We are by far the most contradictory of all primates. An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

The thinking is that we started evolving language not by speaking but by gesturing.

Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary.

Wild groups of chimpanzees attack their enemies like gangs. What they completely lack, precisely because of their strong territorial behavior, is a friendly relationship with their neighbors.

We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.

The chimpanzees could tear me apart in no time. They're many times stronger than we are.

We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, leveled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach.