John Gribbin,Jeremy Cherfas
Recent scientific research has established that Charles Darwin was wrong: humanity is not descended from the apes! The common ancestors of modern humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees - the Australopithecines - displayed distinctly human characteristics, including the ability to walk upright and a tendency to live on treeless plains. In other words, apes are descended from humans or protohumans. Through confirmed only recently by DNA analysis, this possibility was first suggested more than two decades ago by the authors of ,The First Chimpanzee,.,Now acclaimed science writers John Gribbin and Jeremy Cherfas re-examine the implications of this mementous finding and the added fact that human genetic material differs from that of chimpanzees by little more than 1 percent. In this fascinating investigation of our evolutionary past, you'll find the answers to such essential questions as:,Could the hairy apes be descended from a man-like ancestor?,Can tiny differences in DNA bring about huge differences in appearance?,What accounts for the vast difference in intelligence between humans and chimpanzees?,Can we trust DNA analysis to pinpoint the timing of a split between two species?,Why would a species that could upright return to the trees?,From the scientific research, Gribbin and Cherfas have constructed a compelling detective story --the story of where we came from.
Science,Science,Biology,Biology,Evolution,Nonfiction,Anthropology
The First Chimpanzee: In Search Of Human Origins