Editors Reads Verdict
The Third Chimpanzee is Diamond's most provocative and wide-ranging early work — a book that uses evolutionary biology to explain the full spectrum of human behavior, from art and language to drug use and genocide, and that anticipates the larger arguments of Guns, Germs, and Steel.
What We Loved
- The framing — humans as the third chimpanzee, differing from chimps by only 1.6% of DNA — is immediately clarifying and productively humbling
- The range is extraordinary: language acquisition, sexual selection, drug use, genocide, and environmental destruction all examined through the same evolutionary lens
- The book anticipates the larger arguments of Guns, Germs, and Steel and reads as essential context for that later work
Minor Drawbacks
- Some evolutionary psychology arguments, particularly around sexual selection, have been challenged by subsequent research
- The book's scope means that individual topics receive less depth than they would in a focused study
Key Takeaways
- → Humans are the third chimpanzee — our DNA differs from common chimpanzees by only 1.6%, less than it differs from gorillas
- → The human capacity for language, art, and culture emerged relatively recently in our evolutionary history and may have been triggered by a single genetic change
- → Many distinctively human behaviors — drug use, genocide, environmental destruction — have evolutionary precursors in our primate relatives
| Author | Jared Diamond |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Harper Perennial |
| Pages | 407 |
| Published | January 1, 1991 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science, Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology |
The Third Chimpanzee
We think of chimpanzees as our closest relatives, separated from us by an enormous gulf of intelligence, language, and culture. Jared Diamond’s opening argument in The Third Chimpanzee reframes this assumption with a single genetic fact: human DNA differs from that of the common chimpanzee by only 1.6%. We differ from gorillas by more. If we were classifying animals purely by genetic distance, humans would be classified as a third species of chimpanzee — the third chimpanzee.
This reframing does substantial intellectual work. It forces the question: what, exactly, makes the 1.6% difference so consequential? What does that genetic distance account for? Diamond’s answer is the book’s subject: language, art, agriculture, technology, religion, drugs, genocide, and environmental destruction — the full catalog of what is distinctively human, both magnificent and catastrophic.
The Great Leap Forward
Diamond proposes that the distinctively human cognitive capacities — language, art, symbolic thought — emerged relatively suddenly, around 50,000 years ago, in what he calls the Great Leap Forward. Before that point, human stone tools had changed little for a million years. After it, tool technology, art, long-distance trade, and evidence of symbolic behavior appear in the archaeological record with striking rapidity. Diamond speculates that a single genetic mutation affecting the structure of the larynx or the neural architecture of language may have triggered this transformation.
The Dark Side of the Leap
The same cognitive capacities that produced art and language also produced genocide and ecological destruction. Diamond examines both as evolutionary phenomena with deep roots in primate behavior. Chimpanzees conduct lethal raids on neighboring groups; humans have simply scaled this tendency up. The megafauna extinctions that followed human arrival in Australia, the Americas, and on oceanic islands represent the first instances of a pattern that has accelerated ever since.
Anticipating the Later Work
The Third Chimpanzee anticipates the larger arguments of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse — the uneven geographical distribution of domesticable plants and animals, the role of epidemic disease in conquest, the environmental roots of societal failure. Reading it as part of Diamond’s larger project reveals how consistently his thinking has been organized around a single underlying question: what does our evolutionary and environmental history tell us about how we got here, and where we are going?
Our rating: 4.3/5 — An ambitious, provocative, and often uncomfortable examination of what evolutionary biology reveals about the full range of human behavior, from art to genocide.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Third Chimpanzee" about?
Jared Diamond's first major popular book asks what makes humans unique among the great apes — examining language, art, agriculture, drugs, and genocide as distinctly human traits — and what our evolutionary history predicts about our future.
What are the key takeaways from "The Third Chimpanzee"?
Humans are the third chimpanzee — our DNA differs from common chimpanzees by only 1.6%, less than it differs from gorillas The human capacity for language, art, and culture emerged relatively recently in our evolutionary history and may have been triggered by a single genetic change Many distinctively human behaviors — drug use, genocide, environmental destruction — have evolutionary precursors in our primate relatives
Is "The Third Chimpanzee" worth reading?
The Third Chimpanzee is Diamond's most provocative and wide-ranging early work — a book that uses evolutionary biology to explain the full spectrum of human behavior, from art and language to drug use and genocide, and that anticipates the larger arguments of Guns, Germs, and Steel.
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