Getting All Philosophical

Over on his blog, John Hawks discusses what it means to be human — he says all humans share their evolutionary history. People may not share any genes with their 20th cousin, he says, but they still share that same history. Blogger RPM, though, isn't sure that's true, depending on what definition of "gene" Hawks was going for. If Hawks meant copy number polymorphism or allele, Evolgen's RPM says he was wrong, but if he meant a more genealogical definition — full siblings have a 75 percent chance of sharing a gene, first cousins 25 percent chance, and so on — then he's right. "In fact, all humans share an evolutionary history — a tighter history than we share with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. And that's what Hawks says makes us human," says RPM.