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The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution

Timothy Taylor (Goodreads Author)

3.90 · Rating details · 122 ratings · 9 reviews

A breakthrough theory that tools and technology are the real drivers of human evolution

Although humans are one of the great apes, along with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, we are remarkably different from them. Unlike our cousins who subsist on raw food, spend their days and nights outdoors, and wear a thick coat of hair, humans are entirely dependent on artificial ...more

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Hardcover, 256 pages

Published July 20th 2010 by St. Martin's Press

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Jan 17, 2019 Tom Quinn rated it really liked it

I love Evolutionary Psychology and Sociobiology and all their speculative marvels, so the title of this book caught my eye. And let me tell ya, I couldn't be happier with it. The Artificial Ape addresses some of those big burning philosophical, biological, and anthropological questions: Why are humans human? What exactly separates us from our nearest genetic relatives, and when exactly did it arise?

This book insists that there was an actual moment when we became human. It was a moment long befor

This book insists that there was an actual moment when we became human. It was a moment long before we became intelligent in any modern sense. It was a moment seized by a female as, for the very first time, she turned to technology to protect her child. In that moment, everything that we were going to become was made not just possible but inevitable. (2)

This book is a worthy companion to Hodge's classic The Naked Ape and even goes further to talk about the various artificial environmental factors that shaped humankind's development, those fabricated by humankind itself. And it does so with a lively and energetic narrative that carries the thread of scientific inquiry, as Taylor makes himself a character in this story, not just reporting data but colorfully recounting how and where it was obtained.

There's kind of a preemptively defensive tone to be found. I suspect Taylor has had his line of argument attacked before, by the type of strict literalist or what-have-you who might admonish that there's no room for emotion in pure science and there's no real, firm, 100% certainty to be found in analyzing or reconstructing the past. But then anyone who outright declares that they intend to prove Darwin wrong (or at least incomplete in his theorizing, with regard to human evolution) must expect some backlash. Crudely summarized, his core argument is that human evolution is different from straight natural selection because we have aided and affected our own development by interacting with the environment through the use of technology. In his own words: "There is increasing evidence that we are no longer governed by natural selection. Technology can and does supersede biology and lead us into a new form of life, one not primarily governed by Darwinian process." (8) And further on, after a number of examples of human biological weakness: "The central paradox of our existence is that we are the product of the artifice that we ourselves brought into the world." (69)

One early and easy to grasp example given is eyesight. Before the invention of glasses, humans with poor eyesight might have hunted with less accuracy, brought home less food and less-impressive trophy kills, and therefore attracted fewer mates. Left to purely natural selection, those with poorer eyesight would logically have mated with less regularity, had smaller broods of children, and lived shorter lives, eventually being eliminated from the human gene pool. But with the invention of glasses, those with poor eyesight are no longer at a disadvantage compared to their 20/20-seeing peers and are free to breed at the same rate. Today, says Taylor, 25% of the Western world requires corrective lenses by age 12—and many, many more require them past the age of 60, a lifespan which itself was unheard of millennia ago before the introduction of medical innovations that now make living in spite of serious physical detriments commonplace. (This is the kind of stoner line of thinking I used to indulge in after graduating college, firmly convincing myself on a gut level that somehow "tool use" was the defining "thing" that would allow our species to make the next evolutionary leap. Except here it's expressed much more clearly and more professionally than my half-baked 3 am conversations among layperson friends.)

4 stars out of 5. Fascinating stuff that I absolutely gobbled up. It isn't perfect but it is really perspective-broadening, thoughtfully articulated, and passionately argued. If anything, the enthusiasm our author displays is a bit of a detriment because he tends to move very quickly through his points rather than spending time developing them with progressively deeper analysis. Also, he jumps from topic to topic without fully connecting why his evidence supports his thesis. In the end, there is still a LOT of speculation going on, which would probably bother strict practicing biologists. But after reading this book, I don't think I'll ever drive a car, unlock my front door, pop a pill, or undertake any other everyday technology-assisted task without pause for thought. ...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Jonathan rated it liked it

A bit inflated, a lot of anecdotes from the author. Fluff? maybe.

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Apr 05, 2016 Kerem Cankocak rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

İnsanlar, şempanzeler, goriller ve orangutanlar gibi büyük kuyruksuz maymun türlerinden biri olmalarına rağmen, kuzenlerinden dikkat çekici şekilde farklıdır. Çiğ besinlerle beslenen, gündüzlerini ve gecelerini dışarılarda geçiren ve ince bir kıl tabakasıyla kaplı diğer kuyruksuz maymunların aksine insanlar, giyim, barınma ve alet kullanımı gibi yapay nesnelere bağımlıdır. Doğada, bunlar olmadan yaşamlarını sürdüremezler. En zayıf kuyruksuz maymun olmamıza rağmen, yine de gezegenin sahipleriyiz
İnsanlar, şempanzeler, goriller ve orangutanlar gibi büyük kuyruksuz maymun türlerinden biri olmalarına rağmen, kuzenlerinden dikkat çekici şekilde farklıdır. Çiğ besinlerle beslenen, gündüzlerini ve gecelerini dışarılarda geçiren ve ince bir kıl tabakasıyla kaplı diğer kuyruksuz maymunların aksine insanlar, giyim, barınma ve alet kullanımı gibi yapay nesnelere bağımlıdır. Doğada, bunlar olmadan yaşamlarını sürdüremezler. En zayıf kuyruksuz maymun olmamıza rağmen, yine de gezegenin sahipleriyiz. Doğuştan gelen yetersizliklere rağmen, biz insanlar nasıl en üste çıktık? Arkeolog Timothy Taylor bu soruların cevaplarını arıyor Yapay Maymun’da. Önce zekanın evrimleştiği, bunun ardından teknolojiyi geliştirdiğimiz şeklindeki geleneksel Darwinci görüşe karşı çıkan Taylor, sürecin tam ters olduğunu iddia ediyor. Teknolojinin evrimi, genetik evrimi biçimlendirmiştir görüşünü öne sürüyor.

Kökenlerimizle ilgili bu etkileyici yeni açıklamada Taylor, nesnelerle ilişkimiz açısından insan evrimine yönelik yeni bir düşünme yolu öneriyor; en son fosil delilleri ışığında, türümüzün gelişiminin her adımında insanların kendi evrimimizin kontrolünü daha fazla üstlenmemize neden olacak seçimler yaptığını söylüyor. Taylor’a göre, bilimsel teknolojinin sınırlarını zorlayarak, protezler, zeki implantlar ve yapay olarak değiştirilmiş genler yaratarak, tarih öncesi geçmişimizde, nesneler üzerindeki gücümüzü artırmayla başlayan bir sürece devam ediyoruz.

İnsan iskeletleri ve insan yapımı ürünlerin ana buluşları ile ilgili canlı tartışmaları Darwin’in evrim teorisinin yeniden incelenmesi ile bir araya getiren Taylor, bizi, varlığımızla ilgili esas soruya cevap vermeye başladığımız ilgi çekici ve merak uyandıran bir yolculuğa çıkarıyor: İnsanları eşsiz yapan nedir ve bunun geleceğimiz için anlamı nedir? İnsanlık, 2 milyon yıldır, mızraklardan ateşe, evlere, su borularına ve kıyafetlere teknolojik açıdan bağımlı. Tüm diğer yaratıklardan farklı olarak, evrimsel uyumumuz biyolojik olmayan bir şekilde ölçülüyor: Biz özünde yapay bir türüz ve başlangıçtan beri böyleyiz. Yaklaşık 7 milyon yıl önce kuzenlerimiz şempanzelerden ayrıldık. Bu ayrımda teknolojinin kullanımı kilit rol oynadı. Oysa geleneksel yaklaşım insanın biyolojik evriminin önce genetik sonra teknolojik olduğunu öne sürer. Taylor bu yaklaşıma fosil kanıtlarıyla karşı çıkıyor. Beynin büyüyebilmesi için çenelerimizin zayıflaması gerekli. Aksi takdirde kafatasımızı hapseden kaslar, bizden defalarca daha fazla ısırma kuvvetine sahip şempanzelerde olduğu gibi, beynin büyümesini engeller. Bu anlamda, Yapay Maymun’un tezi insana dönüşmemizin mutlak bir ‘an’ı olduğudur. Bu an, insanın, modern anlamda zekâ sahibi bir varlık haline gelmesinden uzun bir zaman öncesine, bir dişinin dünya üzerinde ilk kez, anne olarak çocuğunu koruma içgüdüsüyle teknolojiyi kullandığı andır.
Doğal/yapay ayrımının belirsiz olduğunu vurgulayan Taylor, evrende üç farklı sistem olduğunu söyler: Birincisi fiziksel sistem ve biyolojik olmayan kimyasal sistemdir. İkinci sistem ise, fizik yasalarına uygun davranan ama birikimli seçilim gibi evrim yasaları ile kendi yasalarını oluşturan biyolojiden meydana gelir. Biri canlı diğer cansız olan ama yine de doğa yasalarına dayanan bu iki sistemin üzerine gelen üçüncü sistem ise yapay sistemdir. Taylor’a göre bu yapay sistem evrimimizi şekillendirmiştir. Taylar kitabında kuramını destekleyici kanıtları ortaya koyarken aynı zamanda Darwin’den bu yana evrim kuramlarının da konuyla ilgili tezlerini tartışır ve karşı argümanlarını sıralar. Yapay Maymun bir yanıyla, insana dair görüşlerin kısa bir özetini de ortaya koymaktadır. ...more

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May 31, 2011 Elaine rated it liked it

Shelves: ebooks

Taylor brings up issues few scholars of evolution consider, especially the problems that had to be overcome when hominin babies were born with big heads, making childbirth itself dangerous to mothers, as well as the twin problem of the utter helplessness of infants. This meant that mothers had to hold them constantly, hampering females greatly in their food gathering or when their bands were traveling.
Taylor considers that female concerns like baby care to have been a driving force in evolution Taylor brings up issues few scholars of evolution consider, especially the problems that had to be overcome when hominin babies were born with big heads, making childbirth itself dangerous to mothers, as well as the twin problem of the utter helplessness of infants. This meant that mothers had to hold them constantly, hampering females greatly in their food gathering or when their bands were traveling.
Taylor considers that female concerns like baby care to have been a driving force in evolution.

However, his main thesis, hardly original, is that each advance in toolmaking led to bigger brains. Thus, he claims to refute Darwin. But this doesn't disprove Darwin, but reinforces him. Darwin said that gene mutations that enabled an organism to survive better in an environment would, by preferential mating, pass the mutation to more descendants. Well, for hominins, tools were part of the environment. A hominin with a mutation for better hand-eye coordination or the ability to envision a tool when looking at a piece of rock would be attractive to potential mates, thus passing the beneficial mutation on.

Oddly, Taylor doesn't consider language at all, even though it was a major factor in larger brains and increased intelligence. Before I had even heard of Taylor, I wrote three posts on the evolution of language. In them, I showed how each advance in language led to another until homo sapiens ruled. http://www.smarthotoldlady.blogspot.com

Although I found Taylor both arrogant and repetitious, he raises the facts that big brains meant that hominin and human babies are difficult to birth. For babies to be born with fully formed brains would be impossible, so they are so undeveloped at birth they can't even hold their heads up. Hominins, being hunter-gatherers were on the move. But what to do with babies? Mothers needed their hands free to help gather food--and to keep their balance on uneven terrain, so they probably fashioned slings from animal skins.

The most primitive peoples ever found by Westerners, people so primitive they had no clothes, have baby slings. It seems to me, also, that since females were also the food gatherers, they might have devised slings to carry berries and nuts in as well. Since such slings had to have been devised thousands of years, even a million+ years before the first stone tools, (which were cutters and scrapers, not spears or hunting weapons). Taylor credits female hominins with being the first tool makers. He shows

Scholarship is so androcentric paleoanthropologists have ignored the most basic fact about perpetuating the species. Babies have to be tended. ...more

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Jul 29, 2017 Toby Newton rated it really liked it

I like Taylor's thesis - which I had previously come to independently, without any supporting evidence, which is never a very strong position. So, it was nice to come across Tim's back-up argument and the reassurance it offered.

In a nutshell, we humans were shaped by technology, biologically, in our distant evolutionary past e.g. cooking exported the stomach to a pot over a fire and, by predigesting our food, allowed us to trade off shorter guts for bigger brains. Thus, while there is very littl ...more

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Oct 09, 2013 Liam rated it really liked it

This is one of those great examples of an expert in their field distilling their life's work down into bite-sized chunks for the rest of us. It would definitely help if you're a closet anthropologist, but whatever. For some reason I was convinced this book would be about technology of the last 500 years, which seems really stupid in retrospect, especially considering the millions of years of evolution we have behind us.

ANYHOW, it's well worth a read anyways, even if it's not about computers and ...more

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Jan 13, 2021 Bastard Travel rated it really liked it

A fascinating book about how using tools makes us human, and how that's not necessarily a compliment.

The main thrust of Taylor's argument is that we started using tools that shouldered much of the burden that we would otherwise need actual shoulders for, so the shoulders we had went a little vestigial from generations of disuse. I know that analogy sounds kind of clunky, but it's literally what happened in the case of our 10% loss in bone density over the last few thousand years.

The perspective A fascinating book about how using tools makes us human, and how that's not necessarily a compliment.

The main thrust of Taylor's argument is that we started using tools that shouldered much of the burden that we would otherwise need actual shoulders for, so the shoulders we had went a little vestigial from generations of disuse. I know that analogy sounds kind of clunky, but it's literally what happened in the case of our 10% loss in bone density over the last few thousand years.

The perspective makes sense. Orangutans are strong enough to rip the lower jaw clean off of a crocodile, and have been observed doing it, so don't fuck around. But that kind of power requires a lot of upkeep, at the expense of other systems. We had a common ancestor 12 million years ago. The human genetic code contains the blueprints to be that kind of jacked manimal, but instead we started throwing pointy sticks around. We didn't need to be that strong. The strength, or lack thereof, wasn't making that big of a dent in the gene pool anymore.

Bipedalism was our first big advantage, and we've been coasting on that ever since. Hands free mode let us tinker, and the clubs, spears, and baby slings (for carrying, not for throwing) let us outcompete pretty much everything else in the world at the time. Fire was our next big W, and we became so reliant on it that we lost a large portion of our intestine, which is why gorillas can get donkey brolic on nothing but nectarines and foliage while a vegan diet is a death sentence for any human outside of the 1st world. Our stomachs aren't long enough, or multiple enough, to break down the plants into nourishment. Cooked meat was a shortcut to an unprecedented amount of easily absorbed nutrition. Why waste the biomass maintaining a massive gorilla colon for processing 40 lbs of roots and leaves a day when we're getting everything we need in a pound of mammoth flank and a few handfuls of high-glucose berries?

What I found most interesting was the sort of fork-in-the-road that our skulls and jaws took. When you look at animals with a preposterous bite force like a gorilla (1300 PSI) or a pitbull (2000 PSI), you see the long, threatening canine incisors first. For good reason. Evolution has programmed us to steer clear of seeing those incisors pointed our way, as it often precedes getting got. In order for the canine incisors to be functional, they have to be deeply rooted into bone. A pitbull's teeth wouldn't be much use if they snapped off every time he clamped his big square head onto something.

But for those teeth to support that bite force, the muscles wrapping around the skull have to connect to occipital bone. That's the big knot of bone toward the back of a dog's skull. All the great apes have them, too, except for us. Those powerful biting muscles sort of squeeze the braincase, which requires the bone to be thicker and sturdier overall, but that's okay. Fair trade. Most animals have much greater need for dangerous teeth than for the wasted space of extra cranial capacity.

Enter man, a scavangening omnivore who can comfortably walk a hundred miles a day, supplements his arsenal with his lethal little arts-and-crafts, and eats his prey cooked. Absolutely no need for those canine incisors anymore. No need for the muscles supporting them, either - no matter how much gristle is in the steak, it won't compare to the 8+ hours a day spent chewing if all your food was raw. And thinner, more pliant cranial bones make for an easier escape from the birth canal.

Nature did what nature does, and as those muscles loosened as they became less necessary for survival. In conjunction with our easy nutritional intake and the burgeoning protoculture that comes from being social animals.... our brains exploded to four times their previous size, maybe? No one actually knows why that happened, but Taylor's guess seems as good as any.

Great book. I knocked off one star because I found it dry in some parts, but that's to be expected, the man's an archeologist and most of them aren't Indiana Jones. Well worth the read if you care about anything I said in this review. ...more

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Mar 18, 2017 M.H. Davidson rated it really liked it

Great book ... fun read

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Sep 24, 2010 Ross rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book addresses the author's theory that it was tools that caused our species to evolve, not that our ancestors first evolved a larger brain and then started to adopt the use of tools.
When I first started the book I had high hopes it would be very interesting to hear his arguments and evidence.
Unfortunately the author does not make his case.
He simply states that the earliest evidence of stone tools which had been fashioned to create a sharp cutting edge dates to 2.5 million years ago and our ...more

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