The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

by Richard Dawkins

Theory 4. Chimpanzees really could have passed through a more humanoid, bipedal stage before reverting to quadrupedal apehood. As it happens, this very suggestion has been revived by John Gribbin and Jeremy Cherfas, in their two books, The Monkey Puzzle and The First Chimpanzee. Although it is not a strictly necessary part of their theory, they even suggest that chimpanzees might be descended from gracile australopithecines (like Lucy), and gorillas from robust australopithecines (like ‘Dear Boy’). For such an in-your-face radical suggestion, they make a surprisingly good case. It centres on an interpretation of human evolution which has long been widely accepted, although not without controversy: people are juvenile apes who have become sexually mature. Or, putting it another way, we are like chimpanzees who have never grown up.