My cousin belives in evolution and he said that black people are the closest things we have to monkeys today..

Question

DOES ANYONE BELiEVE THiS?! I don't. I think it's racist and stupid. Then he said asian people are the second closest to monkeys... then its white people... so I guess that hispanic and native americans are the farthest from being monkeys? YAY I'M NOT A MONKEY!! Just kidding... I don't believe this crap. But tell me if you think it's true and give some reasoning and don't be stupid please!

Answer 1

Actually, you can tell your cousin that monkeys are the closest thing we have to monkeys today. Human beings are not monkeys, they're primates, which are related to monkeys, but just because you're related to your cousin doesn't make you him.
To the orignial peoples of North America animals are just another kind of people; they are not automatons, or primitive, or stupid, or worthless, but they have their own lives and purpose and relationship with the world around us, and just because we cannot communicate with them does not mean we don't have to respect them.
Personally I am proud to have monkeys for cousins. They are not nearly as foolish as many people that I know.
Anyway, biologically speaking there is no such thing as race. As much as we might like to divide our communities up and say some people are different and some people don't belong in certain places, this is a purely social phenomenon that doesn't have any basis in our genes.
I think the most basic definition of a species is a group of animals that can reproduce with each other. And we can all make babies with each other; black, white, hispanic, purple, yellow, red, pink, olive, pale, tan, or tope. Generally speaking, humans are not in the business of getting into the hanky panky with monkeys, and it would be very surprising if a baby resulted from such a union. Our lineage diverged from theirs long ago, so although your cousin wants to claim some sort of authoritative crediblilty for being special and better than some other humans, it's just not there.
If he wants to look for explanations for the differences between human beings he would be much better off if he studied things like history, geography, linguistics, or politics.
One of the interesting features of the way our genes are distributed among the human population is that you probably have more genetic similarities with people spread across the globe than you have with the people who are around you. For instance, a person living in a village on an island in Indonesia is more likely to have certain genetic similarities to another person living in a village in Germany than with his or her next door neighbors.
Let me try and give you an example of how this might be observable to you: I am "white", but I know a fair skinned black person whose skin tone is very close to mine; closer to mine than it is to other people in his family. If we hold our arms next to each other we almost cannot tell the difference in tones.
Then of course there are other differences that tend to crop up in populations; my hair is very different from this guys, eye shape and color are different, fat and muscle distribution are different between us, but this is natural; everybody is different.
In fact, though, human beings are very uniform as a species; some geneticists are becoming alarmed in recent years at how similar we actually are. There are 6 billion people on the planet, but only 200,000 chimpanzees (more or less). But despite the tremendous superiority in numbers that we have, chimpanzees actually have more than 100 times more genetic diversity than we have in the whole of humanity.
Geneticists working for the human genome project have traced back the spread of humanity and they have a pretty good idea of how our populations got to be the way they are. Humans evolved in Africa. From there they spread out in several waves starting about 40,000 years ago. The first migration wave out of Africa was a group of people who gradually moved east along the shores of the ocean, leaving strong genetic markers in India, and finally settling in Australia where they became the progenitors of the Australian aboriginees. The next wave out of Africa also moved and settled in China, which gave rise to many of the populations still living in Asia today. Next to leave Africa was a population that moved into central Asia and the middle east, where they stayed for a very long time. After thousands of years, another population split off from this one and migrated west to Europe, where they displaced the neanderthals and became the ancestors of modern Europeans. The next wave out of Africa was the population of people who eventually made their way to the Americas and became the native populations here. So, really, if you think about it, black Africans are actually a more recent population than anybody, since they developed in Africa after several other populations had already left.
And the fact is, we don't know what colour our ancestors skin was. There is no way to tell that. Perfectly preserved skin specimens just don't happen often enough in the fossil record. Maybe dark skin pigments evolved recently and the original african human populations were all white. Maybe we were all black and white skin pigment was a later mutation. But it REALLY doesn't make any difference at all except to how you tan and what kind of service you get in Denny's restaurants.
It would be nice if all the foolish racial discourse could just disappear because it really only gets in the way of people understanding each other. But we're stuck with it, and if you want to understand more clearly what it is that we're stuck with you need to realize that the differnces we percieve here in North America come from our history and what we have done to each other or had done to us in the past. We won't be able to come to terms with each other until people acknowledge that. Inventing justifications for our differences and then trying to label it with scientific sounding words does not help the situation at all.
Good luck with your cousin. He sounds like a case.

Answer 2

Your friend is an idiot. Since we all probably came from Africa originally, I'd say it's more likely that we were all black at one point. There is a tribe in Africa which appears to have most of the facial features of the different races, and we could all be descendants of them. As for being descended from monkeys, that's ridiculous. Even Darwin never said that. He said that all primates come from a common ancestor, and that the different species branched off from that one. Some became monkeys, apes gorillas, or humans. It's like saying you are descended from your third cousin, four times removed, because at one point you had an ancestor in common.

Answer 3

It's not really true. You can measure DNA to determine how far a certain population has changed from primate DNA. I took an anthropology class on this. They had measured something like the foreshortening of the forearm to determine how far populations had evolved from primates (the shorter the forearm the farther from primates). It turned out that people from Africa were actually move evolved away from primates than europeans. This was when i was in college and that was 20 years ago. Now that we have DNA it's not so hard to see what is close to what genetically. But you will not find black people any closer to the DNA of primates than white people. You should take some anthropology classes or subscribe to national geographic to learn these things. I don't think your friend is a reliable source. I mean what are his references?

Answer 4

Actually, blacks are more "evolved" than whites, in certain respects. Take lips - blacks have lip ridges, but whites still don't, just like chimps and gorillas. Whites tend to have, as a group, more body hair. It is whites that are closer to the common ancestor of apes and humans, not Asians or Blacks. Not that any racial category is at all close. All humans originated in Africa, and spread out from there. Owing to "bottlenecks" in the genetic flow and natural selection for minor characteristics like skin color, Asians and whites evolved out of the original Black stock.

Your cousin is using "evolution" to provide an excuse for his racist views. Biologists tend to deny that there even IS such a thing as race, because under the skin there are utterly NO differences whatsoever.

Answer 5

You are right in believing that this is nonsense. Blacks, whites and asians are all part of the same species, homosapien. Skin color is simply an evolutionary adaptation that permitted people living in northern climates who receive less direct sunlight to produce the needed amount of vitamin D by lessening the skin tone. Clearly, your cousin does not understand evolution which he is using as an excuse for racism.

Answer 6

your not kidding and you probably do believe this moronic thinking's and it's because of ppl like him and you that society will never develop as a ppl and will never understand each other or live in peace. there is no such thing as evolution; God made man in his image and if the pictures were true that only means that God perfected on a the looks, and forms so don't think that just because blacks or any other race have animal features that they were or will be an animal cause truth be told whites are just as animal like as black-they have more hair; they smell like dog when wet and they eat after their pets (now how much more close to animal can one get)

Answer 7

thats a load of crap. the only reason we have "colour" (from an evolutionary point of view) is because in some places its too hot so human skin has adapted to contain more pigment to stop people from getting sunburnt. So if anything, black people the the most evolved....

but no, we're all the same, except for that cousin of yours. He seems to have a poorly developed brain compared to that of an average human.

Answer 8

You cousin is an idiot and a racist. if my evolution studies return to me i remember s saying that all humans are evolved from monkeys. Where does he think other people evolved from the stars in the sky.

Answer 9

You're showing your deep knowledge of the subject (the Bible) by mentioning the story of Balaam's monkey. How about Sampson slaying 1,000 Philestines with the jaw bone of a gorilla?

Answer 10

It is racist, and untrue. Black pigment has nothing to do w/ us coming from Monkeys. Also, ethnisity has nothing to do with it either.

You have some stupid cousins on your hands.

By the way, evolution is real though. Don't get me wrong.

Answer 11

its not true because its racist ranting from someone with no idea about evolutionary theory.

its a cheep attempt at calling people monkeys based on the simplest possible misreading of what people mean when they say evolution. do your sefl a favour and read a little about evolution here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution