Bonobos at the Cincinnati Zoo

[Catherine]

It is late and I am tired, but I can say this.  Life has gone from being very simple to being very complex. It has been a process that has taken hundreds of millions of years.  Evolution is not a straight line. It is like a tree that branches. If you follow the branches of a tree, some branch off from each other early on. They go on separately to be full grown branches. Tree branches keep separating or branching. Reptiles now are the top of their branch. They separated from our branch a long time ago.  Chimps, Gorillas and Bonobos and even Orangutans  are on the same branch as us. They have almost the same DNA as us.  So we would have common ancestors if you went back far enough.  We are talking millions of years.

I understand that Orangutans branched off first and are the top of their branch now. Gorillas were next to branch off. You can see how close they are. Chimps and Bonobos are even closer. I would have to look up details to know how long ago these things took place.  There are primitive human ancestors that were found recently.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/scienc....html?_r=0
They do not even know how closely related they are  yet.
 
We don't have all the details of evolution worked out. We are still coming up with theories and ideas. We do know that there has been a tremendous process at work. The fact that we are still finding big pieces of the puzzle is exciting.

Using the tools of DNA finger printing it has been determined that our species, Homo sapiens did not drive Homo Neanderthal to extinction. Whatever happened, we all seem to have some Neanderthal DNA in our genetic make up.

All of this makes Bonobos so much more exciting because they are close relatives.  Most of our other close relatives no longer exist.