John Gribble and Jeremy Cherfau. The First Chimpanzee (2001)

     John Gribble and Jeremy Cherfau. The First Chimpanzee (2001) The authors contend that humans evolved before chimps, i.e., that chimps are more recent derivatives of the common ancestor. They outline their case in the first couple of chapters, and that’s really all they need: I’m convinced. At least I’m convinced that it’s a tenable theory. I can’t judge its validity, but the rest of the book seems to me to be mostly padding, so I haven’t read it. The style is workmanlike, which means it doesn’t engage, and almost all the information is old news, some of it so old that it’s no longer useful. For example, the authors persist in using the blueprint metaphor for the genome, although this metaphor does nothing to help their case and in fact raises questions they haven’t addressed. Maybe they address them later, but the outline of their case gives no hint of this. I’m surprised at the date of the book: by 2001 many of the notions presented by Gribble and Cherfau were outdated. * (2004)