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<blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 1400299" data-attributes="member: 463">Well, current genetic evidence indicates that chimpanzees &amp; gorillas, who share 99% of our DNA, 'devolved' from a common bipedal hominid ancestor with homo sapiens (us) only a little over 3 million years ago*, by switching back on the maturity process that in our case doesn't kick in, causing humans' body form to essentially remain forever that of overgrown babies.&nbsp; Ie, chimps' mutual ancestor was much more like a human than like a chimpanzee to outward appearance.&nbsp; So the idea of apes (d)evolving from men is a lot less unlikely now than it seemed 30-40 years ago.&nbsp; Although I expect it would take more than 10,000 years or so to produce Howard's man-apes, it takes far less genetic change than outward appearances might indicate.Paleontological support for this theory is 'negative' in that there are no non-bipedal non-modern ape bones found in Africa, although there are the remains of bipedal hominids back to ca 12 million years ago when we probably arrived from Asia. *given that the rate of change in DNA markers is highly constant, this event can be dated to within a million years, and must have occurred 3-4 million years ago.See eg Gribbin/Cherfas &quot;The First Chimpanzee&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="S'mon, post: 1400299, member: 463"] Well, current genetic evidence indicates that chimpanzees & gorillas, who share 99% of our DNA, 'devolved' from a common bipedal hominid ancestor with homo sapiens (us) only a little over 3 million years ago*, by switching back on the maturity process that in our case doesn't kick in, causing humans' body form to essentially remain forever that of overgrown babies. Ie, chimps' mutual ancestor was much more like a human than like a chimpanzee to outward appearance. So the idea of apes (d)evolving from men is a lot less unlikely now than it seemed 30-40 years ago. Although I expect it would take more than 10,000 years or so to produce Howard's man-apes, it takes far less genetic change than outward appearances might indicate. Paleontological support for this theory is 'negative' in that there are no non-bipedal non-modern ape bones found in Africa, although there are the remains of bipedal hominids back to ca 12 million years ago when we probably arrived from Asia. *given that the rate of change in DNA markers is highly constant, this event can be dated to within a million years, and must have occurred 3-4 million years ago. See eg Gribbin/Cherfas "The First Chimpanzee". [/QUOTE]

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