why is it untrue to say that humans were descended from apes?

Answer 1

Apes and hominids have a common ancestor. Apes are not the ancestor of hominids. To put it another way, the family of apes and the family of homids are related as cousins are related, not as a parent is related to a child.

Here's a brief sketch of the evolution leading to the hominids, including Man.

This causally contiguous region of spacetime, "the universe," began about 14 billion years ago.

The solar nebula condensed into a planetary system about 5 billion years ago.

Biogenesis occurred in Earth's waters about 3.5 billion years ago. There was a proliferation in types of single-celled life forms about 1 bya.

Multicellular life appeared in the sea about 600 million years ago, followed by an extreme proliferation of multicellular life forms over the next hundred million years (the Cambrian Period).

Plants colonized the land beginning about 570 mya. The higher plant types began appearing about 420 mya.

Animals colonized the land beginning about 500 mya. However, animal life on land had to wait for forests to appear, about 420 mya, before getting major ecological niches.

Reptiles appeared about 330 mya. They got bigger with time, until the really huge ones appeared from 220 mya until 65 mya.

Mammals appeared about 210 million years ago. [Mesozoic/early Triassic]

Monkeys appeared 60 million years ago. [Cenozoic/Tertiary/Eocene]

Proto-Primates appeared about 40 million years ago. [Cenozoic/Tertiary/Oligocene]

True Primates (Proconsul, a genus of three species: major, africanus and nyanzae) appeared 24 million years ago. [Cenozoic/Tertiary/Miocene]

From Proconsul, the following genera branched away from the line leading to the hominids...
Gibbons diverged 15 million years ago.
Orangutans diverged 11 million years ago.
Gorillas diverged 7 million years ago.
Chimpanzees diverged 5 million years ago.

What was left of Proconsul's decendants, in our direction, was the hominid family. The original hominid might have been Australopithecus anamensis [known to exist: 4.2-3.5 mya] or Australopithecus afarensis [known to exist: 5.0-3.0 mya].

Whichever of these is our ancestor, they evolved in Africa and spawned (probably through racial divisions) many daughter species, most of which became extinct. A genus of such species was distinguished by a sagittal crest: a bony ridge on top of the head formed by an extension of the spinal bones and to which was attached extra muscles that served to add chewing strength to the jaw. The last species of this genus was A. robustus, which became extinct only about a million years ago; i.e., it was contemporary with our own ancestors, Homo habilis and Homo erectus. (The Klingons in Star Trek: The Next Generation look something like A. robustus might have.)

Homo habilis was the first species in the genus Homo, itself descended from Australopithecus.

From the early Australopithecines to H. habilis, the brain volume ranged from 400 cc to 530 cc. Doubtless they were all smarter than your average bear, but none of them would have been accounted as gifted by our standards, nor even by Black standards.

It's what happened after H. habilis that made Man what he is.

As probably you've already guessed, there never was any significant period of time across which any species of hominid (or, earlier, of prehominid primate) wasn't acquiring internal biological divisions. At first, they were family-and-tribe types of distinctions; later they became large enough to amount to racial differences; still later they became the cause of a fission of one species into several. I said "significant period of time." In this sense, 5000 years (the length of time between ancient Egypt and today) has only modest significance.

H. habilis (2.8 mya-1.8 mya) began the rise of primate brain size, reaching about 800 cc by the time of the Habilis/Erectus threshhold.

H. erectus (1.8 mya-?) was probably a strongly racianated species when he appeared 1.8 mya, with some variants (races) in Europe, others in Asia, in Africa, in Australia, and on some of the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The reason I have put no closure date on the existence of H. erectus is that his transition to H. sapiens occurred at different times in different parts of the world, and because there is a possibility that H. erectus is not yet extinct.

In Europe, the Erectus/Sapiens threshhold was crossed about 800 kya. The resulting hominid was not yet the modern White race; however the cranial capacity of a later erectus was comparable with that of modern Blacks [1300 cc].

In Asia, the same threshhold was crossed about 300 kya, however Homo sapiens yoyoi would later sustain hybridization with migrating groups of Euro-sapiens, resulting in a hybrid Asiatic that eventually became the more lustrous, glossier, better-looking race that is today called "Asian."

In Africa, the same threshhold began about 30 kya, and may not be complete as yet.

Further, H. erectus might still exist as aboriginal hominds in Australia and in parts of the Pacific Rim islands. Recently, in Indonesia, the remains of a dwarf race of erectus was found and dated as recently as 18,000 years ago. They almost made it to our modern times, but not quite.

You may be sure that if some of these dwarves had been found living, every liberal on the planet would insist that they be classified as "Homo sapiens only-one-human-race-sapiens" with dues fully paid up and with membership in good standing. And our timorous endowment-dependent scientists would oblige them with taxonomic haste.

All the evidence that had been used formerly to prove they were of a different species would be creatively reinterpreted to prove the exact opposite, and the original scientific judgment would disappear in true Orwellian memory-hole fashion. The only reason these hominids were recognized for what they are, and correctly categorized, is that they are extinct and therefore have no political utility to liberals.

About 40 kya, a biologically high grade of humans [brain capacity 1500+ cc] appeared. Their advanced culture has left artifacts that indicate that many of the innovations usually credited to the Middle Eastern civilizations actually were introduced in Europe many thousands of years earlier. For example, pottery fragments from nearly 30 kya have been found in Eastern Europe (Dolni Vestonice, Bohemia, once part of Austria-Hungary), whereas the earliest such fragments in the Middle East are only 8000 years old. Their immediate descendants were the Nordic and Aryan peoples, and with the advent of Cro-Magnon, the modern White race (or "Man") began.

Answer 2

Who says it is untrue? The statement that humans
are not descended from "the apes" was invented
mostly to dodge the questions raised by the
creationists. Looking at the subject one way one
could say that humans are not descended from
apes because humans ARE apes. There is so
little difference between us and the other great
apes that we really qualify, anatomically, as just a
peculiar kind of ape. It is mostly our egotism that
results in our being classified in a different family
from the living apes.

Another viewpoint is that so many people, not
familiar with science, think that if you say we are
descended from apes you mean descended from
the living apes. Obviously this is not correct.
However, if we had a living member of the common ancestor of humans and living apes
available for study we would almost certainly call
it an ape. It would be somewhat different from
both the living apes and humans, but not enough
different to put it outside the concept "ape".

Answer 3

Because they are not. Humans and apes have an ancestor in common, over a million years ago. After this, we evolved our separate ways. So we are not descended from apes. Apes and humans are both descended from one ancestor. It's like they're our very distant cousins.

Answer 4

it is kind an oversimplification to say we descended from apes. its not like apes are some static creature that has always existed, and humans magically were spawned as an offshoot.

there are probably hundreds of species that we dont know of, or may never know of, that are extinct that are common ancestors of humans and "apes" that are no longer around.

what is reasonable to assume based on the evidence that we do have, is that we have common ancestors as all other animals. and the evidence from almost every angle indicates that our closest relatives in the animal world are apes, or actually chimps.

dont forget, its the THEORY of evolution. that mean that it is a hypothesis, and not a fact. that is not to say it is not true, that just means it is not proven. from here, we may gather some huger amount of new information that could turn it into the LAW of evolution. or we might find some new information that turns this theory on its head, and we will talk of it in the future as the fallacy of evolution, or the myth of evolution. or, most likely, niether of the first two possibilities will play out and we will stay where we are, with all evidence pointing towards evolution, but not enough experimentally verifiable facts to allow us to make the leap to the LAW of evolution.

my peronal opinion is that this theory will be turned on its head, we dont know nearly as much as we think we do. dont assume this to mean creation, it does not. what it does mean is that we dont know how things really work, and someday i think we will know much more, but it will be another scientific theory, better than the current one.

Answer 5

Because the apes that humans descended from looked nothing like modern apes therefore it is not correct to say that they descended from apes. Rather, it is more correct to say that they had ape-like ancestors.

Answer 6

We did not descend from apes but rather from an ape like creature that spawned the chimps and us.

Answer 7

I have a hard time believing that we came from apes and I believe that the earth is young....about 6000 years old.

Answer 8

with the theory of evolution there is the question of where did the first cell come from. either the aliens put them here OR the aliens ARE single cells and we evulved from one lost little alien. The other aliens keep sending out serch parties but they find all of these strange beings that couldn't possibly be their lost friend.

Answer 9

no direct connection just speculation