In 2001, the director of the chimpanzee genome project, Svante Paabo, anticipated that when the sequencing of the ape’s genome was completed, it would be possible to identify “the profoundly interesting genetic prerequisites that make us different from other animals.” When the complete chimpanzee sequence was published four years later, his interpretation was more muted: “We cannot see in this why we are so different from chimpanzees.”15
