No Rousseauian fantasies and not a long tale of progress - Rated 
Jared Diamond's hard-hitting book paints a hyper-realistic and thorough picture of the place of mankind in the Darwinian evolution, of its tiny genetic, but huge `intellectual' differences with apes, of the deep animal roots of its behavior and of the evolutionary trade-offs explaining biological imperfections.
His book is divided in five parts.
Part one discusses the ascent of man and the great leap forward in the Darwinian evolution due to skeletal changes, upright walking and the use of tools.
Part two gives a full picture of man's life cycle: a limited number of offspring, parental care, mating selection with conception as only a by-product of copulation, social relations and life expectancy (slow aging).
Together with `normal' animal behavior like rape, infanticide, intergroup warfare or adultery, mankind has some unique characteristics like the menopause of women and the treatment of the latter through asymmetric adultery laws or genital mutilations.
Part three analyzes man's cultural traits, In the first place, the ascent of agriculture and its most important concomitant characteristics, like demographic explosions, rampant malnutrition, gross social and sexual inequalities, epidemic diseases and political dictatorships; also, language, art and technology.
Part four treats a unique and destructive feature of mankind: xenophobic killing of other human groups en masse, mostly in fighting for lebensraum. Man's arsenal of nuclear weapons can wipe out all living things on earth.
Part five analyzes man's assault on the environment (e.g., the self-destructive chemical abuse) and his mass extermination of other living species, on which depends his own survival.
Despite his pessimistic vision, Jared Diamond remains still cautiously optimistic because man has the power to find solutions for the actual dire state of the planet he lives on.
This book is a must read for all those who want to know who we are and in what kind of world we are actually living.
Brilliant overview of the human development - and a warning for its ending - Rated
The book :The Third Chimpanzee" by Diamond is a - indeed fascinating in its overview of the human genesis, rational and logic in the description of the various development steps, the discussion of scientific disputes of interpretation and in the author's own conclusions. By stressing (and giving evidence of) the animal-ancestry of humans, it humbles one's own perception of being, illuminating the slight difference we have in our genes from the chimpanzees, and at the same time making one aware of the fragility, both of ourselves, and our dependance on the environment.
Diamond is a gifted writer, one is spellbound by the development of his thesis, and the interspersed personal experiences make the thesis trustworthy and lively.
His is an eloquent and potent warning against our own self-inflicted extinction - currently running full steam against the wall.
I bought and read the follow-on books "guns, steel and germs" and "collapse" and they are equally gripping.
I gave numbers to all my friends to read - so convinced I am :-)
You'll enjoy it !
hans-werner wabnitz, France
"It helps us understand what it means to be human" - Rated
This is a brilliant examination of the rise of mankind from just another species of big mammal to our current domination of the earth, and an important exposition of our position in the world today.
Diamond combines many disciplines to produce a riveting dissection of humanity to dispel any myths of inimitable human nature, presenting examples of "human" nature in the animal kingdom, and the reasons for our sudden rise in The Great Leap Forward.
Diamond continues by warning the reader of the severe consequences of ignoring the destruction of the environment, ideas he pursued further in Collapse. Diamond, however, remains optimistic of our ability to learn from our mistakes and those if fallen civilisations, sentiments I don't share.
Like all of Diamond's books, this is immensely readable, and tackles a subject of great importance to how we perceive ourselves, our place in the universe, and the world around us.
Interesting, informative and entertaining - Rated
2006 Harper Perennial reissue of 1st edition (1992), 368 pages
This is another of the twenty books Charlie Munger recommends in the second edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack (which I recommend very strongly you get and read). Two of Jared Diamond's books make it on to the list (this one plus Guns, Germs and Steel), so I had high hopes for his first book, The Third Chimpanzee. I wasn't disappointed.
A big theme in Poor Charlie's Almanack is the importance of multi-disciplinary learning. Munger believes that many/most academic disciplines suffer from `man with a hammer syndrome': if your only tool is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail. Jared Diamond is a man who comes equipped with a full tool kit: he started off in medical research, then pursued a parallel second career in bird ecology, evolution and biogeography and is learning his twelfth language.
The first part of this book is about where we came from and how we have become so different to all of the other animals, when, for example, only 1.6% of our DNA differs from that of a chimpanzee. The second part is about our likely future as evidenced by our relatively recent past (though these broad headings are actually subdivided into five sections by the author).
The book is full of interesting facts and surprising (and well argued) theories. The evidence that he discusses when looking at whether we ever lived in harmony with nature and how far back and regularly our human genocidal tendencies manifested themselves is rather disquieting. It suggests strongly, for example, that my own laissez faire attitude towards the environment is emphatically not justified by human history. The difference between us and the Easter Islanders or Anasazi Indians is that we have a global resource base to compromise before we run into serious trouble.
Diamond also has a theory of how the plant and animal species available for domestication may well have proved the decisive factor in determining which of our societies spread and became dominant. I had not come across it before at all and I found it extremely interesting - it is a prime example of how broadening the information under review may lead to completely different and unusual conclusions.
The Third Chimpanzee is an excellent and interesting book and I have already purchased his next book Guns, Germs and Steel. (I particularly recommend the 2006 Harper Perennial reissue as it contains an interesting addendum at the back with information about Diamond, some recommended further reading, and, most importantly he also discusses new scientific discoveries made since the original 1992 edition.)
Good book but dodgy conclusion - Rated 
This book is a good read, and is about what enabled the 'European' nations to reign supreme over the rest of the world.
Jared decides it was all down to luck. The luck of having the right crops and livestock available, the right climate and the right location.
The "Wealth and Poverty of Nations" by Landes, takes another view and attributed the West's power and wealth down to it's culture of relative freedoms - freedom to own and keep ones wealth for example - it's relatively free economies, that led to the quest for trade, expansion and invention.
The amazing thing is, that where Jared states that America, Africa and Australia were 'unlucky' with their lot, once the Europeans transplanted their culture & freedoms to South Africa, Canada, Australia and the USA these areas became some of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world.
A good book non the less, but a dodgy 'politically correct' conclusion.
I'd reccomend you buy this and the Landes book for comparison and then make your own conclusion.
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