Although all primates use their voices and facial expressions to communicate, only people and the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutan and gorillas — use these types of gestures as well.
De Waal noted that great apes first appeared about 15 to 20 million years old, meaning such gestures may have been around that long.
“A gesture that occurs in bonobos and chimpanzees as well as humans likely was present in the last common ancestor,” Pollick said in a statement. “A good example of a shared gesture is the open-hand begging gesture, used by both apes and humans.”
This last common ancestor may date to about 5 million to 6 million years ago.