2007-10-07 08:38:09 · 8 answers · asked by Jack K 2 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
This is a common question from the creationists and it makes no sense at all. Modern day apes descended from their early ancestors traced back to a hominid species dating over 2.7 to 4 m.y.a.
Modern man belongs to the genus Homo, which is a subgroup in the family of hominids. What evolved into Homo was likely the genus Australopithecus (once called "man-ape"), which includes the famed 3.2 million-year-old "Lucy" fossil found three decades ago.
The whole human family tree, being able to connect the branches is the life work of anthropoligists and other scientists. The great apes are man's closest cousins, they developed off the main family of hominids over 4 m.y.a. To say that modern man descended from present day monkeys and apes is as ludicrous as saying "horses descended from zebras, so why are the zebras still around...?"
2007-10-07 09:36:12 · answer #1 · answered by Its not me Its u 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Humans share an ancestor with apes (apes have larger brains and smaller tails than monkeys, I think). Not only that, but it was only necassary for some to evolve in certain places (savannas, steppes, plains). Life doesn't evolve if it doesn't need to (sharks for example). And all apes didn't need to evolve.
2007-10-07 17:51:08 · answer #2 · answered by Mitchell 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The primates that are still here are not the primates they evolved from. Neither are we. We are not Homo sapiens, as everyone generally assumes. He is dead. We are a SUB species of him, and we are called Homo sapiens sapiens. Where did he go? Well, he got a little more sophisticated in mind, a little better at hand and eye coordination in coordination with what his mind asked of him, he developed rational thinking and civilization, and somewhere an invisible line was crossed, genetically and metaphysically speaking. He became us.
2007-10-07 18:01:03 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
No species is evolved from a species that still exists. The theory is that man and the other primates had a common ancestor.
2007-10-07 15:57:27 · answer #4 · answered by Max 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
We didn't "evolve" from them - we share a common ancestor with them.
It's like saying, "Why are there still zebras if horses exist, or why we do still have wolves now dogs are around?"
2007-10-07 19:35:01 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Speciation. There were apes who, do to their environment, needed to evolve while other apes were fine in their environment they way they were.
2007-10-07 16:00:40 · answer #6 · answered by Candice P 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
We didn't evolve from them. We and they both split off from a common answer. And this isn't philosophy, this is basic science that I learned in ninth grade.
2007-10-07 15:59:23 · answer #7 · answered by greenlybuddha 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Or why haven't more species survived? Why have "all" the "in-between species" died out? Who knows?
2007-10-07 16:57:41 · answer #8 · answered by David L 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋