Did we evolve from apes or are we common ancestor? What did apes evolve from?

Question

I don't know if I'm weird or not but when ever I look at myself I see all the things we relate to as an ape like the way our fists are, when we clench them there's a flat part that apes still have that is used for walking (and we can use them that way if we wanted to). I honestly think the human is a really creepy creature. So I obviously don't believe in creation, I just wanted to know from people that believe in evolution... where or what do you think apes evolved from and do you think we evolved from them or are just common ancestors?

Answer 1

Rach, no one said we evolved from monkeys. We evolved from apes. And THAT is proven so far as any such thing can be.

Yes, we evolved from apes, but not modern species. We share a common ancestor with modern apes, and that ancestor was also an ape of some sort. So yes, and no.

Answer 2

Humans are primates just like apes and chimpanzees, but we did not evolve from them, we evolved with them. 9 million years ago (approximately) we diverged from a common ancestor from the great apes, and chimpanzees. We came to this conclusion through archeological finds and genetic testing which calculate rates of change through mutation. The guy who told you to read the "Third Chimpanzee" is the man because thats a great book, and will explain in great detail the answers to your question.

Answer 3

I think the fundies think more about "apes" and monkeys than they do about "god."   I think if you meet a fundie on the street and say "hello, how are you?", the reply might be: "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

Answer 4

Biologically, we ARE apes.

The ancestor which links us to the other apes has been extinct for millions of years, so there is no surviving example of a common ancestral species, and we have diverged widely from most of the other apes.  

Genetically, there is one chromosomal difference between chimpanzees and humans.  Chimps are our closest relative among the apes.    

Monkeys share a very distant ancestor with apes - many millions of years back.  

One of the people who tried to answer this stated that the fact that "Piltdown Man" has been proven to be a hoax shows that humans did not evolve from monkeys or apes.  This is, of course, illogical and inaccurate.  We certainly did not evolve from Monkeys, and it is impossible to say whether, if the common ancestor for humans and the other apes were alive today, it would be classified as an ape.  

I do not recognize any real conflict between creationism and evolutionary thought.  Science and spiritual belief are two very different things, and the people oneither side of the debate consistently talk past each other.  As I used to tell students in my historical geology class - "if you see the 'hand of god' in everything I am about to describe, I have no problem with that."

Answer 5

As the science stands now we did not evolve from apes.

We do share feature similarities.

There is still a search for the common ancestor 50 to 75 million years ago from which we separated.

As you know we are 98% genetically like certain Chimps.

If we keep digging we may find it.

I am reminded of a Star Trek episode where the major galactic players found they had a common beginning.

So if Klingons, Romulan, Vulcans and Humans we from the same stock pot so are we and apes.

Answer 6

Its actually proven that we didn't evolve from monkeys or any such animal. A long time ago a man wanted to pull a hoax and mixed monkey bones with human bones but the hoax never really cleared up but its proven that we didn't com from monkeys

Answer 7

Human beings are apes. Just apes with less hair. Humans, chimpanzees, bonoboes, orang utangs, and gorillas, all share a common primate ancestor.

The only thing that sets humans well apart from the rest is the extraordinary development of just one organ - the brain.