A new study hypothesizes that human beings are more closely related to orangutans than to chimpanzees. From the story:
University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as “problematic” the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.
Jeffrey H. Schwartz, professor of anthropology in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences and president of the World Academy of Art and Science, and John Grehan, director of science at the Buffalo Museum, conducted a detailed analysis of the physical features of living and fossil apes that suggested humans, orangutans, and early apes belong to a group separate from chimpanzees and gorillas. They then constructed a scenario for how the human-orangutan common ancestor migrated between Southeast Asia—where modern orangutans are from—and other parts of the world and evolved into now-extinct apes and early humans.
I read the whole article, and it all seems very speculative. Besides, what does it matter in the end?
While I am all for learning every scientific fact we can, assuming proper ethics, I don’t think this is very important. For some reason, human beings became the exceptional species in the known history of the universe, becoming creative, moral, and able to partially transcend nature with intentionality. We philosophize, pray, seek meaning, comprehend beauty, think abstractly, and design and manufacture machines. We are the only species with duties and the only ones with rights. Indeed, we are the only species that comprehends these concepts. However we came into being—blind evolution, design, creation, or a combination thereof—and whichever animal might be our closest evolutionary relative, human exceptionalism is the core. Distant relations may be interesting, but are not morally germane.
