Thumbs, Toes, and Tears
by Chip Walter
Summary
Countless behaviors separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, but all can be traced one way or another to six traits unique to the human race - our big toe, our opposable thumb, our oddly shaped pharynx, and our ability to laugh, kiss, and cry.
As the story of each trait unfolds, Walter explains why our brains grew so large and complex, why we find one another sexually attractive, how toolmaking laid the mental groundwork for language, why we care about what others think, and how we became the creature that laughs and cries and falls in love.
Excerpt
We are—all of us—freaks of nature. We don’t generally see ourselves this way, of course. After all, being human, what could be more ordinary than a human being? But it turns out that our personal (and biased) impressions that we are unremarkable simply don’t stand up against the plain, objective facts. The way we walk, for example, teetering on long, paired stilts of articulated bone, is unique among mammals, and as preposterous in its way as elephant trunks and platypus feet. We also communicate by tossing oddly intricate noises at one another, which somehow carry complex packages of feeling, thought, and information. We share and understand these sounds as if they were scents drifting on the wind, and our minds special noses that sniff the fragrance of their meaning. Using them we are able to change one another’s minds, even bring one another to tears. We also invent, to the point of being dangerous, incessantly bending the things, living and otherwise, around us to our own ends. Because of this habit, we have, for better or worse, created national economies, erected the pyramids of Giza and Chichen Itza, fashioned exquisite art, sculpture, and music, invented the steam engine, moon rockets, the digital computer, stealth bombers, and “weaponized” diseases. Nothing on the planet seems to escape our urge to remake it. These days we are even tailoring genes to remake ourselves.
This book is about how we became the strange creatures we are, and why we do these peculiarly human things….How did we be come human beings? All living things are unique. The forces that drive evolution make them so, honing each down to the razor edge of itself, providing it with a handful of qualities that distinguish it as the only animal of its kind. The elephant has its trunk, Bombardier beetles manufacture and precisely shoot boiling hot toxic chemicals from their tails. Peregrine falcons have wings that propel them unerringly through the air at seventy miles an hour to their catch. These traits define these creatures and determine the way they act. But what unique traits shape and define us?
I have whittled it down to six, each unique to our kind: our big toes, our thumbs, our uniquely shaped pharynx and throat, laughter, tears, and kissing. How, you may ask, can something as common as a big toe, as silly as laughter, or as obvious as a thumb possibly have anything to do with our ability to invent writing, express joy, fall in love, or bring forth the genius of ancestral China? What could they have to say about rockets and radio, symphonies, computer chips, tragedy, or the spellbinding art of the Sistine Chapel? Just this:
The origin of all these human accomplishments can be traced to these traits, each of which marks a fork in the evolutionary road where we went one way and the rest of the animal kingdom went the other….
Copyright © 2006 by Chip Walter. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury USA.
Reviews
“Fascinating and superbly written”—Publishers Weekly
“A fluid introduction to the development of the human species”—Booklist
“Walter vividly tells the fascinating stories that led to our becoming the technology-creating species” --Ray Kurzweil, inventor and author
Author's Biography
Chip Walter is a science journalist, documentary filmmaker, and former CNN bureau chief. Author of Space Age, Walter teaches science writing at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also senior manager of strategic communications and public information at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC),