Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story Of How And Why We Survived (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
I loved it. Let's face it Paleoanthropology is pretty fascinating stuff, even it needs to be updated almost constantly as we learn more and re-think what we know. Human origins, evolution and behavior is complex a field because of the difficulties in researching the topic, but so worthwhile reading about. And this is very nice overview of the current thought. The beginning is a bit dry as the author tries to overview the changing views of species and lineage, but leads to some thought provoking explorations throughout the book once you move past that. When I went to college many years ago I minored in anthropology so we got a lot of information on ancient humans. This book shows how much the body of knowledge has changed, while revealing how often scientists claim something is true while they're actually just making it up as they go along. It also shows off many other things I really find distasteful about science and our modern culture now. The tone of the book is naturally overtly humanist, with us being the top of evolution and the best thing since sliced bread. I found it arrogant and off-putting. The assumption that humans are the best and brightest is frankly bullshit. Science really has no idea how any other creature really thinks, it only has assumptions based on its mythology, and a bunch of tests that can be (and usually are) interpreted as a matter of opinion but are then passed along to the public as fact. This has the effect of reinforcing the idea that humans are the best and brightest because the tests start from that stance and aren't truly open as they'd like to think. And anyway objectivity is a dirty word; our culture objectifies everything to the detriment of all life. Humans are the best, really? OK, then, let's see one of you scientists go out into a jungle and survive with nothing but your bare hands and a termite fishing stick, like the chimpanzees do. Oh, you can't? Well, then we aren't the best at everything then, are we? I also have really come to abhor this culture's hatred of nature as evidenced in this book CONSTANTLY by referring to early humans' living conditions as horrible, harsh, brutal, etc. For a modern human, pampered by his toys and inventions, living locked away from being in a relationship with nature, maybe it's true, but I doubt very much that the early peoples felt this way any more than any other wild creature in its natural habitat. It's modern people who are afraid of nature and living wild, who the hell knows what the ancients felt or even what a wild creature now really feels and thinks about its place in the world? Indigenous cultures all over the world, when found by the colonizers of Europe, were content living in their ancient ways. Some cultures didn't know what lying was. Some cultures didn't know what rape was. They didn't fear and hate nature, they had close personal relationships with it, fulfilling relationships. It's us, the moderns, that are the broken ones to be pitied. And the awful ones to be feared.Science always holds itself up as truth but always gives itself away. The author kept saying over and over again how nobody really knows what people thought or lived like in the distant past, not even how many extinct varieties of human there were or how they were descended from and related to one another. And then goes on to speak with certainty about most of the connections and peoples. One hypothesis about Neanderthal communication was so bizarre I thought I was suddenly reading a fantasy novel. Interpretive dance. Do you mean like bees? Seriously? OK then. Because nobody can use language if they don't have identical equipment to Homo Sapiens. /facepalm Nobody knows, and nobody will ever know, what people lived like, spoke like, thought of themselves in ancient times -- most people today can't even do it with their next door neighbor. I walk away from this book feeling more than ever that the sciences are the mythological dogma of the monotheism known as humanism. And I wonder why more people don't question these things. How can people talk about extinct humans with certainty when the scientists themselves argue about what each piece of evidence means with the fervor that the early church fathers argued the substance of Christ at the First Council of Nicea? It's not objective truth if you have to argue other people into agreeing with you when they have an alternative theory. There is no difference between the early church and science except that now there are machines to measure things that supposedly tell us the truth of the ancient past and mysteries of the universe, which are then interpreted according to each scientists individual personal preferences. Nah, it's all completely objective.If you read this as mythology it's good enough I suppose. But it's best not to go around speaking with certainty of people a million years dead. It tends to make the speaker look like a credulous fool.
What do You think about Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story Of How And Why We Survived (2013)?
Fun read. The last third is kind of let down because it seems too common-sensey AND hand-wavy.
—simo
Interesting, but perhaps used a few too many words to get the points across in spots.
—hayleykay123
Less technical but still very interesting. Short answer is we barely made it.
—Mabeline8
Who knew there were 27 kind of us before we became one species??
—Ariana
