Did we evolve from the Apes?

Answer 1

still hard to understand I see.
apes evolved from the same anchestry as we did. we have not
evolved from apes. apes did not exists yet. eventually pre-homo
defined the pre-apes by separating. a few serious theories
keep an option up, this hadn't happened still, sufficiently. :-)

Answer 2

No, we evolved on a paralell path to apes. They are distant cousins, not ancestors. Now as to whether this was a planned evolution, involving a designer, that is a separate issue. It could be so, who knows.
Us and the great apes share over 90% the same DNA. That is an accepted fact.

DNA is the same 4 components in all life on earth, plants, animals, microbes, just in different configurations. Like an incredibly complex computer code.

Change the order of the DNA code and something will be a different organism. This is amazing, and some consider it to be evidence of design. I'm still open minded.

However, there is this arguement often put forward, 'why aren't they still around?' (the missing links). Well that is also true of lots of links to different species. They aren't around now because they were superseded by the next stage. No big mystery.

Neanderthals did exist, again they were cousins to us, but they aren't around now. They died out as a result of either contact with the newer human (us), or changes to their environment. The changes didn't affect us, as we were built differently, and used the land/hunted differently. This is survial of the fittest.

Answer 3

Not exactly.

In Spain scientists have discovered 13-million-year-old fossils of new species of ape. The species may have been the last common ancestor of humans and all great apes living today. (See pictures of the new ape species.)

The great apes—which later gave rise to humans and which now include orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas—are thought to have diverged from the lesser apes about 11 to 16 million years ago. Today's lesser apes include the gibbons.

The new species was christened Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, after the village, Els Hostalets de Pierola, and region, Catalonia, where it was found. Like great apes and humans, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, had a stiff lower spine and other special adaptations for climbing trees.

The fossil skeleton's age would make it just old enough to be the last ancestor common to all modern great apes and humans, the researchers say in the November 19 issue of the journal Science. Or, if the ancestor wasn't Pierolapithecus exactly, it may have looked a lot like Pierolapithecus and been closely related.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1118_041118_ape_human_ancestor.html

Answer 4

No. This is a common misconception. We did not evolve from apes, but we did evolve from a common ancestor. Apes and humans share the same common ancestor. Thus, we did not evolve from apes. To get a better understanding of this I suggest Francis Collins' book The Language of God. I was skeptical on this issue until I read his book. Gene order and similar chromosome anatomy between human and chimp make this clear. I suggest you look into it.

Answer 5

Humans *are* apes, a product of evolution, descended from other, earlier apes. Our closest relatives are chimpanzees, and the most recent common ancestor of both humans and chimpanzees was approximately 6 million years ago.

The way to understand our origins is to remember that living organisms are in a state of constant change - It's not that evolution *can* occur, but that it *must* occur, simply because there is no mechanism in living organisms to ensure perfect, flawless reproduction for ever.

Suppose you could study a population of chimpanzees in the jungle, on a timescale of millions of years. Clearly, each individual only lives a few decades, so the population is constantly being succeeded by individuals which are different from their parents, because reproduction is imperfect - and remember, this is *inevitable*. It can't *not* happen. All the time this population is inter-breeding, the genes are getting mixed together, and only genes which work well with all other chimpanzee genes will tend to get passed down to successive generations (because individuals with genes that don't work well together will tend not to survive and reproduce).

However, suppose that circumstances arise which cause a group to become genetically isolated from other chimpanzees. This could be as a result of an accident of geography (e.g. an impassable river) or breeding preference or simply great distance. There will develop two distinct groups of chimpanzees which can never again exchange genes, because they have become different enough that mating will not produce viable offspring. This is what biologists define as speciation - i.e. the population has forever split into two distinct groups. Biologists have observed many instances of speciation, so there is no doubt that it occurs.

Assuming that both groups continue to survive, it is again *inevitable* that they will diverge genetically - There is no possible way that both groups, isolated and independent from each other, can change in exactly the same ways, and the longer they continue to breed, the more different they will become. Over millions of years, given that the rate of genetic change via mutation tends to remain fairly constant, the two groups will become as distinct as today's chimpanzees and humans are from each other, and from their most recent common ancestor.

All this is based on what we *know* is true - it's not supposition or guesswork, and remember it's not just possible, it absolutely *has* to happen, because there is no mechanism in biology to make reproduction a 100% perfect, flawless process.

NB: The reason we're classed as apes is that there is no valid way to group all the other apes together that doesn't also apply to humans. In other words, whatever criteria you use to define what is an ape, in order to include chimpanzees, gorillas, orangs and gibbons, humans will also fit those criteria. Indeed, chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to gorillas, and gorillas are more closely related to humans and chimpanzees than they are to orangs, so any classification that separated humans out from those other apes would not make any sense.

Answer 6

We are apes. But we did recently evolve from a more primitive hominid some 200,000 years ago.

Answer 7

No. We evolved from a common ancestor, and so did the modern apes (along with other primates). We evolved alongside them, so to speak, not from them. Think of apes like our cousins, or siblings.

Answer 8

Of COARSE not! that is a rediculous question! if we evolved from apes then why aren't we evolving from apes now? The Big Bang theory is also not true.
Here is the Big Bang theory:
God Spoke and BANG it happened, everything was created
Public schools teach kids that evolution is true but it is completely false, there is no evidence of it happening. it has never happened and never will.

Answer 9

No.

We evolved from a common ancestor, and THEN branched off into humans, apes, monkeys, etc.

Answer 10

We evolved from a common ancestor. The evolutionary "tree" is more like a bush.