How Are Humans Different From Other Great Apes?

It is a privilege and honor for an organization that is less than ten years old (namely, CARTA) to partner with one that originated before the U.S. Constitution was written (the American Academy of Arts and Sciences). A common theme supported by both organizations is the discovery and dissemination of factual knowledge. Time does not allow me to provide a description of the origins and goals of CARTA, so I will simply read our mission statement:

“To use all rational and ethical approaches to seek all verifiable facts from all relevant disciplines to explore and explain the origins of the human phenomenon, while minimizing complex organizational structures and hierarchies, and avoiding unnecessary procedural complexities. In the process, train a new generation of scholars in anthropogeny [understanding the origin of humans], and also raise awareness and understanding of the study of human origins within the academic community and the public at large.”

The overall question at hand today is: How Are Humans Different from Other Great Apes? At first glance, the last three words – “Other Great Apes” – may appear a bit strange. Let me explain. Humans are, of course, primates, who shared a common ancestor with Old World monkeys, then with Gibbons and other lesser apes, then with orangutans, followed by the gorilla and eventually with the common ancestor of the chimpanzee and bonobo, the so-called pygmy chimpanzee. Based on anatomical, physical, and behavioral features, we humans classified our closest evolutionary relatives as “the Great Apes.” In reality we are more similar at the genomic level to chimpanzees and bonobos than these two species are to gorillas. Moreover, at the genomic level, we are more similar to chimpanzees than mice and rats are to each other.

Thus, from a genomic perspective, humans are nothing more than one kind of “Great Ape”; the correct term encompassing all these groups is “Hominid.” Asking how we are different from the other Hominids is one way to understand our own evolutionary origins, an approach that we call “Comparative Anthropogeny.”

Carrying out this comparison requires attention to a very large body of knowledge. One of the currently incomplete efforts of CARTA is to try to collate this knowledge on our website under the rubric of The Matrix of Comparative Anthropogeny (MOCA), which is a collection of comparative information regarding humans and our closest evolutionary cousins, with an emphasis on uniquely human features.

MOCA is still very incomplete, but it is organized by Domains (each with defined Topics) arranged by areas of interest and scientific discipline. Some examples of MOCA Domains are: Anatomy and Biomechanics, Behavior, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, Cognition, Communication, Culture, Dental Biology and Disease, Development, and Ecology. In the time available today, we cannot possibly cover even a small portion of these Domains of knowledge. Instead, our panelists will explore some specific examples of distinctly human features, ranging from genetic to cognitive to anatomical to behavioral to biomedical, while also considering implications for explaining human origins.