The First Chimpanzee: In Search of Human Origins (Penguin Science)

by John Gribbin, Jeremy Cherfas, John Gribbin; Jeremy Cherfas

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140294813
• ISBN13: 9780140294811
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.1" x 0.6" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

a different twist

This is an interesting book. The authors took a different approach to human origins. Instead of relying soley on fossils, they prefer to use molecular evidence to support their hypothesis. They claim that humans, chimps, and gorillas shared a common ancestor less than 4 million years ago (mya), which is quite different from the 20 mya which is the number used by "traditionalists." They also believe that the ancestor might have been more "manlike" than "chimplike," or a man-ape rather than ape-man. Also suggested is that neoteny occured in our evolutionary development. This is not all that was discussed in the book. Other interesting topics include chimps and language/communication experiements, ape ancestory, and brachiation. Certainly a good read for those interested in palaeoanthropology.

Six Mutations Separate Man and Chimp

People are more closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas than the horse is to the zebra, the porpoise is to the dolphin, the sheep is to the goat, or the chimp and gorilla are to each other. Just six inversions and a broken chromosome separate humans from either of them. Tradition dictates that descriptions of human origins start out with fossil evidence. Until the 80's, paleontologists argued that man had been evolving separately from the apes for at least 20 million years. In 1967, molecular evidence was presented that stated the separation was more like five million years ago. This evidence was based on the molecular clock. Mutation is a random process as is decay of Carbon 14 or argon. While you can never say which nucleotide will mutate, or which C14 atom will decay to C12, you can accurately predict how many of the millions of letters in our genetic code will change in a given amount of time. Whether it's carbon atoms, argon atoms, or nucleotides, their constant rates of change give us a clock, superbly explained in Chapter 4. The authors think this clock is vastly superior to fossil evidence for timing. The scientific documentation is convincing, further evidence is there anytime you need it, and its conclusions fits the fossil evidence. The molecular clock does NOT agree with the paleontologists' interpretation of the evidence. In the last 35 years (with generous goading by the molecular clock) the fossil jocks have steadily shortened their time frame from 20 million years ago to around six million years ago. Meanwhile, the molecular geneticists have decreased theirs even more to 3.6 million. I don't know who's right, but this book is fascinating, is particularly clear for a book on hard science, and has plenty of important information about the relative reliabilities of paleontology vs. molecular genetics. The authors are redundantly critical of mainstream science and paleontologists for not giving molecular genetics its appropriate credence all these years. To add a little flair, they have a unique interpretation of the Australopithecus/man/gorilla/chimpanzee family tree. "First Chimpanzee" is exemplary for the science-impaired reader because it spends considerable remedial time on basics - DNA, for example - yet the more advanced reader will not be disappointed in its depth. I encourage you to read the other two excellent reviews of this fine book and agree that Chapter 8 - "People of the Ice" - is an exceptional essay. You would have to search far to find a better explanation of how the earth's cycles and the changes in the earth's crust have created ice ages.

The Second Monkey Puzzle

In their earlier book The Monkey Puzzle (1982) John Gribbin and Jeremy Cherfas suggested that gorillas and chimpanzees are descended from human-like ancestors, an idea by no means as crazy as it might seem at first sight. The essential observation is that there are two well attested fossil species, Australopithecus robustus and Australopithecus gracilis, with no identifiable descendants, and two modern species, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, with no identifiable ancestors. The two fossil species appear to have been well on the way towards evolving human-like characteristics, and the two modern species are superficially no more human-like than, say, the orang utan. Traditional zoologists regarded humanity as the pinnacle of evolutionary achievement, and from that perspective it seemed difficult to imagine why two species well on the way towards humanity should have reversed direction and become more like their ancestors. However, all surviving species are well adapted and none is more "evolved" than any other, and if drastic climatic changes, such as those that marked the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch 3 million years ago, cause an advantage direction of change to become disadvantageous there is no reason to exclude the reappearance of ancestral characteristics. In The First Chimpanzee (with a name that echoes that of Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee), Gribbin and Cherfas return to the same theme, and two decades of further research have produced a great increase in the amount of evidence they can adduce, particularly in relation to the genomes of humans, gorillas and chimpanzees. Nothing of this new evidence contradicts their hypothesis, which, on the contrary, emerges strengthened. In 1982 there was still considerable resistance from palaeontologists to the idea that biochemical data could complement the study of fossils for elucidating phylogeny, but most of the resistance has now crumbled, as inevitably it had to, given the huge amount of biochemical data to set against the extreme sparseness of primate fossils. The authors quote Christine Janis as saying that "there are more people working on fossil primates than there are fossil primates". Gribbin was trained as an astrophysicist, and he contrasts strikingly with another astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle, who was more distinguished as an astrophysicist but vastly less distinguished as a popularizer of biology. Gribbin shows how valuable the skills and insights of physicists can be when they deign to make a serious study of biology before pontificating about it. His knowledge comes over very clearly in the chapter on the ice ages, where the explanation of the Milankovich Model of Ice Ages is as clear as any to be found in a popular science book.

98.4% Human

This is a book about genetic dating and the role it has played in helping to shed light on human evolution. Most folks who are familiar with geology are also aware of a class of dating techniques ubiquitously lumped together under the label of radiometric dating. Carbon 14 is, perhaps, the most commonly known of these, but there are many other types as well. The authors explain relatively early in their book the basic idea behind radiometric dating, which is the quantum-mechanically observed fact that, in a group of unstable isotopes there is a particular percentage that, on average, will decay to their daughter products in any given period of time. Specifically, in the half-life of the isotope, half the atoms will decay. Radiometric dating provides a means of accurately determining the age since formation of many different types of materials. Carbon 14 is one isotope that is useful for dating samples that were once living, but are now dead. Other, longer-lived, isotopes can be used for dating various types of volcanic rocks. What Gribbin and Cherfas have done in "The first chimpanzee" is show how a similar technique can be applied to sequences in our genes. Early in the book the authors introduce the reader to DNA and the genetic code. They also have one of the best introductory explanations for what it actually means - in terms of laboratory testing and results - to say that this or that species share X amount of their genetic code. Wrapping up this discussion is the rather humbling, remarkable (and, upon reflection, expected) result that humans and chimpanzees have almost all their genetic material in common. As they carefully explain, genetic sequencing has reached the point where very specific statements can be made regarding the differences in the genetic makeup of different species. For example, according to Gribbin and Cherfas: "We now know from multiple lines of evidence that genetic similarity between us and chimpanzees is 98.4 per cent, and that's pretty exact. It's not 98.3, and it's not 98.5 but is 98.4 per cent." This means that chimps and humans are more closely related to each other than to any other species. We are their closest evolutionary relative, and they are ours. We are more closely related to chimps than rats are to mice. Indeed, we are as closely related to chimps as horses are to donkeys. Chimps are more related to us, than they are to gorillas. Upon laying this introductory groundwork, Gribbin and Cherfas proceed by showing that two species that descended from a common ancestor start out with identical DNA, which then (in the process of speciation) drifts divergently but at the same rate. This means that, once the rate of the molecular clock is determined, the genetic differences between species can be used to reliably date the point at which they diverged from their most recent common evolutionary ancestor. As they word it in their book: "The number of accumulated differences tells th