http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/apes.

html

A subject of frequent discussion among creationists and evolutionists is
the remarkable genetic similarity between humans and apes, somewhere
in the neighborhood of 98 to 99 percent. This curious situation leads to
some questions. Why is it so di"cult for evolutionists to determine the
human-ape connection from fossils, if we have a common ancestry, and
why would God create something so similar to man, if we don't?
In the rst place, many mammals have a high degree of genetic similarity
(Spetner, Not by Chance, page 69). For example, the cytochrome C of a
dog is about 90 percent similar to that of a human, and the hemoglobin of
a horse is about 88 percent similar to that of a human. In view of this, a 98
percent genetic similarity between apes and humans is not surprising. It is
interesting that some sources put the di#erence between humans and
apes much higher, as high as 10 percent. At least for one gene, human
and chimpanzee alleles seem to di#er by 13 base pairs out of 270, for a
di#erence of about 5 percent. (See Science, 6 Jan. 1995, pp. 35-36.)

There are also some notable di#erences, apparently. Mammals in general
can drink and breathe at the same time, according to a posting on
talk.origins. But humans cannot. This is the price we pay for being able to
speak. It would seem that this must involve quite a bit of genetic
di#erence from the apes.

The following quotation from ReMine, The Biotic Message, page 449,
calls into question the signicance of DNA similarity:

There are two species of ies (Drosophila) that look alike but have only 25
percent of their DNA sequences in common. Yet the DNA of humans and
chimpanzees share 97.5 percent. This means the DNA of two virtually
identical ies is 30 times more di#erent than that betweens humans and
chimpanzees.

It should also be noted that chimpanzees have 24 pairs of chromosomes
and humans have 23 pairs, so there is a denite discontinuity.
Many of the similarities between humans and apes derive simply from the
structural similarity of their skeletons. Given any animal that is partially
upright, with grasping hands on its forelimbs, there may just be one
optimal way to design the rest of the organs. For example, such an animal
will need extra intelligence to control its hands. It will also tend to be
exible and adaptible, and not so tied to the seasons as other animals
are; thus it is more reasonable to have a reproductive cycle that permits
o#spring at any time of year, rather than only at certain seasons. Thus
much of the genetic similarity may simply be a result of structural
similarity.

This does complicate the fossil picture, however. The similarities of the
skeletons, combined with the various races of man and the various
species of apes, can make the evolutionary task of determining ancestry
very confusing. Add to this the fact that one does not always have a
complete skeleton, but only a few bones, or fragments of bones.
Furthermore, what makes humans unique is not the structure of our
skeleton but intangibles such as language, culture, and thought, which
are very di"cult to infer from the fossil record. Even if these di#erences
arise from one or two percent of the genome, this is a very signicant one
or two percent.

And in fact, there appears to be a notable division between the skeletons
of apes and humans. Glenn C. Conroy of Washington University in St.
Louis reported in the journal Science in June, 1998 that "Mr. Ples," the
name given for the fossil of an Australopithecus africanus, a hominid that
lived in what is now South Africa, had the brain capacity of about 515
cubic centimeters. Another A. africanus skull had a brain capacity of 370
cc. Modern humans have a brain size of about 1,350 cc., while 370 cc is
the size of a chimpanzee brain.

There is also a striking division in speech ability between humans and
apes in the fossil record. The following information is taken from a news
item:

A report published in April, 1998 in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences states that scientists at Duke University have
explored a new avenue of fossil anatomy and found surprising evidence
suggesting that the Neanderthals, relatives of modern humans, could
have had the same gift for speech as modern man. The research was
conducted by Dr. Richard F. Kay and Dr. Matt Cartmill at the Duke Medical
Center in Durham, N.C., with the assistance of a former student, Michelle
Balow. The Duke scientists directed their research at the hypoglossal
canal in all primates. It is a hole at the bottom of the skull in the back,
where the spinal cord connects to the brain.