At what point do primates become people??

Question

The evolutionists say that people are primates but all primates are not people. at what point do primates become people, or as they way we are a branch of primates, where is the branching off place the we can say "this primate became human"?? You can't just take two different things and say they are the same but different??
There must be some series of events or documented changes or even now living beings that are evolving into human intelligence??

In my other question even the evolutionists could not agree about the primate being human or not..
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070504145811AA8DWlZ&r=w

At what point does a primate become a homo sapien, and who is it that decides that this is now a homo sapien??
It is you that don't get it, because I don't think that you can answer this question other than throw it back re-worded

If primates NEVER become homo sapiens, then how did we become homo sapiens if primates never do??

And once again "When does the square become a rectangle??

Answer 1

First of all, a definition of primates:
"The group of mammals that include humanity, with two main groups, anthropoids (humans, apes, monkeys) and prosimians (aye-ayes, galagos, lemurs, lorises, pottos, and tarsiers."

The australopithecines are now thought to be immediate ancestors of the genus Homo, the group to which modern humans belong.

Homo habilis is arguably the first species of the Homo genus to appear. Its closest ancestor was though to be a member of the genus Australopithecus.

No one waved a wand and said, "become human!" This is all a matter of evolution, occurring over millions of years. It is also theoretical, but backed by fossil evidence.

As for things being the same but different, there is always the fact that all members of the family Equus are not horses, but all horses are members of the family Equus.You CAN take two things and say they are the same, but different!

Homo sapiens ARE primates.
Primates that are NOT Homo sapiens are not BECOMING Homo sapiens, any more than horses are morphing into donkeys or vice versa.

Answer 2

Hi, I'll try to answer your question seriously.

First of all, as I'm sure others have said, primates aren't destined to become humans (Homo Sapiens) since evolution doesn't have a set goal. This is just how we happen to look. So other primates will develop into whatever's down the road for them. Evolution is just like gravity: a mechanism. If you choose to see God's hand behind it, fine, but to us it appears as mere chaos.

Secondly, you raise a good point, because it's not trivial to delineate precisely where human beings stop and other species begin. The fact that it's easy in today's world is simply a consequence of all the intermediaries dying out.

We've become a species of our own, and all 'semi-apes' have been dead for a long time. If they still were, however, we wouldn't find a distinct jump from non-human to human, since all intermediaries are very much similar to both their parents and children. It's the fact that there's so many of them that allows us, distant descendants, to be distinctly different from those ancient ancestors.

The distance between us humans and the common ancestor we have with other primates is quite long, then. It's just as long for the other primates. The distance, genetically speaking, between us and other primates is twice as long: first back in time, then forward again in another direction. If that ancestor is our distant grandfather (mother), other primates are our VERY distant cousins.

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A few words about different species:
One definition of a species is, animals that can breed with one another and produce non-sterile offspring. Horses and donkeys, for instance, are different species but can still breed. Their offspring is sterile, however, so there is nothing keeping donkeys and horses genetically 'close' forever. In the future, they may have evolved away siffuciently to no longer be able to breed at all.

If an early man came around today, the question is, would he be able to breed? Would he even want to, given how different we look (girls without facial hair, yuck!)?

Answer 3

At what "point" does a seed become a tree?
... a child become an adult?
... a puppy become a dog?
... a cliff become a beach?
... a town become a city?
... Old English become Modern English?

Get the point? When you ask a question about a slow transformation, it is never possible to say "at this point X became Y." But it is clear that once there was X and now there is Y.

We can arbitrarily draw a line between X and Y ("a child becomes an adult on his 18th birthday" or "Homo erectus became Homo sapiens when he started making tools about 250,000 years ago") but everyone is aware that this is an arbitrary line ... nobody believes that the child is significantly different on the day before his 18th birthday than the day after ... and nobody believes that a Homo erectus ("non-human") couple gave birth to a Home sapiens ("human") baby one day. That would be equally silly.

Consider that the evolution of a species is very much like the evolution of a language. It is silly to ask at what point Old English became English. It's not like some speaker of Old English gave birth to someone speaking a different language called English. Every child of course learns to speak the same language as its parents ... but somehow over many generations, one language evolved into the other ... and an individual is speaking a very different language than its great-great-...-grandparents. And in fact, languages can branch and become very different languages, both evolved from the same parent language ... just as several species can branch and evolve from the same parent species.

So if you can understand how languages evolve, then you can understand how life evolves.

> "There must be some series of events or documented changes or even now living beings that are evolving into human intelligence?"

No. That is not true at all. While it is *possible*, it is no more a "must" that something today is evolving into human intelligence than that something is evolving into hummingbird flight or orchid-like beauty. There is nothing special human intelligence as some sort of "goal" of evolution ... it's pretty special to US because we have it and it lets us do cool things like converse on Yahoo ...but as far as nature goes, human intelligence is just our way of adapting to the world, just as giraffes have long necks and turtles have hard shells.

And it is not necessary for intermediate stages to continue existing. As long as all the populations of a species are interbreeding, then any change to the species eventually affects *all* populations. So none gets left behind as an "intermediate", but still living, species. Human populations have gotten isolated and show obvious physical differences in a relatively short time ... but it would be wrong (and racist) to say that these are examples of "intermediate" stages of human development.

There are examples in nature of one branch getting isolated and staying in its current state without changing much ... but it is not *necessary* ... and this just did not occur to any primates. All splits (branches) in the primate line appear to have continued changing ... or they went extinct.

Answer 4

I don't think you're posting this in the right section. This is a science question. It's unrealistic to expect people interested in Religion to know the exact answer to a question about the subtleties of a scientific theory.

That being said, I suspect the answer is necessarily hazy. Evolution is a very slow process, while you're asking about a particular point in time.

When does it go from being a sunny day to an overcast day? Is it when the first clouds appear, or when the clouds first cover the sun, or when the clouds cover 50% of the sky? Different people would say different things and none of those disagreements would disprove anything about the weather, would it?

Now, if that answer doesn't satisfy you, it's because I'm a Religion and Spirituality kind of guy. Try posting in a science area.

Answer 5

Your question makes no sense as worded.

Humans are primates--they never stopped being primates. A human is part of the group primate, just like dogs, wolves, foxes and coyotes are all canines.

But if you're asking where the split between humans and OTHER primates happened, then check the link in my source. It will a good starting point for your research on this subject.

Answer 6

Posting a science question in the religion and spirituality section often means the asker does not really want an answer. His goal is to ask a question that he believes proves some scientific knowledge to be wrong, or that science does not yet answer, and make the implicit claim that the only other explanation is a god, and specifically, the same god he happens to believe in.

It's the "god of the gaps" - intellectually bankrupt, since it favors ignorance instead of knowledge, and because of the contained logical fallacy.

However, on the off chance that you really want to know the answer:

It's the tyrrany of the discontinuous mind.

Evolution works as a series of very very very tiny steps. No two generations are very far apart.

Take a short walk, keep adding to its length, millimeter by millimeter. At what point does it become a long walk?

Yes, there are documented changes, but you need scientific background to understand it.

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

Answer 7

God made Man, and man- made a lie to compensate for the
ignorance of his origins. They get their best manipulative minds to back up this ignorance.That's why ,when you have an IQ above a primate, you question this massive confusion,because the puzzle makes no sense,at least the numerous explanations we get for evolution. and yet every creature has to ADAPT to this environment , or they die, yes there are similarities in all living creatures of The Earth, but THAT'S WHY we can live on the same planet.

Answer 8

People were created in the image and likeness of God from the very beginning, or at least the sixth day. The view of some is to lower us to the animal realm and take away the glory and majesty of our exalted, special position in creation. We are MAN, created in the image of God. Primate, bipod, homo erectus, homo sapiens, etc... it all is meaningless without the understanding that we, YOU, are special in the eyes of God.

Answer 9

In Austria right now they are trying to have an ape declared a human because the ape needs some care and protection and people cannot legally donate to the cause because in Austria you can only give charitable donations to people...so, activists are trying to get the ape declared human so it can get donations toward it's care and feeding.

Answer 10

primates=humans:FALSE!

primates=monkeys,apes and humans.

look it's very difficult to teach all of evolution here because to answer these sort of Qs (which show that you have no knowledge whatsoever about evolution) is quite impossible.

+if all cats are animals,does that mean all animals are cats?

read up on your own.could you explain the ENTIRE bible to me now? i thought not.well it's the same thing.