Are humans and chimpanzees descended from a common ancestor which existed approximately 5 million years ago?

Question

Are humans and chimpanzees descended from a common ancestor which existed approximately 5 million years ago?

Answer 1

Some people claim that, but the scientific evidence does not support it.

Humans are unique and very different to apes and monkeys.

The idea that man evolved from an ape is completely false, and is laughable.

It is not supported by any evidence whatsoever.

All hominid fossils are clearly human or clearly ape.

Evolution requires the creation of new genetic information. The proposed mechanism is mutations, yet all obser ved mutations are information neutral or lossy.

All hominid fossils are clearly ape or clearly human. History is full of frauds and over-enthusiastic claims of anthropologists

Man was created as man. We are very different to all apes/monkeys and there is no evidence that we evolved at all.

The evidence does not support he idea that we are evolved from an ape. All hominid fossils are clearly human or clearly ape.

History is full of frauds and wishful thinking in regard to alleged missing links:

Piltdown man - fraud

Java man - a few teeth, and a few skull and bone fragments

Nebraska man - a pigs tooth

Australopithecene (Lucy) - portrayed with human like hands and feet despite the fact that it is known to have ape like hands and feet.

To believe we evolved from an ape requires an awful lot of faith! It flies in the face of the evidence, and of scientific knowledge.

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Answer 2

No. All humans are from Africans.

Answer 3

yup

Answer 4

Your question in some form appears about once a week. There are a number of knee jerk responses that will appear.

Humans are part of the hominid family. They are both part of and descended from them. The process of this development is called evolution. In brief, this means that new species develop and expand as they are better at dealing with their environment then others. See: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/evo...

for a discussion of the evolution process.

The hominids include humans and the apes. They are part of the family Hominidae, of the order Primate. Humans did not "descend from the apes" We share a common ancestor with them and are considered "cousins." Chimpanzees, our closest relative, share a 99% match in DNA. In protein sequencing, the match is closer, no differences at all.  When man's protein sequencing is compared to gorillas there is only two differences in the match with hemoglobin, red blood cells and amino acids. Lastly the antgen-antibody reaction for humans is 97% from chimpanzees compared to 50% for baboons. In other words we're related. DNA is today used to show how closely people are related (as in determining paternity) and to determine if people were at a crime scene (as a means to determine guilt or innocence). It also is used to determine how long ago species split off from each other.

The split from the apes is put at 8 million years ago. That's based both on the fossil remains and the know rate of change for DNA. The first bipedal hominids (walking on two feet) is 4 million years ago. The first known bipedal hominids were the Australopithecus. ("Southern Ape")

      Certainly you'll see claims from creationists that this isn't true. Please note that most statements are sweeping and loaded with bias while lacking the full facts.

Answer 5

That is what genetic data suggests.  The time isn't really that precise and it has been estimated to be 5 to 7 million years ago.  The problem is that it is not an exact science estimating the rate of mutations on particular regions of the mitochondrial DNA or other genes used.  It is very good at telling you which animals are most closely related but animals vary in how fast they evolve for various reasons like how many years is a generation.

<edit to add>We are not descended from a single female.  That is misunderstanding how it works.  There were always many females and they all contributed DNA to the offspring because the DNA recombines.  There has been selection pressure that selects for a particular configuration of mitochondrial DNA.  It eliminated all the other mitochondria so that our current mitochondria could be traced to a single female over 100,000 years ago.  If you go back 5,000 generations you would have so many great great (5000 times) grand parents that essential every person on earth would be your ancestor especially if we came from a population in Africa.  She just had the mitochondria that fit best with the the genetic configuration we inherited to control the population and functions of mitochondria.  It is important to get the metabolism just right.  The apparent evolution favoring a particular mitochondria also distorts the estimated time of a common ancestor somewhat as do other factors like cross breeding.

Answer 6

DNA has already proved we humans came from one female.

Chimps are descended from older chimps.

Answer 7

I was going to say yes, but bravo zulu said it better.

Answer 8

Yes. I don't understand is that all you wanted to know?