"I await flaming by some of my fellow Freepers."
No big flame here, pal, just a flickering candle-light from science. ;-)
According to fossil evidence and DNA studies:
- In the Primate's very long lived line, proto-primates first arose during the age of dinosaurs somewhere around 85 million years ago. The looked a little like this:
- Lemurs formed a seperate branch around 75 million years ago.
- Monkeys split around 40 million years ago.
- Great apes (homonids) split off from monkeys around 15 million years ago.
- Gorillas split off about 8 million years ago.
- Chimps split around 4 million years ago.
- Early genus homos (i.e., erectus, Neanderthals) split around 2 million years ago.
- The first modern humans -- homo sapiens -- split from all other pre-humans around 100,000 years ago, during the earth's most recent previous episode of interglacial "global warming."
So, science tells us that human ancestors go back a very long ways indeed, and include any number of, shall we say, attractive critters. ;-)