It is hard to say. Since diverging from Pan, our line seems to have split many times.
Humans do have some weird, but perhaps we came by it naturally.
The five million year pattern is mostly lost, but the last half million shows in our genes.
We were the same as neanderthal, 600,000 years ago, to a common ancestor. Neanderthal was 250,000 years apart from denisovan, but somehow, humans bred with both in the last 100,000 years.
This genetic divergence over time produces survivor lines, which do not change. They are losing genes.
When two related survivor lines mix, the best and worse join, and the results can seem a new species.
The results seem messy, some die out quickly, some have conditions that reduce them over time.
After the last human-denisovan-neanderthal mating, Cro Magnon appears.
Cro Magnon was taller than a modern man, had a brain 300 ccs larger, and survived for thousands of years.
They died out, but the smaller brained humans survived. It was a possible low reproduction rate caused by a baby with a head to large to pass through the birth canal. 1% greater or lesser birth rate, over a thousand years, humans returned to the 1200 cc brain we had before and after.
Homo florensis, the hobbits, were an island group only a meter tall. Fully human, had survived millions of years, until 17,000 years ago. Perhaps they were eaten, perhaps they bred with the larger humans, and died out in childbirth. None of their genetics survive.
As much as 40% of the neanderthal genome is carried by humans, up to 4%, but the results of many lines crossing.There were perhaps hundreds. Denisovan genes survive in humans, and several unnamed other lines.
That still leaves unanswered questions. The mostly hairless ape, with an attached skin, the other apes have a loose skin like dogs. The only ape with an ass. We have hams like a pig, also skin, hair, and organs, much closer to a pig than an ape.
Aliens might have done it, but not with their DNA, all of ours traces back to early pond scum, of local production.
Also, the pig would have come in millions of years ago, as neanderthal, denisovans, seem to have the same non ape traits.
Natural selection would seem to prevent an ape-pig mating, A mismatched number of cromosones, but adding a few extra to a pig egg, seems possible lab work. It would have been millions of years ago, and the results did not show any intellectual development until recently. Random interspecies sex is also possible. You cannot tell what will work till you try it.
Aliens designing something that would take millions of years to develop, possible, if they live outside of time.
I think time is gravity related, and between the stars there is a gravity null point.
From our own short time of thinking about it, even a hundred year plan seems impossible. In a thousand years the language would change, and for half the time we have been literate, there were three dark ages when no one wrote or read.
Multi million year projects seem iffy.
I could see space faring reptiles seeding planets with their favorite live snacks, but all our DNA is local.
Best I can tell, we are very, very random, and the result of sexual choices made by bonobos.
Their one choice, all of the above.
16 Mar 2014, 8:09 pm
