Even though evolution was covered in school curriculum, my curiosity awakened when I came across Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Selfish Gene gave me a better understanding of genes and evolution with less scientific terms without dumbing down or simplifying too much. It had the balanced approach of handholding us while forcing us to apply our thinking to get the scientific concepts. Selfish Gene led to running through other books by the same author, Blind Watchmaker, The Greatest Show on Earth. Great thing about non-fiction books is one will reference another. So, humanity got added to evolution and the journey continued with Guns Germs and Steel, and Third Chimpanzee books by Jared Diamond – they dealt with how civilizations evolved in different geographies, precedence of human behaviors in our evolutionary ancestors and other species. The Gene and Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee did a deep dive into genetics. Breaking the Spell by Daniel C Dennett explored the role of religious beliefs in our lives. Enlightenment Now and Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker and Humankind: A hopeful history by Rutger Bergman gives hope on our species, how we have evolved progressively better over a period of time. They give a positive picture than Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrai. To reiterate books mentioned above are not an easy read – writers have done an excellent job in presenting science in an easy-to-understand vocabulary, but it still needs the reader to do their part of climbing the mountain of logical thinking. Then there are few books which I consider as light reading – Red Queen, and Genome – OK kind of books compared to above.
Now coming to The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. Desmond Morris is the first author who took evolution to the masses with The Naked Ape in 1967. He paved the path for future authors like Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinkers. This is the book I should have hit upon first. But came to know about this only when the 50th year edition came out in 2017 and ended up reading now!! Unlike fiction, it is hard to put our thoughts in words on non-fiction books like these or literature books. They kindle our thoughts in different directions and change our perspective on how we see ourselves, others, and nature. We start observing things more closely. If we really get the idea, it is kind of WOW moment. To me that is the spiritual AHA moment. You get one step closer in understanding the nature. The Naked Ape is an excellent starter book to get a peek into our nature – insights into our beginnings, sex life, rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding, and our astonishing bonds to the animal kingdom. We may want to put ourselves on a pedestal from our primate ancestors, but the author pulls us back to the ground level. He does that with lots of humor. The section on sexual behavior gets in to minute details that will startle the weak hearted!! Desmond Morris covers so much ground in 250 pages – origin of naked ape, crying, smiling, laughing, pair-bonding, mimicking, hunting vs working, territory marking, chit-chat vs grooming, dominance and submission, and more. The author makes a strong case against the belief that our intelligence can dominate over our basic biological urges. We may be flexible and behavioral opportunists but are limited by our raw animal nature. The books cover these restrictions. By recognizing them – which means tailor our intelligent opportunist advances to our basic behavioral requirements – we stand a better chance of survival. If we succeed in doing this, we can continue to progress without denying our evolutionary inheritance. Else our suppressed biological urges will build up and up until the dam bursts and our existence is swept away in the flood. That is the closing statement of this exceptional book 👏