Courtesy of Rick Effland; Design, Erica P. Johnson
Although the genetic differences are small, as illustrated in the above stretch of FOXP2, and the neural differences still largely unknown, there is a world of difference between the mind of a chimp and the mind of a human.
From our common ancestor with chimpanzees, it took only six million years, give or take, to develop the ability to speak. And, as we now know, the vast majority of our genetic material has been inherited unchanged. Language, and whatever else separates us from chimpanzees, has its origins in alterations to no more than about 1.5% of the nucleotides in the genome,1 a pretty neat trick, when you consider how handy talking can be.
How did evolution pull it off? Some important clues have already come in, such as a recent study showing that there has been an important change in a gene ...
