But there are several key physical attributes that we humans have developed that our ape relatives have not, and author Chip Walter has boiled these down to several rather surprising differences. If not for the development of simple, and often overlooked, "little" attributes like our big toes or our unique thumbs, we would likely have either gone extinct as a species or not have evolved to the level that we have today.

In a fresh, vibrant new way, author Chip Walter illustrates how the evolution and development of such a seemingly insignificant physical feature as our big toe makes standing erect and walking possible from a purely engineering standpoint. Without our big toes, we could not stand for long periods, or walk through the park, or run like we do. We would undoubtedly be a very different animal without it and life as we know it would be radically different as well.

The story that Chip Walter reveals is a fascinating and revealing one, and puts a new twist on the evolutionary story of humankind that is fresh and interesting for readers of all ages. The reader will find him or herself speeding through one easy-to-follow chapter after another in "Thumbs, Toes, and Tears" almost unaware of the vast array of technical and scientific research that they are absorbing. It's one thing to throw a lot of heavy scientific information at the audience, but quite another challenge to make a balance between readability for a general mass-market audience and still be a valuable and insightful took for knowledge and learning - all the while maintaining a high degree of enjoyability and engagement. Author Chip Walter has a real knack for making the scientifically-informative engaging for all of us.

For lack of a better word, this unique little book is simply "cool". In my mind, the mark of a "good" book is one that will stick with the reader upon completion. I like a book that makes you continue to think about what you just read hours or even days after putting the book down, discussing things you read with family, friends, and coworkers. You'll likely find yourself looking at your reflection in the mirror after reading "Thumbs, Toes, and Tears" and ponder all the wonderful things that make us, as human beings, so unique in this world. To me, that's a great book!

"Thumbs, Toes, and Tears" is a suitable and enlightening read for teens, young adults, and adults of all ages.

Thumbs, Toes, and Tears And Other Traits That Make Us Human explores links between appendages and the human emotions of love, laughter and tears. Six behaviors and physical traits set humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom: THUMBS, TOES AND TEARS examines these traits and explores their influence and impact on human characteristics and development processes. An excellent, fine survey for not only high school and college science students, but for the general lending library.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book picks out various physical features (per the title, as well as other stuff) and traces how they evolved in our ancestors and how they contribute to making us human. It's competently but not brilliantly written at a level that will appeal to laymen. I found it interesting, and I suspect that those who find the description interesting will like it. I read the Kindle version, and the digital conversion hurt my book experience. There are numerous typos from conversion, enough that in a few cases it interfered with my understanding of specific passages. At this point in technology, images in Kindle books are never great, but the illustrations for this book were worse than average when translated to the Kindle.

Recommended, but not a barn-burningly great book.

How do toes rate a spot in the title? As Chip Walker says "The same big toe made thumbs - and the tools they fashioned - possible, which led to the evolution of language, arguably the greatest tool of all." Mind you, he said this after spending 200 pages justifying it.

The big toes of apes are toward the side, rather like thumbs, and are used for grasping branches while climbing. Humans' big toes are in the front and support our striding walk. As Walter points out, this doesn't necessarily involve major genetic change; a small change in a regulatory gene, such as a Hox gene, could have made most of the difference.

Once our ancestors were walking upright, their hands were free to make and use tools, to carry food and tools, and to gesture to others while walking. This new posture led to changes in the shape of the neck. This increased the range of vocal sounds our ancestors could make. After further evolution, each of us is born with the capacity to make all of the sounds in all of human language.

Walter brings up the hypothesis that language began with gestures and only later was connected with speech. This may sound far-fetched to some, but humans communicate with gestures and speech together, so it would have been easy for gesture-language to give rise to speech-language.

From toes to speech covers the first half of the book. This is in 3 sections: "Toes", "Thumbs", and "Pharynx". Then come "Laughter", "Tears", and "The Language of Lips". 4 of these are obvious, but "Pharynx" deals with language and with the nature of consciousness, and "Lips" covers a wide range of topics, including kissing, pheromones, and why women prefer big, strong men.
There is also a short, mostly speculative section about current topics, such as why men are better at math and women at language.

There is much here that is well established, but there is also much that is hypothetical or even speculative. For example, the importance of big toes for upright walking is well established, while the question of whether men are better at math and women at language is still being debated. Fortunately, Walter points out the uncertainties frequently. We read "says", "thinks", "believes" and so on. Too often, science writers report unverified results and researchers' interpretations as if they were established facts. Walter lets a few such items slip by, but he's generally more careful.

Thumbs, Toes, and Tears covers a lot of territory that doesn't leave a lot of room for in-depth analysis. The goal is for the reader to see that all the many pieces fit together into one picture. We know the pieces must because WE are the picture. Walter himself describes the main fun of the book: "I do hope that the science in the book can help curious mainstream readers learn something interesting and thought-provoking about themselves. I want them to have those `Ah-ha' moments.' (Walter, W.J., Jr., personal communication.) I had several of those moments myself, and I am a fairly advanced reader.

There is a final chapter, "Cyber sapiens", about our species' bionic future, which should stimulate a lot of thinking. Walter doesn't go into the area I find more exciting: genetic engineering. For a few thousand years men have been genetically modifying crops, livestock, and pets using techniques that have been in nature for hundreds of million years. Now a few labs are working out how to create new genes. There's not much to say yet, but it's worth thinking about how both bionics and genetic engineering will affect society. Will the new technology be available, or will the super-rich make of their descendants a new Master Race of ubermenschen?

It is not a criticism to say that much of the material is uncertain; it is one of the strengths of the book. Science starts with speculation, with scientists asking questions. Questions lead to testable hypotheses and testing sorts out the ideas that work from those that don't. Eventually there is solid, established theory. Walter gives a look at the beginnings of a science of the human mind. perhaps some of the younger readers will be inspired to join this quest.