Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Monday, 20 April 2009
What makes us human?
Here's a nice round up of some of the major breakthroughs over the past few years in the hunt to "find the genes that make us human" from Katie Pollard of UC Santa Cruz. Few surprises but a good precis of her own efforts to find HARs - highly accelerated regions of DNA that have lain conserved in mammalian genomes for millennia and then sprung to evolutionary life uniquely in humans. FOXP2, ASPM and AMY1 - all dealt with extensively in NOT A CHIMP - also get a look in.
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