There are three things extremely hard:

steel, a diamond,

and to know one's self.

Benjamin FranklinPoor Richard’s Almanac

1. Our primate selves

Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (original title)

1988

Huxley, 1863• "It is quite certain that the ape which

most nearly approaches man is either the Chimpanzee, or the Gorilla..." (p86).

Modern cladistics supports Huxley

• synapomorphies = elongated skulls, shortened but stout canine teeth, changes in upper jaw, fusion of certain bones in wrist, enlarged ovaries and mammary glands, changes in muscular anatomy

Sarich and Wilson, 1967•Injected rabbits with human serum albumin, let rabbits make anti-human antibodies•Removed blood serum from rabbits (with anti-human antibodies)•Mixed rabbit’s anti-human antibodies with purified serum albumin from humans and variety of other primates•ID increases among phylogenetically more distant relatives and at a constant rate through time; it is a sort of molecular clock

•Strongest immunological reaction to human, then chimp, then gorilla, then others.

•Concluded: Humans and chimps were nearest relatives and diverged 5 mya.

Sarich and Wilson, 1967

• A host of molecular papers in the 1990’s said humans and chimps are the nearest relatives

• “Gorillas not in the midst”

March 2011

• Perelman et al., 2011:

• 34,927 bp• 54 nuclear genes • 191 taxa, including 186

primates representing 61 genera

• 90% of all primate genera

Perelman et al., 2011

6.6 mya8.3 mya

From Perelman et al., 2011

Gracile Australopithecines

Robust Australopithecines

Early humans

Recent Humans

Some fossil species were contemporaries:These two species are both from

Koobi Fora, Kenya, 1.7 mya

Cladogram adding Ar. ramidus to images of gorilla, chimpanzee, and human, taken from the frontispiece of Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, by Thomas Huxley

C O Lovejoy et al. Science 2009;326:73-106

Published by AAAS

2. Out of Africa

Out of

AfricaDrift associated with migration should cause a reduction of genetic diversity as compared to an ancestral population…

3. WhataboutNeandertals?

2010http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPWm58ACMtoStop at 5:20

Homo neanderthalensis was distributed across Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia when Homo sapiens arrived 80,000 ya(The two species split ca. 270-440,000 ya)