Did moden man directly decend from an ape or another human?

Question

I know Homo sapiens decended from an ape ie. Australopithecines but did another variant of the Humanoid for instance Homo Erectus come in the middle?

Answer 1

Firstly to clarify a misconception (that has been reinforced by some of the other answers) humans ARE apes as much as australopithecines and gorillas are.

So in the simple sense because we are apes (members of the superfamily hominoidea), we are descended directly from apes. To answer the real question you are asking, the genus Homo is believed to have evolved from earlier hominid species, probably an austrolopithecine or a species very similar.

It is likely that an early homo species (e.g. Homo habilis which is much more similar to Australopithecus than modern humans are) radiated into a range of further human species, one of which eventually evolved into modern humans.

So a probable simplified sequence would be early ape ancestor (shared ancestor with chimpanzee), australopithecine (shared ancestor with all humans), early human ancestor (shared ancestor with neanderthals), modern human.

Incidentally, the current consensus is that humans did not evolve from neanderthals, and both species evolved separately from a common ancestor. There is still a lot of debate about the contribution of Homo neanderthalensis to modern humans (in fact there was an article about this very subject in today's issue of the journal Nature).

Answer 2

Homo sapiens did NOT descend from apes. Evolution says that primates had a common ancestor. Different levels of primates branched off at different times from the evolutionary tree. It's more like this. You have a distant cousin. You both have the same great-great-great-great grandfather. You are descendants of that grandfather. You are not a descendant of your cousin. Your attributes are from that grandfather, not from your cousin. You may have overlapping attributes, but that does not mean that you were spawned from that cousin. (This analogy works on a basic level - but not quite on a broad biological level)

So from that common ancestor, you have many different branches. Some survived (Homo sapiens), some didn't (Homo habilis).

Here's a list, essentially from furthest back to most recent, of 'relatives'.

*Ardipithecenes*
Ardipithecus ramidus


*Gracile Australopithecines*
Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus africanus
Australopithecus anamensis
Australopithecus garhi


*Robust Australopithicines (Paranthropus)*
Australopithecus aethiopicus
Australopithecus boisei
Australopithecus robustus


*Genus Homo*
Homo habilis
Homo rudolfensis
Homo ergaster
Homo erectus
Homo neanderthalensis
Homo sapiens

Answer 3

Homo sapien sapien is the current modern man and the only surviving species of the genus Homo. There are approximately a dozen known species in the genus, but this differs due to the difficulty in defining which skeletons belong in a species together and which are separate species. A time line of when some commonly accepted species lived can be found at http://www.msu.edu/~robin400/timeline2.html .

Answer 4

Ooh ooh The Neanderthals too!

It also depends upon the specific region of the world... You know, hunter gatherers start up in Africa and then they spread out, towards Europe and Asia (I know these places were called different things as the continents were in a much different orientation...)
and from Asia some crossed a land bridge to North America and they headed down south. I'm not sure how Australia and South America fit into the equation but they sure did have some indigenous tribes spring up too.

Well, let's take it to Wikipedia, because they have a much better answer than I do.. (and a ton as you're interested!)

Answer 5

There are many in between A. Afarensis and Homo erectus There's also H. habilis and other Homos.
To learn the most, get a recently published book. The scientists are finding more fossils yearly and trying to fit them in the "bush" (not considered a "tree" anymore). There were many that overlapped in time frame.
It's exciting to learn about.

Answer 6

From another man..
Homo Erectus before Homo Sapiens I believe
and of course there were Homo's before Erectus..
Yes, I know...Ha Ha Ha

Answer 7

From Apes, and then some developed into humans and some remained ape or ape like. Just pick up the NY Times and see the ones that developed and the ones that didn't

Answer 8

Yawn. no longer all those who accepts the idea of evolution is an atheist, and also you does no longer call someone who accepts quantum mechanics a quantum mechanicist. As for the pygmies, often times scientists are incorrect about their unique hypothesis, however the clinical technique has a tendency to maximum magnificent that. utilising this to disprove evolution mainly makes no experience, because there continues to be a great deal of information in want of it.

Answer 9

I'm not sure, but I remeber reading in Bill Bryson's book Mother Tongue, that we are not Homo Sapiens. We are Homo sapien sapiens. I'm being serious!

Answer 10

I think there were a bunch of stages on the way but there seem also to have been a bunch of offshoots that were not successful. Debate continues to rage about which is which. Other than that, I Know Nothing