>From NewScientist, May, 2006, p. 5 "A Messy Divorce, Our distant
ancestors' behaviour can teach us a thing or two".
"People who have trought accepting that we are descended from apes,
and even some who are fine with the concept, will not be happy with
this news about human origins. Not only were our ancestors related
to chimpanzees, they carried on mating with them long after our
family tree branches from theirs".
"It's not all as bad as it sounds. First, this startling idea is
still only a hypothesis -- albeit the one that best explains the
unexpectedly limited differences between our own genome and those of
our nearest ape cousins, the chimpanzee and gorilla. To know for
certain will take much more genomic detective work".
"Even if true, though, is is no sordid tale of scandal and
perversion. After all, at the time any hybridization would have
happened, oru ancestors had barely begun to walk upright and probably
looked very much like the protochimps they interbred with. Instead,
this new glimpse of our history serves as a lesson in how fuzzy the
boundaries of a species can be, and in how evolution bumbles along
without any grand plan."
The article goes on to say that the apparent separation between
species is often messier than simply being unable to interbreed; and
also that entire family trees are messy.
Regarding the divergence of amps and humans, the article says, "At
times it would have been hard to decide if there was one species or
two: evolution just selected what worked."
--- End forwarded message ---
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