The Monkey in Our Family Tree

“Human Evolution” is an enigma everyone has an opinion on but few truly understand. Its political connotations, conflicts with cultural norms, and the potential it offers for curious humankind perhaps distort our grasp of it. In Soyağacımızdaki Maymun (The Monkey in Our Family Tree), by going beyond all these inevitable manipulations, the question of how we know that "humanity" has evolved is revealed through the most frequently asked questions: If we are close relatives, why don't our monkey relatives contract the same diseases as us? Why do they remain stagnant while we have advanced so much? Why can't we mate, why don't we have children?
In Soyağacımızdaki Maymun, Eugene E. Harris also sincerely shares the transformation his own understanding of evolution underwent: while he was a physical anthropologist examining organisms by comparing anatomical details, he became captivated by the infinite possibilities contained in the four-letter alphabet of DNA, and his personal journey ending in paleogenomics heralds the Genome Revolution to the reader.

Whether we accept it or not, the new science of human evolution will change us all.

Eugene E. Harris is a professor of Molecular Anthropology in the Department of Biological Sciences and Geology at the City University of New York.