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

by Jared Diamond (Harper Perennial 2006; originally published by HarperCollins, 1992)

I’ve read several Diamond books by now (Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; Why Is Sex Fun?), and there is a lot of overlap among them, but they are all fascinating and thought-provoking. Diamond is a geographer by profession, but his wide-ranging interests and expertise (from bird-watching to cultural anthropology to history to biology to linguistics and beyond) and his first-person experiences in more countries than one person would normally have the time to visit in a lifetime, let alone live and work in, make his books special.

This one is a complete examination of all aspects of human biology and history, including language development, genocidal behavior, adultery, substance abuse, art,  senescence, and the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe. Diamond looks at human beings critically, compares them to their closest relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos), and asks whether this or that behavior hard-wired within us? Why do we do it?

For me, the most sobering chapter is the one on genocide, where Diamond  lists the appallingly many such events (he lists 37) that have taken place since 1492 and describes several in excruciating detail. Genocide is not, as we would prefer to believe unusual in our species. Nor is it unknown in other species, although our guns, germs, and steel give us the power to annihilate more people faster.

 

Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality

by Jared Diamond (Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 1997; ISBN 0-465-03126-9)

In this very short (less than 200 pages) book in only seven chapters with titles like “The Animal with the Weirdest Sex Life,” “Why Don’t Men Breast-feed Their Babies? The Non-Evolution of Male Lactation,” and “What Are Men Good For? The Evolution of Men’s Roles”, Jared Diamond considers why human sexual behavior is so different from that of most (but not all!) other animal species, in that ovulation is concealed, intercourse is not limited to fertile periods, females experience menopause, and men’s penises are larger than they need to be. He considers where humans fit on the spectrum of promiscuity, monogamy, and harems. He discusses different strategies for fertilization in use throughout the animal world. He postulates that perhaps the reason for menopause is that it allows women some years unencumbered by childcare during which they can finish raising their own children and help raising their grandchildren, and function as knowledgeable elders in their family or tribe. Like a book that describes a reader’s native culture, allowing him or her to really notice it for the first time, this book helps readers to view human sexuality from a more objective vantage point and to wonder about how it came to be as it is. Diamond is just speculating, but he leads the reader to speculate with him; it’s interesting.