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?
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
New Perspectives On Anthropoid Origins
For those of you with access to PNAS this looks like an interesting paper. The authors point out that, while a combination of exploration of the fossil record of hominins, allied to genomic studies of humans and the great apes, is shedding light on the adaptive shifts that typified human origins, much of the groundwork in sensory ecology and brain organization that paved the way for the human lineage was laid down much earlier in the anthropoid lineage.
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