Insights from the Complete Monkey Genome on Early Human Ancestry

This excerpt comes from our human stories newsletter covering the archaeological revolution. Subscribe to receive it in your inbox monthly.

One of the significant unanswered questions in human evolution is about its origin, which remains largely unexplained.

The discussion focuses on the last common ancestor shared with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos. This enigmatic ape existed millions of years ago, and at a certain point, the population split into two groups. One lineage eventually gave rise to modern chimpanzees…