Try to understand this Neo-Melanesian advertisement for a department store:
Kam insait long stua bilong mipela stua bilong salim olgeta samting-mipela i-ken helpim yu long kisim wanem samting yu laikim bikpela na liklik long gutpela prais. I-gat gutpela kain kago long baim na igat strap long helpim yu na lukautim yu long taim yu kam insait long dispela stua.
If some of the words look strangely familiar but don't quite make sense, read the ad aloud to yourself, concentrate on the sounds and ignore the strange spelling.
I was quite intrigued by this snippet found in the book titled The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. It is a 28 year old Jared Diamond classic that followed his Guns, Germs and Steel and is equally satisfying to read. If you have read his GGS and/or Collapse, you'd vividly recall the magnificent scope his books provide, analyzing a vast array of evidence to support his underlying thesis. This one does the same to claim that human beings are biologically so close to two different chimpanzee species (common and bonobo) that they can be considered the third chimpanzee variation. From 98.4% similarity in DNA to what/how we eat, what our social structures are, there is a lot of evidence to show that human beings are just another species in the continuum of animal spectrum. Then how did we come to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom to dominate the planet so profoundly? Initial chapters point out that the extremely crude stone tools that human beings used 2.5 million years ago starts to differentiate us from other animals. Bonobo (also called pygmy) chimpanzees and gorillas don't use tools. While the common chimpanzee occasionally uses some, it doesn't really depend on tools much for survival. Thus, tools usage is an initial differentiator. Over the next 1.5 million years, we slowly spread across warm parts of Africa and Asia but are still less widespread in the planet than many other animals, like lions. We didn't evolve much for another 900,000 years. About 100,000 years back we seem to have started using fire regularly, which is a big improvement but that's about it. An alien flying into earth and seeing Neanderthals, predecessors to human beings, 100K years back, would have considered them as yet another big mammal roaming around the earth. That's it.
Diamond thinks we took a great leap forward about 40,000 years ago, coinciding with the arrival of the anatomically modern Homo Sapiens. He guesses this spectacular jump to be the development of language. Since the 1.6% difference in DNA between us and chimps came in long before 40K years, author argues that this great leap forward cannot be attributed to genetic differences but just variations in the vocal chord construction that allowed us to create different sounds. The snippet at the top is part of the chapter deftly discussing the evolution of language. If we hadn't paid attention, we might think pidgin as a grammar less, poor quality means of communication uneducated people practice in a language they don't know well. Diamond explains nicely as to how pidgin is the first stage of two different language speakers communicating with each other using broken words and very short sentences that then evolves into creole, if and only if a new community of that pidgin language speakers continue to thrive bringing in the need for sophisticated grammar, and expressions of complicated thought. If not, neither side bothers to learn the language of the other side, leaving the pidgin usage where it is. The list of pidgin and creole used around the world, the kind of detective painstaking work linguists do to trace and time languages are all quite fascinating. For example, take a word like gun. Unlike sun or sea, gun didn't exist forever but was invented at a point in time. So, tracing the term for gun in various languages around the world gives fascinating insights into whether a set of languages had a common ancestor or not. Now look at the same two lines given above rewritten using English spelling to see if it makes better sense (another snippet from the book):
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Come inside long store belong me-fellow-store belong sellim altogether something - me-fellow can helpim you long catchim what-name something you likeim, big-fellow na lik-lik, long good-fellow price. He-got good-fellow kind cargo long buyim, na he-got staff long helpem you na lookoutim you long time you come inside long this-fellow store.
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Although scientists and philosophers trying to glorify human beings will claim that we differ from other animals in having innate sense of ethics and other such noble traits, author thinks that human beings actually differ from other animals in two other notorious traits: our capacity to murder each other in really large numbers very efficiently and our capability to destroy the environment extremely quickly than any other species on the planet! He thinks if this capacity for self-destruction is a standard part of the evolution of any advanced civilization, it might explain Fermi's Paradox. About 10K years back we started occupying lot more parts of the planet, killing off many species into extinction around the globe, and invented agriculture. Of course the last 500 or so years have been detailed very well with written records available in many places. He thinks with the advent of modern technology & science, we might fall into a false complacency thinking that we are much more civilized and are all set to live and rule the planet forever. But under closer examination, many things look fragile, there are still genocide going on in different parts of the world, consumption of natural resources has been accelerating without any possibility of replenishment, and so on that may lead us towards a lot of pessimism. But Diamond is optimistic since the problem we face were created by us and so potentially they could be solved by us as well.
To lead us to his conclusions author walks through a wide array of topics ranging from how survival of the fittest evolution could have brought about menopause in women, the science of adultery, Indonesian martial arts experts who drink kerosene once in a while to prove to themselves they remain strong, drug addiction, how perpetrators of genocide practice "blame the victims" to justify their acts (several pages of analysis on how Native Americans were killed of by the European settlers in US), etc. The GGS and Collapse book themes also show up in few pages that may feel a bit repetitive to those who have already read those books. Similarly while detailed slow moving discussion of various species carrying a burden as a display of its strength (e.g. peacock with a long plume) might feel like an argument seen in many other books (e.g. Richard Dawkins), if I had read this book 28 years back, I am sure it might have been new to me. Diamond also seems to have detractors who argue that many is his conclusions can't be proven and his claims are dubious. I am not an anthropologist. But he himself says that in his line of work, speculation is often involved since you can't go back thousands of years to see exactly how, what, when something happened. I wonder some of his critics make the criticism to ride his coat tails, with any publicity is good publicity attitude. To me, his easily accessible prose, varied discussion carrying an underlying directional motive are all nice signature characteristics of this book making it thoroughly enjoyable.
Regards.
-sundar.
P.S. Have you bought the Thought Experiments book yet? :-)
You can buy the e-book from Google: https://tinyurl.com/TESVGoogle
or from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/TESVAmazon
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