@Ragman,
Ragman wrote:
Weren't monkeys also monkey-eaters? Not exactly seeing how that is relevant?
Doesn't the possible theory of a missing link come into play into this discussion? Perhaps whatever that link was has since disappeared. Maybe at some point it'll be found?
My non-scientific research about genetic similarities between the human genome and other animal genomes turned this up:
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"It is very difficult to find reliable data comparing the human genome to animal genome. The principal reason is that few animals have had their full genome sequenced. Even those that have cannot be easily compared in terms of percentages because the genomic length and chromosomal division can vary greatly from one species to another.
Scouring the Web, here is what I have found so far.
- Genome-wide variation from one human being to another can be up to 0.5% (99.5% similarity)
- Chimpanzees are 96% to 98% similar to humans, depending on how it is calculated."
Another extract from further research :
"- Cats have 90% of homologous genes with humans, 82% with dogs, 80% with cows, 79% with chimpanzees, 69% with rats and 67% with mice. (source)
- Cows (Bos taurus) are 80% genetically similar to humans (source)
- 75% of mouse genes have equivalents in humans (source), 90% of the mouse genome could be lined up with a region on the human genome (source) 99% of mouse genes turn out to have analogues in humans (source)
- The fruit fly (Drosophila) shares about 60% of its DNA with humans (source).
- About 60% of chicken genes correspond to a similar human gene. (source)
The number of genes across a few tested species can be compared on HomoloGene.
My point is that while some monkeys, even chimps can be predatory and cannabalistic, anyone like us and not us was doomed... Cro mag man taught us how to fish, and was bigger and stronger... Then he asked for our bud lite, and that was that..
We have traditionally treated all people unlike ourselves as animals, and our myths reflect this... We behold super humans like Jews with near terror, but we hold in absolute contempt all people we consider sub human or low in intelligence...
Life is an intelligence test, and clearly, many people have not made the cut.. This situation is very much reflected in language... We have relatively few word of Gallic in English and those we do have reflect the fact that the Celts of Britain who were allowed to live gave a few words to the Anglo Saxon as houshold slaves... The fact that we have two words for a lanimal alive and as food reflects the fact that the Anglo Saxons raised the living animal that the Normans did eat, so that sheep to one was mutton to the other...
We may look at our white bread and mayonaise cutlure and wonder at the loss of cultural diversity... We should try to remember one thing... When cultures die, it is not just an abstraction of their combined knowledge that is dying, but real human beings... Other people bury them and take over their places who may themselves in time be swept away, but it is not just people then and cultures that are dying, but genetic diversity which we have too little of, and bad ideas/ forms that we have in plenty, which is generally what kills all societies...
The Romans had some great ideas in their time which allowed them to utterly destroy many cultures... What was said of the Bourbons might have applied equally to the them or to us: That they forgot nothing, and learned nothing... People learn in adaptation to problems, and when they arrive at a form of society which protects them from problems it also protects them from adaptation... Look at us... Our society is falling around our ears and just like the Romans or the Greeks we think we are living with perfection and so cannot change anything... It is an intelligence test; and we are failing it...
