ABSTRACT
A beginning for the human line some three million years ago would almost necessitate an ancestor not unlike the modern pygmy chimpanzee, whereas a beginning thirty million years ago would require a derivation from an ancestor that had barely reached the monkey grade of primate evolution. The basis of the molecular approach is, of course, the fact that as organisms evolve, so does their constituent genetic material (DNA) and its functional product (proteins). Given that assumption, verifiable by using non-primate albumins as reference points, the internal phylogeny of the higher primates can be developed using only molecular data. In view of the relative novelty of the molecular approach to evolutionary history, the relative concordance among the various comparisons is comforting. On the specific point of the human-African ape relationship, the albumins of man, chimpanzee, and gorilla stand equidistant from one another with seven units separating any pair of the trio.
