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First detailed anatomical study of bonobos exposes just‐so stories of human evolution, anatomy, variations, bipedalism and tool use
Author(s) -
Diogo Rui
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.31.1_supplement.578.1
Subject(s) - bipedalism , extant taxon , human evolution , bonobo , evolutionary biology , biology , anatomy , cognitive science , psychology , ecology
Just‐so stories are prominent in human evolution literature because of our tendency to create simple progressionist narratives about our history and how special and unique we are. One point that is particularly striking about such stories is how confident their authors are about the origin and evolution of our specific soft tissues and their ‘functional adaptations’, despite the fact that they are almost exclusively based on hard tissue data. How can we be so certain about stories on the evolution of human facial communication, bipedalism, tool use, or speech that were put forward without any phylogenetic analysis including muscle data or detailed knowledge of the internal anatomy of one of the two extant species more closely related to us, the bonobos? Here I show how many of these stories now becomes obsolete, after such a comprehensive knowledge is finally put together with the first detailed study of bonobo soft tissues. Each and every muscle that has been long accepted to be unique for humans and to provide ‘crucial singular functional adaptations’ for our bipedalism, tool use and/or vocal/facial communication, is actually present as variants or even as the normal phenotype in bonobos and/or other apes. Support or Funding Information This project has received funding from NSF grants 1516557 and 1440624 to RD.