Why do people think humans are descendant from apes!!!?

Question

If i read one more question with that as its basis i will go crazy. Charles Darwin never said that. We have a common anscestor, but we split. We are not evolved from apes! But no matter the number of times people are told, there is always another question asking the same thing!!

rhsaunders - i neally fell of my chair laughing when i read that.
- 'The sky is blue because it reflects the sea' and she even went ahead and put that she was a science teacher!!!!!

Answer 1

For people not involved in the research or academia in general, it is just easier to give them a basic grasp of a concept, the problem being though, that the basic grasp technique is frequently and quaintly twisted around to something that is, well, wrong. For those that understand, we take the others by the hand and lead them along with a generous helping of understanding. Be kind, we all can't be Einstein's or Darwin's.

Answer 2

Why won't my car start? - Because you bought a heap of junk and/or didn't maintain it you fool.

I want a good cheap gadget - Good and cheap are often mutually exclusive.

What sort of lights can I put under my car? - Any type you like, you'll still look like Richard Cranium.

Am I pregnant? How the hell would I know? You might just be constipated. Did you have unprotected intercourse? You might still be constipated And pregnant.

If it is summer in the USA, what is the season in Australia? (and variations thereof) Good grief, don't they teach elementary geography in the USA?

Where can I download a free copy of "Barry Pothead and the Chamber of Commerce" - Ever heard of copyright?

How do I find Frederica Bloggs who lives in Sydney? - Why not try the Australian White Pages on the net. (It's true Australia has only had telephones for 125 years so we are a bit behind.)

Q. My German/Japanese car Model Y has a fault, what is the likely cause? Wrong Answer. There is no such thing as a Model Y in the USA. Right answer. Not all German or Japanese car models are offered in the USA and guess what, the internet is global, the question might come from somewhere else.

Evolution is wrong because there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. - So what has that got to do with it? In any case there are transitional forms and your source of information is lying.

Do I know the difference between evolution and the theory of evolution? - Well I do, but a lot of people don't.

The weather in Ohio/Texas/England is cooler than normal just now. This means global warming is wrong. - Yeah, so what you are having is weather, not climate.

Town X is boring - Oh dear. How sad. Never mind. (No town is there for the amusement of teenagers. Amuse yourself. Grow up and stop whinging.)

Can you do my homework for me so I can watch some crapola on TV? - Not a chance.

Answer 3

Human beings are not 'descended from' apes. Humans are a species of ape.

If you really have read Charles Darwin, I'm not totally sure you were paying much attention. What's so awful about being an ape? We have to be some sort of species or other. The thing that makes us different from every other species on the planet is simply that we have an extremely rich and complex capacity for language; everything else we can do follows from that. Apart from that, we're just one amongst many different kinds of animal living on Earth.

Answer 4

Exactly. All the great apes on the planet have an "ape-like ancestor" of some sort or another. We just evolved in different ways.

Besides - we're STILL apes, we're just a more advanced variety of ape!

And the sky is blue because it reflects the sea?? Really. How fascinating. Oh wait, no, it's utter crap.

Answer 5

This is the problem with oversimplifying evolution to "man from ape" or "man from monkey" ... which is exactly why creationists do it. It's so much easier to ridicule a theory if you reduce it down to a CARTOON version.

Part of the problem is that the words "ape" and "monkey" are ambiguous in people's mind. They are non-scientific words used to describe a scientific theory.

Many people hear "ape" or "monkey" and think "the animals I can see in the zoo" ... in which case we most certainly *NOT* descend from any of those species. NO modern species descended from another modern species.

There is actually a scientific definition of "ape". It is "member of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates" ... in which case, humans technically *ARE* apes.

There actually is no scientific definition of "monkey." It is a group of primates that does not include the apes ... but that is such an imprecise definition.

And in neither case is is clear if *ancestral* (now extinct) species would belong to either group.

But creationists love to spout that "man from ape" or "man from monkey" caricature of evolution because it is easy to call something stupid if you start by describing it in a stupid way.

Answer 6

Humans are descended from a more primitive primate than ourselves. That primate may not exactly have been an ape of today but it WAS an apelike humanoid. In my biology book there is a very clear description of the evolution of humans. The main points for this claim was skull evolution. The skull of a known primate was traced to its next ancestor, and so on until the human skull arrived.

Answer 7

Technically speaking, our common ancestor was an ape, and so are humans.

The people who bring this up in that way are unsophisticated creationist who keep rambling on the 'argument' "how come there are still apes around" that the creationist movement (the more sophisticated ones) has learned not to utter anymore as it was (and still is) pointless and ridicule.

The same thing happens for people claiming that 9/11 was an inside job by the CIA, that an UFO crashed landed in Roswell in 1947, that Detroit bought out (or killed) someone who invented a carburetor that allows 1000 miles to a gallon (or runs on tap water), and so on. There is just not getting into some people overly thick skull...

Answer 8

We are not descended from modern-day apes, but are distant cousins of them, all of us descended from a common anscestor, who may or may not have been classified as an ape by modern definition, but probably.

Today's classifications list "apes" as any member of the superfamily Hominoidea. Gibbons, sometimes called lesser apes, are split into a family called Hylobatidae. Gorillas, chipanzees, orangutans, and humans are in the family Hominidae.

Below the family level, orangutans split off first into the subfamily Ponginae. Then gorillas split off into the tribe Gorillini. Finally, chipanzees split off into the genus Pan.

Answer 9

We are not, per se, evolved from the apes on earth today. But much scientific evidence shows that both we AND today's apes evolved from a common ape-like mammal ancestor from long ago.

Why does this subject cause so much consternation in people? It has no true bearing on our society other than the constant stupid back-and-forth argument between science and religion. Everybody get over it and get on with your lives!!!

Answer 10

There is the question of the missing link? this may sound stupid but what if another life form came to earth millions of years ago, got some DNA from the ape like creatures from here and some from it's own race and made a new string of DNA and then impregnated some of the female species of the time !! sound a bit cuckoo but who knows actually ..................no one