Wann gingen Mensch und Schimpanse evolutionär gesehen getrennte Wege? Die endgültige Trennung der zwei Entwicklungslinien liegt einer neuen Erbgutanalyse zufolge weniger lange zurück und war komplizierter als bisher vermutet.

Sie erfolgte laut David Reich vom Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge und seinen Kollegen vor 5,4 bis 6,3 Millionen Jahren.

Doch die Hominiden (Menschenartige) und Schimpansen, ihre engsten Verwandten, fanden nach dem ersten Bruch immerhin über einen Zeitraum von vier Millionen Jahren immer wieder zusammen, bis sie sich endgültig voneinander lösten.

[Mensch und Schimpanse hatten langen Trennungsweg, ORF ON science, 18. Mai 2006]

Herr M: "Sind wir nicht alle Primaten?"
Ich: "Ja wir sind es doch"

Sagan: Without a drastic change to human nature, I think it's reasonable to doubt that world peace will ever be anything more than a pipe dream. Thousands of years of recorded human history, and look at where we are today. Look at what we are. Genetically, we're not so far from chimpanzees. Are chimps capable of cooperation, compassion, tolerance and compromise? Yes, but they're far more likely to form tyrannical hierarchies and then persecute, rape and kill chimps from other groups. That's deeply ingrained primate behavior. It goes back millions of years. A few thousand years of human culture and philosophy have a hard time standing up to "might makes right." In the animal kingdom, might typically prevails, and our genes know this. They tell us to fight or flee, lead or obey, exploit or be exploited. We can talk about egalitarian utopias all we like, but the aggression lurks within us just the same.

Evolution has a way of recalibrating, so I can imagine a scenario where, without any man-made interference, our genes eventually "catch up" to our loftiest ideals. But how many millions of years will that take? And how long do we have? Technology ups the stakes. A hundred years ago, if you wanted to kill a certain person or tribe, you had no chance of wiping out the entire human race. Now we have enough nuclear arms to annihilate our population many times over. Proliferation is out of control, weapons are unaccounted for, and many nuclear have-nots are actively pursuing the technology to make their own bombs. We are developing newer, deadlier technologies all the time. Mapping the human genome is sure to lead to amazing medical breakthroughs, but consider the flip side: The potential to make horrifying biological agents is greater than ever before. How many weapons have we humans created that we haven't later tested and used?

[John Joseph Adams, Nick Sagan, who sought out new life and new civilizations on Star Trek: The Next Generation, explores a strange new world in Everfree, SCI FI weekly, 08. Mai 2006]

I hate every ape I see
From chimpan A to chimpan Z
No, you'll never make a monkey out of me!
Oh my God! I was wrong!
It was earth, all along!
Yes, you've finally made a monkey
Yes you've finally made a monkey out of me!
I love you, Doctor Zaius!