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bookgoonie's review
3.0
Very biological. Lol. Parts had me giggling like a middle school boy with talk of testes & penis size, but mostly rolled around in the deep end.
nickfourtimes's review
4.0
1) "The gorilla must have branched off from our family tree slightly before we separated from the common and pygmy chimpanzees. The chimpanzees, not the gorilla, are our closest relatives. Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans."
2) "[The] most hotly debated problem in the evolution of human reproduction is to explain why we ended up with concealed ovulation, and what good all our mistimed copulations do for us. For scientists, it's no answer just to say that sex is fun. Sure, it's fun, but evolution made it that way. If we weren't getting big benefits from our mistimed copulations, mutant humans who had evolved not to enjoy sex would have taken over the world."
3) "We wouldn't mourn the shrinking cultural diversity of the modern world if it only meant the end of self-mutilation and child suicide. But the societies whose cultural practices have now become dominant were selected just for economic and military success. Those qualities aren't necessarily the ones that foster happiness or promote long-term human survival. Our consumerism and our environmental exploitation serve us well at present but bode ill for the future. Features of American society that already rate as disasters in anyone's book include our treatment of old people, adolescent turmoil, abuse of psychotropic chemicals, and gross inequality. For each of these problem areas, there are (or were before first contact) many New Guinea societies that found far better solutions to the same issue."
4) "Our inherited [proto-Indo-European] roots tend to be for human universals that people surely were already naming thousands of years ago: words for the numbers and human relationships; words for body parts and functions; and ubiquitous objects or concepts like 'sky,' 'night,' 'summer,' and 'cold.' Among the human universals thus reconstructed are such homely acts as 'to break wind,' with two distinct roots in PIE depending on whether one does it loudly or softly."
5) "Although we usually think of the Cro-Magnons as the first bearers of our noblest traits, they also bore the two traits that lie at the root of our current problems: our propensities to murder each other en masse and to destroy our environment. Even before Cro-Magnon times, fossil human skulls punctured by sharp objects and cracked to extract the brains bear witness to murder and cannibalism. The suddenness with which Neanderthals disappeared after Cro-Magnon arrived hints that genocide had now become efficient. Our efficiency at destroying our own resource base is suggested by extinctions of almost all large Australian animals following our colonization of Australia fifty thousand years ago, and of some large Eurasian and African mammals as our hunting technology improved. If the seeds of self-destruction have been so closely linked with the rise of advanced civilizations in other solar systems as well, it becomes easy to understand why we have not been visited by any flying saucers."
2) "[The] most hotly debated problem in the evolution of human reproduction is to explain why we ended up with concealed ovulation, and what good all our mistimed copulations do for us. For scientists, it's no answer just to say that sex is fun. Sure, it's fun, but evolution made it that way. If we weren't getting big benefits from our mistimed copulations, mutant humans who had evolved not to enjoy sex would have taken over the world."
3) "We wouldn't mourn the shrinking cultural diversity of the modern world if it only meant the end of self-mutilation and child suicide. But the societies whose cultural practices have now become dominant were selected just for economic and military success. Those qualities aren't necessarily the ones that foster happiness or promote long-term human survival. Our consumerism and our environmental exploitation serve us well at present but bode ill for the future. Features of American society that already rate as disasters in anyone's book include our treatment of old people, adolescent turmoil, abuse of psychotropic chemicals, and gross inequality. For each of these problem areas, there are (or were before first contact) many New Guinea societies that found far better solutions to the same issue."
4) "Our inherited [proto-Indo-European] roots tend to be for human universals that people surely were already naming thousands of years ago: words for the numbers and human relationships; words for body parts and functions; and ubiquitous objects or concepts like 'sky,' 'night,' 'summer,' and 'cold.' Among the human universals thus reconstructed are such homely acts as 'to break wind,' with two distinct roots in PIE depending on whether one does it loudly or softly."
5) "Although we usually think of the Cro-Magnons as the first bearers of our noblest traits, they also bore the two traits that lie at the root of our current problems: our propensities to murder each other en masse and to destroy our environment. Even before Cro-Magnon times, fossil human skulls punctured by sharp objects and cracked to extract the brains bear witness to murder and cannibalism. The suddenness with which Neanderthals disappeared after Cro-Magnon arrived hints that genocide had now become efficient. Our efficiency at destroying our own resource base is suggested by extinctions of almost all large Australian animals following our colonization of Australia fifty thousand years ago, and of some large Eurasian and African mammals as our hunting technology improved. If the seeds of self-destruction have been so closely linked with the rise of advanced civilizations in other solar systems as well, it becomes easy to understand why we have not been visited by any flying saucers."
gdollinger's review
4.0
Written before Germs Guns and Steel. Some same ideas less developed. Very good. Want to read Collapse. Diamond recommended The Human Career.
bellatora's review
3.0
I've read Diamond's Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel and had never heard of this book before, so when I saw it at the bookstore I picked it up because I thought it was his new book. It wasn't. It was his first book, and it shows. This is basically a primer for the rest of his books, since all his other books are expansions of chapters/sections in this one. Why is Sex Fun? is Chapter 3, Guns, Germs and Steel is Part 4 and Collapse is Part 5.
My problem with this book, besides the fact that I'd read some of it before, was that while most of his arguments were interesting, some weren't convincing. He sometimes kinda relied on personal anecdotes--mostly from his New Guinea friends--and broad generalizations instead of facts. The chapter I had the biggest issue with was "Why Do We Smoke, Drink, and Use Drugs?" His answer is: because, like peacocks' tails and other seemingly useless/potentially dangerous displays, it shows others that I can have/do this crap and still survive, so obviously there's enough awesome about me that it outweighs this stupid thing I do, so you don't want to mess with me if you're a predator/you should want to mate with me if you are a female. He states that "Now, let's test my theory...if it's valid, [it:] should apply to other societies as well." So he brings up this one guy he knows in Indonesia who drinks kerosene as a test of strength. Okay...and that proves your theory how exactly? To be fair, he also mentions Native American tribes that used drug enemas, but still. He doesn't address other possible factors, such as the benefits people feel they get out of drugs and alocohol (mood boosts/escapism/whatever) or their addictive nature. That entire chapter seemed like a 10th grade paper: lots of suppositions, little to concretly back it up.
The book did bring up ideas I'd never thought about before, and made me feel less special as a human being, but I'd still say just read Diamond's later, better books and skip this one.
My problem with this book, besides the fact that I'd read some of it before, was that while most of his arguments were interesting, some weren't convincing. He sometimes kinda relied on personal anecdotes--mostly from his New Guinea friends--and broad generalizations instead of facts. The chapter I had the biggest issue with was "Why Do We Smoke, Drink, and Use Drugs?" His answer is: because, like peacocks' tails and other seemingly useless/potentially dangerous displays, it shows others that I can have/do this crap and still survive, so obviously there's enough awesome about me that it outweighs this stupid thing I do, so you don't want to mess with me if you're a predator/you should want to mate with me if you are a female. He states that "Now, let's test my theory...if it's valid, [it:] should apply to other societies as well." So he brings up this one guy he knows in Indonesia who drinks kerosene as a test of strength. Okay...and that proves your theory how exactly? To be fair, he also mentions Native American tribes that used drug enemas, but still. He doesn't address other possible factors, such as the benefits people feel they get out of drugs and alocohol (mood boosts/escapism/whatever) or their addictive nature. That entire chapter seemed like a 10th grade paper: lots of suppositions, little to concretly back it up.
The book did bring up ideas I'd never thought about before, and made me feel less special as a human being, but I'd still say just read Diamond's later, better books and skip this one.
joanne_is_from_canada's review
2.0
I literally had this staring at me on my "currently-reading" shelf from May until November which may be a new record for me. The first chapter or two was so difficult to get through that I seriously debated just giving it up as I don't lack for things to read, but I just find it so difficult to do that. So instead I put it aside on my night stand and occasionally looked at it while picking up anything else to read.
Finally I guilted myself into just getting on with it just this month, and even though I was probably less than a quarter of the way in, I tried to read at least a chapter a day and found it was not nearly as dry and difficult once I got going. I did actually start to semi-enjoy it by the time I got well into the book, but I am definitely glad I'm finished.
This book did have some interesting things to say on how most of our virtues and vices have some sort of counterpart in the animal kingdom and we are not quite as unique as we like to think.
Finally I guilted myself into just getting on with it just this month, and even though I was probably less than a quarter of the way in, I tried to read at least a chapter a day and found it was not nearly as dry and difficult once I got going. I did actually start to semi-enjoy it by the time I got well into the book, but I am definitely glad I'm finished.
This book did have some interesting things to say on how most of our virtues and vices have some sort of counterpart in the animal kingdom and we are not quite as unique as we like to think.
ulzeta's review
5.0
Very interesting read. A history of mankind and a glimmer of hope for the future of it.