Third Chimpanzee ~ Jared Diamond

Primates again. It’s a curious book this; the first part a concise view on what is known about the evolution of mankind, the last chapters a speculative account of all the destruction humans are capable of.

It is easy to see that last bit as preludes to Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and his latest book Collapse. Having read the first one already, and knowing a bit about the ongoing debates on Collapse, I skipped these chapters.

This left only the first ten chapters to consider, that give a nice enough summary about what is thought about human evolution, and what matters in the 1,6% of genes we don’t share with our closest cousins the chimpanzees.

Though Diamond seems a bit hung up about the differences in testis size.