Last Ape Standing could become a Hollywood star

Have you ever wondered why human beings, or homo sapiens, as we are known scientifically, survived the Earth when there were at least 27 others like us in competition? We came across a most interesting book Last Ape Standing which attempted to tell the story why we of all the hominoids who walked on two feet survived the odds to become the last ape standing on the planet.

Writer Chip Walter draws on scientific discoveries to explain how our survival is linked to ancestors born prematurely, living long and rich childhoods and evolving a new kind of mind that made us resourceful and emotionally complex. It appears also that our highly social nature increased our odds of survival; and how we grew more self aware in ways that no other animal seems to be. Last Ape Standing includes information on our competitors who evolved with us such as the Neanderthals of Europe, the Hobbits of Indonesia, the Denisovans of Siberia, and the recently discovered Red Deer cave men of China who became extinct a mere 11,000 years ago.

We got to thinking that had Walter not become a science writer, he could have become a highly successful producer-director like Peter Jackson who has zeroed in on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit (1937) and has released An Unexpected Journey in 2012 is opening The Desolation of Smaug in December this year, and There and Back Again in 2014. As one covering the movie and television scene, we are actually more interested in the possibility of our Last Ape Standing getting noticed by Hollywood producers and makers of fantasy pictures. Our Last Ape Standing could well be developed into the treacherous Gollum voiced by the remarkable Andy Serkis from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings! Or he could even play the part of the Ape who dies for love of a mortal in KingKong!

Last Ape Standing is evocative science writing at its best, a witty, engaging and accessible story exploring the evolutionary events that have molded us into the remarkably unique creatures we are. It conducts an investigation of why we do, feel and think the things we do as a species; and why, as a people, we are good and bad, ingenious and cunning, heroic and conflicted.

How will we in the current cyber age develop further as humans? At the rate we are going, we have already surrendered over to the machine many of our former functions. Perhaps, we will simply morph into Cyber Sapiens, a new human, more socially adept, infinitely more intelligent than you or I.

Already a whole group of homo sapiens are already contemplating what the next version of us might be like, writes Chip. “They call themselves transhumanists, anticipating a time when future anthropologists will have looked back on us as a species that had a nice run, but didn’t make it all the way to the future present. Transhumanists foresee a time when beings will emerge who will literally be part biology and part machine.”

Continuing with our dream for Last Ape to make it to Hollywood, we follow a script where he feels he has to make a choice in order to survive. His human side rebels against his machine side. They can’t be co-equal. One has to be the boss!

Chip believes that the lines between humans and machines, reality and virtuality, biology and technology, have already become blurred. We find it frightening, but then again, we comfort ourselves  with the thought that that would be many thousand moons away.

“In the not-distant future, we may trade in the blood that biological evolution has so cunningly crafted over hundreds of millions of years for artificial hemoglobin. We may exchange our current brand of neurons for nano manufactured digital varieties; find ways to remake our bodies so that we are forever fresh and beautiful; do away with disease so that death itself finally takes a holiday. The terms male and female may even become passé. To put it simply, a lack of biological constraint may become the defining trait of the next human.

“The question now is, can we survive... ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human? I’m counting on the child in us to bail us out, the part that loves to meander and play, go down blind alleys, fancy the impossible and wonder why. It is the impractical, flexible part we can’t afford to lose in the transition because it makes us free in ways that no other animal can be — fallible and supple and inventive. It’s the part that has gotten us this far. Maybe it will work for the next human, too.” As in our dream role, this is also the part that will make him a star.

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