Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived by Chip Walter
incisive, rational and compelling
The blurb on the cover of this book offers the story of how, as a species, we survived the last seven million years of evolution. This topic has already been addressed in different ways in recent books by experts such as Ian Tattersal and EO Wilson, both five star efforts. Nevertheless, Walter is an incisive generalist with a flair for exposition and rational argument and, as a result, his book is a stand-out. At times it seems like a flow of consciousness, with a few typos etc, but this only serves to sustain it as a clear and unbiased account of the convergence of factors which provided an evolutionary advantage to Homo sapiens.The bibliography and notes are excellent.
Walter makes his main case in seventy pages: the occurrence of neoteny, larger brains forcing earlier births, the mushrooming of childhood learning to adapt to the problems of a specific time and place, and the utilization of these advantages to strengthen the moral foundations of human groups. Insights into contemporary society abound.
The discussion then turns to our geographic expansion and the competition amongst hominids. Conjecture regarding the strengths and weaknesses of Homo neanderthal is the basis of a poignant and informative reflection on that species. Walter builds on the emergent features of H. sapiens to examine the reasons, developmental, chemical or social, that lead to abstract thought, logic, art and our species' eternal fascination with the innovative and youthful. The penultimate topic of Walter's synthesis of being human is 'The Voice Inside Your Head', a compelling thought-piece on our ability to abstract from our behavior, using self perception to reflect and plan. Discussion of the times when this ability gets shaky, leading to mental illness, clarifies the points Walter makes. Walter concludes with a punt on the future, no punches pulled but cognizant of what got us this far.
If human evolution was not the topic of constant commentary, Walter's book would be a contemporary classic. It still might be.