The body language of Chimps

I originally posted this on Oct 4th in response to a post on another board.

This is closely related to APB's recent post about body language.
http://theasianplayboy.blogspot.com/2007/06/tips-nonverbal-game-is-more-important.html


"Time magazine has an article in their latest edition about Humans vs. Chimps that backs up APB's 25% verbal, 75% subcommunication theory.

Genetically speaking, Chimps are our closest match with only 1.23% difference in our genome's out of 3 billion base pairs in the human genome.

Speaking from DNA, we are practically brothers and sisters. Or chimps could at least be your crazy cousin who annoys everyone at Thanksgiving time.

Anyway, according to the Time article they have proven that human ancestors and other bipeds started walking upright millions of years before the evolution of human's big brains.

"A team led by Paabo announced that the human version of a gene called FOXP2, which plays a role in our ability to develop speech and language, evolved within the past 200,000 years - after anatomically modern humans first appeared. By comparing the protein coded by the human FOXP2 gene with the same protein in various great apes and in mice, they discovered that the amino-acid sequence that makes up the human variant differs from that of the chimp in just two locations out of a total of 715 - an extraordinarily small change that may nevertheless explain the emergence of all aspects of human speech, from a baby's first words to a Robin Williams monologue. And indeed, humans with a defective FOXP2 gene have trouble articulating words and understanding grammer."

So, my take away is that we had been walking upright for millions of years and had developed all forms of subcommunication to attract a mate before we even developed the capability for speech. Speech is obviously important to us and a requirement for modern life but on the evolutionary calendar, it is an immature trait and therefore, probably not as important as pre-existing traits of body language and subcommunication.

On top of this, the article goes on to state the following:

"the publication of a rough draft of the chimp genome in the journal Nature immediately told scientists several important things. First, they learned that overall, the sequences of base pairs that make up both species' [chimps and humans] genomes differ by 1.23% - a ringing confirmation of the 1970s estimates - and that the most striking divergence between them occurs, intriguingly, in the Y chromosome, present only in males."

So this leads me to believe that genetic differences in what makes current man a man have happened recently. Women, who don't have the Y chromosome, are much more mature evolutionary speaking and therefore, modern traits such as speech, probaby aren't as important as older, more basic, subcommunication, mating characteristics to women.

Those of you who have a fish symbol on your car or who don't believe that evolutionary traits affect our mating habits can feel free to debunk this but I am not that witty or great with words and still manage to get laid now and then....That is all of the proof I need.