| At all times, there were certain group of skeptics (especially among people who are not remotely related to anthropology), denying the simian theory of Darwin, as the saying goes, "from the beginning". Most of them are trying to substitute it with romantic discussions about aliens from other planets and others, similar to them, beautiful, but unfortunately, unconvincing hypotheses, which do not have support in modern biology.
However, why did these people dislike Darwin's simian theory? Apparently, the reason for this is basically the same, that was prevalent during the days of Darwin, - some kind of psychological factor, which I would call "Lyell's syndrome", the famous geologist of the 19th century. On the whole, this scholar refers to Darwin's works with respect, he wrote however, that with respect to simian theory, he prefers to stick to an uncertain position because of the "insurmountable aversion" to accept the conclusion on the connection of man and apes. And those people, who are "Lyell's syndrome" sick, are aplenty now, and who would not accept Darwin's concept.
However, such an approach rests only on emotions - truly modern scientific reasoning is close to zero in the mentioned "syndrome". After all, in order to approve radical new theory, it is necessary to first refute the arguments of the old theory. And further, it would be shown that it is practically impossible to make such a denial in the 20th century.
The special affinity of humans with chimpanzees was demonstrated in these genetics. It is important to show that chromosome banding is for these two forms of primates - 95 - 99% homologous compatible, that is comparable. The same similarity was found on such an important indicator of how the protein composition of the body, in particular, more importantly, of the brain. Comparative study of 44 proteins of humans and chimpanzees, conducted by King and Wilson, found that the differences between humans and apes is negligible - only a small percent, and it corresponds to the level of subspecies.
Detailed studies, carried out in the 20th century, by many specialists from different countries, showed that the closest creature on Earth (of living primates) to a human being is a chimpanzee. At the end of the 20th century, the famous American geneticist Goodman created a new classification to the order of primates. On the basis of mathematical processing of genetic data, the author came to a sensational result: according to the most stringent counts, it appeared that chimpanzees should be included in the genus Homo, i.e man, at the subgenus level. According to Goodman, the genus Homo consists of two subgenera - Homo (pan) and Homo (homo), in other words, "Human being (chimpanzee)" and "Human being (man)".
Naturally, this innovation is still perceived with difficulty and probably will not be accepted very soon by the entire scientific community. As the appearance of humans and chimpanzees persistently testifies about significant differences between these two primates. However, it is simply impossible to ignore the results of modern genetic analysis, carried out at a very high level. Regarding some differences between genetic and morphological data, this phenomenon is now explained by the fact that, part of the genetic information, associated with outer morphological features, is located in the so-called regulatory genes, distinguished by an increased rate of evolution and thus creating the effect of a relatively huge difference between the biological forms.
The evolutionary path of humans and chimpanzees diverged 5-7 million years ago, at a time, when these two genera (or subgenera) of primates had a common ancestor - ancient highly developed anthropoids. The fact that the long-standing discrepancy about the evolutionary branches of humans and anthropoids gives no answer to the traditional question - can the modern apes transform into humans? No, they cannot, though, of course, there are significant reserves of convergence and dents in understanding between us and our "cousins", which were often referred to as apes.
It must be noted that not only monkeys but also people are progressing in the sphere of understanding. Protests of some scholars against the practice of detaining chimpanzees and gorillas in cages and questions about the legal status of "higher" primates testify to this. |
Today the scientific world celebrates Evolution Day, which takes place every year on November 24th. This date is the anniversary of the first publication of "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. In his book Darwin laid the main principle of evolution - called "natural selection" - which is used in science nowadays. What makes this year's anniversary special is exactly 150 years since "The Origin of Species" was published.
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