Scientists hypothesize from genetic studies that, more than 65 million years ago, humans came from squirrel-like, nocturnal animals that lived in trees and weighed less than 200 grams. Up until recently, scientists also suggested that this primate ancestor was a primitive and solitary mammal that lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs.
A new study published in the journal PNAS, however, sheds new light on the social organization of this prehistoric creature: namely, that most primate ancestors were living not in solitude, as previously believed, but in pairs even 65 million years to 70 million years ago. These results challenge earlier assumptions on the social development of primate ancestors and also prove that solitary living in primates is not an original primitive state, but a social state that evolved later on.
“This is especially important because previous studies always tried to explain the big evolution of so-called social monogamy out of a simple solitary living form, and now we showed that this kind of argument is not correct, because pair-living is actually ancestral,” explains Carsten Schradin, director of research at the CNRS in Strasbourg and an author of the study. “This challenges our understanding of mammalian and human social evolution.”
