Last Ape Standing Quotes

“Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve.”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past, fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep. —Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey In”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“We are the only primates that can tap our foot or move our body in time with a specific rhythm. It’s wired into us, but not into our chimp or gorilla cousins, which tells us that it is a trait that like language, big toes, and toolmaking evolved sometime over the past seven million years.”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“Today we are even manipulating the DNA that makes us possible in the first place—a case of evolution evolving new ways to evolve. (Think about that for a moment.)”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“The question now is, can we survive ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human?”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“we are a kind of elaborate tool in the unconscious service of the DNA swimming around inside us, determined (if strings of molecules can be determined) to make more copies of itself.”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“Still there is a larger point to all of this. Mental illness, a state in which the mind is unable to get a solid handle on what the rest of us generally agree is “real,” could not exist until nature first created a brain that could model the thing we call reality in the first place. That means it takes a human mind to suffer mentally. Cats, dogs, and other primates may endure depression or grow sad, they may develop lifelong fears and strong addictions, but they don’t hear voices, imagine alternate realities, or suffer from an inability to speak or empathize. And they don’t because they never enjoyed those capabilities in the first place and never will.”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“You and I might have smidgens of autism and not realize it, especially if you happen to be a man. Scientists have sometimes described autism as an extreme version of the male brain. And in truth, of all the world’s autistics, only one fifth are female.3 This may be because women have more axons and dendrites, which are the pathways in the brain that enable it to work as a unit. Men’s brains have more neurons. In effect, this makes male brains less networked than women’s, but outfitted with more processing power, largely focused, it seems, on spatial and temporal capabilities. This doesn’t make one sex smarter or more talented than the other, simply different. It also helps explain, at least according to some scientists, why men are sometimes less socially tuned in than females, and why women are superior, generally, at reading social cues.”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“These images would be the envy of art galleries around the world today, or Madison Avenue marketeers—rich, vibrant, and ingenious. You can almost see them move and ripple in the flickering firelight that once illuminated the cave walls as the Cro–Magnon artists stood with their palettes of primordial paints and dyes, dabbing the walls, extracting the beasts from their minds and applying their images to the rock. What powerful magic this must have been to the painter and those who witnessed the work. How could any creature imagine such things and then make them appear right before your very eyes? What hidden powers could enable a living thing to consciously and purposefully create beauty out of nothing more than the popping of the synapses in his head?”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“Creativity isn’t the only way we strive to matter and gain power, but it’s the most functional, sensible way. It doesn’t require greed or jealousy, envy or outright violence, all of which can be highly effective, if immensely damaging, methods for gaining power. But these don’t reveal a fit brain. Creativity does. It is the most impressive way to earn the attention of others. And thankfully, over the long haul, it works;”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt. —William Blake”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

“DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. —Richard Dawkins”
― Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived