Casey N’s Reviews > Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors > Status Update

"Again, we undervalue our non-human ancestors when we blame them for our violent proclivities. Very likely, they had inhibitions in place that we routinely circumvent. Killing an enemy with teeth and bare hands is emotionally far more demanding than pulling a trigger or pressing a button."

"Remember those macaques who would rather go hungry than profit from harming their fellows; might we have a more optimistic view of the human future if we were sure our ethics were ip to their standards?"

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

"Imagine a moonlit darkness in which their adversaries lay senseless, strewn across the landscape in stupors of sleep."

"The primates are so rich in potential that even a small change in anatomy or physiology may provide an aperture to a universe never dreamt of in the rude sleeping pallets made each night in the low branches of the once-vast tropical forests."

"The young are so ready to learn who to love and who to hate...But humans are not rats...The strategy of long childhoods and early learning introduces a new element: culture," (199).

"Death serves as a poignant reminder of our own limitations and frailties—and of the bond with our ancestors who, in a way, died that we might live," (152).

"It will be enough if a few salient and generic characteristics of life on yet another obscure planet are noted for the cavernous recesses of the galactic archives," (139).

"In human history there are a precious few whose memory we revere because they knowingly sacrificed themselves for others. For each of them, there are multitudes who did nothing," (118).

"Biology is much more like language and history than it is like physics and chemistry," (92).