 However the distance to six different Old World monkeys was on average 2.46, indicating that the African apes are more closely related to humans than to monkeys.The authors consider the divergence time between Old World monkeys and hominoids to be 30 million years ago (MYA), based on fossil data, and the immunological distance was considered to grow at a constant rate.They concluded that divergence time of humans and the African apes to be roughly ~5 MYA.