So we have to respect Darwin’s indelicate announcement in The Descent of Man (1871), that
humans had “descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears,” indeed
attracted considerable attention.
Our brain contains 100 billion cells, linked by 100 trillion synaptic connections.
Yet we are part of the evolutionary process, descended from bacteria who lived
3.5 billion years ago. In our mother’s womb each of us retraces the entire
developmental span from amoeba to human being.
Our species, Homo sapiens, is a primate that developed in Africa, splitting
away from the chimpanzee line about 7 million years ago. We still share with
the chimps 99.4 percent of our active genes.
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