Best way to find out if element is a descendant of another

I am in the process of implementing jQuery, and taking out Prototype libraries in my codebase, and I am wondering if you could give me the best way to implement this functionality in jQuery. I am familiar with the jQuery ancestor>descendant syntax, but just want to check if an element is a descendant by true of false, like the code below: can someone give me the most efficient jQuery solution for this ?

<div id="australopithecus">
  <div id="homo-herectus">
    <div id="homo-sapiens"></div>
  </div>
</div>

$('homo-sapiens').descendantOf('australopithecus');
// -> true

$('homo-herectus').descendantOf('homo-sapiens');
// -> false