"Missing Link" Between Humans and Monkeys Found

Hows that for a headline!?  You want to start a riot you can always count on this one to really come with emotional baggage big time! But still......

The "missing link" comes in from an unexpected direction when scientists discovered a link between human speech and monkey chatter.    The "chatter" in question is a distinctive lip-smacking sounds 

made by baboons in the Ethopian highlands.  Researchers  found striking similarities between these lip-smacking sounds and human speech.

The sounds that these gelada baboons make are often so human sounding that researchers often are fooled into thinking there are humans close by talking. 

What this ability demonstrates is that the ability to make complex sounds may have developed well before speech.  When  the need to communicate complex ideas, the ability was already in place.  However the need to communicate complex ideas possibly drove the evolutionary process. 

It should also be noted that monkeys in general smack their lips when eating, it seems to only the gelada who use the "sounds" for communication or the males calling to the females.

link to the Register file

The Future of NASA - Neil DeGrasse - Tyson

Why NASA is vital for our survival as a nation of innovators. Big words, but when you hear Neil DeGrasse-Tyson speak you begin to understand just what he means. NASA for 50 has been in the business of making heros. Someone to advance the horizons of human understanding. When you lose the will to explore and be fascinated by the unknown, is the moment when you start to backslide, the moment when you become less relevant. DeGrasse-Tyson says some very scary things in the short speech I found on the Gizmodo site, but to not heed his words is to relegate the U.S. to that of the observer, not the innovator. Check the video out below.