Put Another Way, The Chimpanzees' Closest Relative

History As Well As Life Itself Is Complicated -- Neither Life Nor History Is An Enterprise For Those Who Seek Simplicity And Consistency.

One Way To Explain The Complexity And Unpredictability Of Historical Systems, Despite Their Ultimate Determinacy, Is To Note That Long Chains Of Causation May Separate Final Effects From Ultimate Causes Lying Outside The Domain Of That Field Of Science.

What Did The Last Easter Islander Say As He Chopped Down The Last Tree? The Easter Islanders Didnt Have Anthropologists.

Bird Taxonomy Is A Difficult Field Because Of The Severe Anatomical Constraints Imposed By Flight. There Are Only So Many Ways To Design A Bird Capable, Say, Of Catching Insects In Mid-air, With The Result That Birds Of Similar Habitats Tend To Have Very Similar Anatomies, Whatever Their Ancestry. For Example, American Vultures Look And Behave Much Like Old World Vultures, But Biologists Have Come To Realize That The Former Are Related To Storks, The Latter To Hawks, And That Their Resemblances Result From Their Common Lifestyle.

I Decided That Now Is The Time To Start Doing The Things That Really Interest Me And I Find Important. It Was In The 10 Years Of The Macarthur Grant That I Began Working On My First Book... And I Began Putting More Work Into Environmental History.