Man was a hunter? Or was he a gatherer, a digger, a ruminator, a grazer?

Something happened. Did it?

We’ve all started with the monkeys because monkeys have hands and walk on their back legs with their forelegs used as tools. It was obvious. Our closest relatives.

Survival of the fittest? Survival or the weakest?

Or survival of the laziest?.........

As we snuffle our way up or down the evolutionary tree we move further and further from the supposed ancestors, those monkeys. We examine our diseases, the bacteria co-habiting our bodies, the embryos growing in our females, our blood, our internal structures and organs. And what do we see? Do we see?

Surely no-one would dare to question, even passingly, laughingly, that we came down from the trees and grew from those hairy little monkeys into our essentially hairless selves. And still we search for the missing link.

How strange our paths have separated so far. How strange the ape world suffers from few of the diseases evolving and attacking humans. How strange we have completely different bacteria on, in and essential to our very existence. How strange a growing monkey embryo is so very different from a growing human embryo. How strange the blood of the apes and monkeys is so very different from human blood.

And, in a moment of madness, we look elsewhere for organs to use in our medicine. We find nothing in the monkey world. We look further, and we find the animal family suidae has just what we need. Perfect, near-human organs we may be able to use for transplant.

Don’t look closer. Don’t make comparisons in virology, bacteriology, embryology, haematology. Silly. Unthinkable. Impossible. Stick with anthropology. You know it makes sense.

After all, why should the fact another species has developed in parallel in so many areas suggest anything more than coincidence. Naturally.