Actually, that overwhelming similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA is a product of two cultural facts: our familiarity with the chimpanzee’s body, and our unfamiliarity with DNA. After all, when the chimpanzee itself was new and interesting (in the 1700’s), contemporary scholars commonly judged it to be overwhelmingly similar to the human form – so much so, that it was commonly classified as a variant of humans.
实际上，人类和黑猩猩DNA的极端近似是两种文化因素共同作用的结果：我们对黑猩猩的身体非常熟悉，而对DNA又没那么熟悉。毕竟，当黑猩猩刚被发现，还引起人们很大兴趣的时候（大约是在18世纪），多数学者都认为它与人类极其近似－甚至普遍把它作为人类的变种。