programme would result. Fortunately, my Wichmann-like cynicism proved wrong. Thanks to the leadership of a core of Indonesians convinced of the value of conservation, Irian Jaya now has the beginnings of a nature reserve system comprising twenty per cent of the province's area. Nor do those reserves exist just on paper. As my work proceeded, I was pleasantly surprised to come across sawmills abandoned because they conflicted with nature reserves, park guards out on patrol, and management plans being drawn up. All these measures were adopted not out of idealism, but out of a cold-blooded, correct Perception of Indonesia's national self-interest. If Indonesia can do it, so can other countries with similar obstacles to environmentalism, as well as much richer countries with broad-based environmental movements.
We do not need novel, still-to-be invented technologies to solve our problems. We just need more governments to do many more of the same obvious things that some governments are already doing in some cases. Nor is it true that the average citizen is powerless. There are many causes of extinction that citizen groups have helped throttle in recent years—for instance, commercial whaling, hunting big cats for fur coats, and importing chimpanzees caught in the wild, to mention just a few examples. In fact, this is one area where it is particularly easy for a modest donation by the average citizen to have a big impact, because all conservation organizations now have such modest budgets. For instance, the annual combined budget for all primate conservation projects that the i World Wild Fund for Nature supports throughout the world is only a few hundred thousand dollars. An extra thousand dollars means an extra project on some endangered monkey, ape, or lemur that might otherwise have been ignored. On pages 352-41 suggest some specific starting points i for interested readers.
Hence while I do see us facing serious problems with an uncertain] prognosis, I am cautiously optimistic. Even the cynical last sentence of Wichmann's book proved false: New Guinea explorers since Wichmannl really have learned from the past and avoided the disastrous stupidities of their predecessors. A motto more appropriate for our future than! Wichmann's motto comes from the memoirs of the statesman Otto vonj Bismarck. As he reflected on the world around him towards the end of his! long life, he too had reason to be cynical. Possessing a keen intellect and! working at the centre of European politics for decades, Bismarck hadf witnessed a history of unnecessarily repeated errors as gross as thosel pervading the early history of New Guinea exploration. Yet Bismarck} still considered it worthwhile to write his memoirs, to draw lessons fromj history, and to dedicate his memoirs 'to [my] children and grandchildren, towards an understanding of the past, and for guidance for the future'.
This is also the spirit in which I dedicate this book to my young sons! and their generation. If we will learn from our past that I have traced, our f own future may yet prove brighter than that of the other two chimpanzees.
These suggestions are for readers interested in reading further. In addition to key books and papers, I have also tended to favour recent references that provide comprehensive listings of the earlier literature. Journal titles are followed by the volume number, followed by the first and last page number, and then the year of publication in parentheses.
Chapter 1: A Tale of Three Chimps
The literature on deducing relationships among humans and other primates by means of the DNA clock consists of technical articles in scientific journals. Sibley and Ahlquist present their studies in three papers: C.G. Sibley and J.E. Ahlquist, The phylogeny of the hominoid primates, as indicated by DNA-DNA hybridization', Journal of Molecular Evolution 20, pp. 2-15 (1984); 'DNA hybridization evidence of hominoid phylogeny: results from an expanded data set', Journal of Molecular Evolution 26, pp. 99-121 (1987); and C.G. Sibley, J.A. Comstock, and J.E. Ahlquist, 'DNA hybridization evidence of hominoid phylogeny: a reanalysis of the data', Journal of Molecular Evolution 30, pp. 202-36 (1990). Sibley's and Ahlquist's many studies of bird relationships by means of the same DNA methods are summarized in two articles: C.G. Sibley and J.E. Ahlquist, 'The phylogeny and classification of birds based on the data of DNA-DNA hybridization', in the book Current Ornithology, edited by R.F. Johnston, vol. 1, pp. 245-92 (Plenum, New York, 1983);andC.G. Sibley, J.E. Ahlquist, andB.L. Monroe, 'A classification of the living birds of the world based on DNA-DNA hybridization studies', Auk 105, pp. 409-23 (1988).
Similar conclusions about human and primate relationships were obtained by DNA comparisons using a different method (termed the tetraethylammonium chloride method, rather than the hydroxyapatite method used by Sibley and Ahlquist). The results were described by A. ^accone and J.R. Powell in 'DNA divergence among hominoids', bv0lution 43, pp. 925-42 (1989). A paper by the same authors explains now percentage similarity among DNAs can be calculated from DNA m«ed melting points: A. Caccone, R. DeSalle, and J.R. Powell,
'Calibration of the changing thermal stability of DNA duplexes and degree of base pair mismatch', Journal of Molecular Evolution 27, pp. 212-16 (1988). The above papers compare the entire genetic material (DNA) of two species by means of mixed melting points in order to obtain a single measure of overall similarity. Alternatively, a much more laborious method yielding much more detailed information about a tiny fraction of each species' DNA consists of determining the actual sequence of molecular units comprising that portion of DNA. Four studies stemming from a single laboratory and applying that method to human and primate relationships are M.M. Miyamoto et al, 'Phylogenetic relations of humans and African apes from DNA sequence in the W-globin region', Science 238, pp. 369-73 (1987); M.M. Miyamoto et al, 'Molecular systematics of higher primates: genealogical relations and classification', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 85, pp. 7627-31 (1988); M. Goodman et al, 'Molecular phylogeny of the family of apes and humans', Genome 31, pp. 316-35 (1989); andM. Goodman etal, 'Primate evolution at the DNA level and a classification of hominoids', Journal of Molecular Evolution 30, pp. 260-66 (1990). The same principle is applied to relationships among Lake Victoria's cichlid fishes by A. Meyer et al, 'Monophyletic origin of Lake Victoria cichlid fishes suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequences', Nature 347, pp. 550-53 (1990). Two papers that vigorously criticize the DNA clock in general, and Sibley's and Ahlquist's application of it to human/primate relationships in particular, are J. Marks, C.W. Schmidt, and V.M. Sarich, 'DNA hybridization as a guide to phylogeny: relationships of the Hominoidea', Journal of Human Evolution 17, pp. 769-86 (1988); and V.M. Sarich, C.W. Schmidt, and J. Marks, 'DNA hybridization as a guide to phylogeny: a | critical analysis', Cladistics 5, pp. 3-32 (1989). In my view, the criticisms by Marks, Schmidt, and Sarich have been adequately answered. The i good agreement between conclusions about human/primate relation-] ships based on the DNA clock as measured by Sibley and Ahlquist, the | DNA clock as measured by Caccone and Powell, and DNA sequencing | further supports the correctness of these conclusions.
Other papers on the DNA clock are in two issues of the Journal oft Molecular Evolution, nos. 3 and 5 in vol. 30 (1990), that also include some j of the papers cited above. Chapter 2: The Great Leap Forward
Among the many books providing detailed accounts of humanj evolution, the recent one that I found the most useful is by Richard Klein,
The Human Career (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989). A beautifully illustrated and less technical account is by Roger Lewin, In the Age of Mankind (Smithsonian Books, Washington DC, 1988).
Two books presenting multi-authored technical accounts of recent human evolution are edited by Fred H. Smith and Frank Spencer, The Origins of Modern Humans (Liss, New York, 1984) and by Paul Mellars and Chris Stringer, The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1989). Some recent articles on
