mon ancestor. When a genetic similarity was established between
birds and humans, the evidence produced to date by the evolution-
ists was invalidated once again. Erich Jarvis, himself an evolutionist,
expressed how this dogmatic approach, resulting from an evolu-
tionist standpoint and which posed an obstacle to real observation,
gave him great difficulty in his research:
The difference… between humans and songbirds, besides the
general brain organization of mammals and birds, is that hu-
mans have more of what the birds have… But in order to ex-
plain this hypothesis of parallels between vocal imitation struc-
tures in the bird brain and language structures in human
brains, I first have to get around this hundred-year-old dogma
that their brains are so very different.
36
The reason behind the evolutionists’ discomfort was that the
possibility of a common gene in hummingbirds and humans could
contradict the concept of homology and thus constitute evidence
against evolution. Accordingly, they were not keen to see informa-
tion on this subject emerge. Nevertheless, Jarvis explains that re-
search in this field could be illuminating:
Such genetic experiments, even with an animal as seemingly
distant from humans as the hummingbird, could help us un-
derstand human language… We're finding with these DNA
chips that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the genes
that we get from the songbird brain have a homologous coun-
terpart in humans and mammals in general.”
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