The Third Chimpanzee

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The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (ISBN 0-06-098403-1), originally published in English in 1992, is the first book-length work of non-fiction from Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist, physiologist and award-winning author. Diamond addresses two issues: how and why human beings transformed, in a short period, from "just another species of big mammal" into a world-dominating force and the degree to which our immense progress has been coupled with the seeds of self-destruction, particularly through genocide and environmental degradation.

While accessible to non-scientific readers The Third Chimpanzee is also erudite, drawing on history, evolutionary theory and genetics, biology and ecology, linguistics and sociology in order to compile a portrait of humanity's success and also its potential for disaster.

Broadly, the work foregrounds patterns of environmental determinism for which Diamond is a well-known proponent (and has occasionally been criticized) but this attitude is not absolute: in discussing mass extinction events, for example, Diamond decisively favours human agency ahead of competing climatic and environmental theories.

A second edition was published in 2004 as The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: Evolution and Human Life, and a later edition in 2006 entitled The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal.