1.6 per cent? Restating the case for human uniqueness
A brilliant new book cuts through all the media-oriented research about 'clever chimps' using tools, doing maths and feeling emotions, and reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing remotely human about primates.
Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human is a refreshing defence of human uniqueness. 'We are a truly exceptional primate with minds that are genuinely discontinuous to other animals', Jeremy Taylor writes.
The first half of Not a Chimp challenges 'the basis of a 40-year-old concept of human genetic chimp proximity'. Taylor does admit that 'over very appreciable lengths of their respective genomes, humans and chimpanzees are very similar indeed'. He writes: 'This is where the oft-quoted "1.6 per cent that makes us human" comes from. Despite 12 million years of evolutionary separation, six million for each species since the split from the common ancestor, we are surprisingly similar in our genes.'
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
