Why No Human Population Is “Closer to Apes”: Evolution, Genetics, and the Collapse of Racial Hierarchy

The claim that some human populations are biologically “closer to apes” than others is recycled by every generation in the west in various forms, often framed around visible anatomical traits such as lip thickness, facial structure, or skin tone. Although this idea has deep historical roots, it does not survive scrutiny under modern evolutionary biology or modern/ updated and better informed genomics.

The premise rests on a typological model of human difference — one that assumed humanity could be divided into ranked biological categories based on superficial morphology. 

That framework has been replaced. Contemporary science provides a far clearer picture: all living humans belong to a single species, share recent common ancestry, and are equally related to other primates.

Humans Are One Species

All living humans belong to Homo sapiens. There are no recognized biological subspecies among modern humans. While populations vary in allele frequencies and physical traits, those differences do not constitute separate evolutionary branches within our species.

Population genetic research over the past half-century has consistently shown that most human genetic variation exists within populations rather than between them. In his landmark 1972 analysis, Richard Lewontin demonstrated that approximately 85% of human genetic variation occurs within local populations, with only a small fraction distinguishing major continental groups. Subsequent genomic research using far more markers has confirmed the core conclusion: human variation is real, but it is not partitioned into discrete, hierarchically arranged biological races.

This pattern alone undermines the notion that one population could be evolutionarily “closer” to non-human primates than another.

Evolution Is Branching, Not Hierarchical

The misunderstanding often come from an outdated metaphor: evolution imagined as a ladder, with some groups “higher” or “more advanced” than others. Modern evolutionary theory rejects that. Evolution is better represented as a branching tree.

Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor that lived roughly 6–7 million years ago. The chimpanzee lineage is represented today by Pan troglodytes, while the human lineage led to Homo sapiens. All living humans descend from populations that emerged in Africa roughly 200,000–300,000 years ago, with major dispersals out of Africa occurring within the last 60,000–70,000 years.

Crucially, no extant human population diverged earlier from the human lineage than any other. Every living human group shares the same species-level origin. In phylogenetic terms, all contemporary populations are sister groups relative to one another. Therefore, all are equally distant from chimpanzees.

There is no biological mechanism by which one living human population could be “closer” to apes while still being fully human. The divergence from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees occurred long before the diversification of modern human populations.

Morphology Is Not Phylogeny

Physical traits such as lip thickness, nasal width, or cranial shape are phenotypic characteristics influenced by small subsets of genes, developmental processes, environmental pressures, and sexual selection. These features account for only a minute portion of the genome.

Non-human primates generally have thinner, less everted lips than humans. Humans, as a species, exhibit a uniquely prominent vermilion (the visible red portion of the lips) compared to other primates. Variation in lip fullness exists across and within human populations, but such differences are minor when placed in the context of the entire genome.

Superficial resemblance in a single anatomical feature does not imply deeper evolutionary proximity. Phylogenetic relatedness is determined by genome-wide ancestry, not by isolated morphological traits.

In fact, all humans share approximately 98–99% of their DNA with chimpanzees. That similarity is uniform across human populations. There is no population-level genomic evidence showing differential proximity to non-human primates.

The Historical Roots of the Misconception

The idea of ranking human groups according to similarity to apes emerged during the 18th and 19th centuries, when racial typologists attempted to classify humanity into hierarchical categories. These efforts relied heavily on cranial measurements, facial angles, and other visible traits. They assumed that variation reflected evolutionary stages rather than adaptation and shared ancestry.

These typologies were constructed before the discovery of DNA, before modern evolutionary synthesis, and before the development of population genetics. They treated race as a fixed biological taxonomy rather than as a complex mixture of social categorization and shallow geographic ancestry.

Modern anthropology and genetics have decisively overturned this model. 

Human variation is clinal — it changes gradually across geography — and is shaped by migration, gene flow, and local adaptation. There are no sharp biological boundaries that correspond to traditional racial categories.

What Genomics Actually Shows

Large-scale genomic studies reveal:

• Extensive gene flow throughout human history

• Overlapping genetic variation across populations

• Shared recent ancestry across all living humans

Population differentiation, often measured using FST statistics, indicates relatively low levels of genetic divergence compared to many other species. Human populations are genetically similar by evolutionary standards.

No genome-wide dataset supports a hierarchical ranking of human populations by evolutionary proximity to non-human primates. The hypothesis simply does not align with the data.

Conclusion

The question of whether one racial group is “closer to monkeys” than another rests on an obsolete framework. It confuses superficial morphology with evolutionary lineage and assumes a ladder-like model of evolution that modern biology has long abandoned.

All living humans:

• Belong to a single species

• Share recent common ancestry

• Are equally related to chimpanzees and other primates

• Are equally evolved

Biology does not support racial hierarchy. It supports shared ancestry, structured variation, and a branching evolutionary history. The scientific evidence is unambiguous: no human population is closer to apes than any other.