Monkey Evolution?

Question

You people that believe in science say that we come from a monkey. So where does the monkey come from

Answer 1

Actually, homo sapians and other primates share a common ancestor.  If you include Gorilla & Pongo species, then the family to which the species belonged would have been the Hominidae, which is about three families backward from our current evolutionary state.

Answer 2

And where are the "in-between"

half monkey / half human beings?



And why are there still

ANY monkeys at all

if they have 'evolved?'

Answer 3

No where does it say we came from monkeys; we are a branch off the great apes.  And our common ancestor was a fish like creature way back when.

Answer 4

"The evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back for some 85 million years, as one of the oldest of all surviving placental mammal groups. Most paleontologists consider that primates share a common ancestor with the bats, another extremely ancient lineage, and that this ancestor probably lived during the late Cretaceous, together with the last dinosaurs."

Answer 5

Just a word of encouragement as I see you're getting piled on here:

No one has ever seen evolution happen.  No one has ever seen one kind of creature change into another.  Ever.

Yes, evolution is believed by faith.  And true science--the facts, not conjecture, nor assumptions, but facts--totally supports the Bible and Christianity.  (In fact, many great scientists were Christians or honored God.)

The facts of science are what convinced me that the Bible is true.  Facts like:

- Most all mutations are harmful.

- All creatures have been seen only to give rise to their own kind.  No one has ever, even over thousands of years, seen one kind of creature evolve into another.  (Sure, there are small variations within kinds, but macroevolution has never been observed.)

- Life only comes from life.

God bless you and hold to the truth!

Answer 6

This question, in various forms, gets asked a couple times a week in the Anthropology section.  The most trivial response is of course, that Humans are not monkeys, but rather apes.  

Study of the fossil record indicates that apes and monkeys had their last common ancestor about 20 million years ago.  From that population, some members evolved into the many species of monkeys and others evolved into the many species of ape, including the apes that became us.

For those who may have some genuine interest in primate evolution, the following is a brief overview. The links below will provide you with more detail.

Fossil dental remains from the Cretaceous period and Paleocene epoch have been identified as primates, based on their unspecialized dental pattern (3 incisors, 1 canine, 4 premolars and 3 molars), but with blunted cusps, showing that they were doing something different than insectivores (later primates show a lot of different dental patterns, showing they have adapted to a wide variety of foods and feeding strategies).

By the Eocene epoch, the first primates were replaced by prosimians.  Prosimians differ from archaic primates by showing larger brains, evidence that they have lost whiskers, evidence that the eyes are getting closer together in the front of the face and shortening of the snout (the last two seem to be adaptations toward living in trees, making binocular vision possible).

By the end of the Eocene, the first anthropoids can be identified.  Anthropoids (monkeys and apes) show continued adaptation for living in trees.  It is uncertain if New World monkeys (Platyrrhines) split from the Anthropoids ancestral to Old World monkeys and ape, or evolved in parallel from the prosimians.

By the Miocene, the Hominoids (apes) have split from the Old World monkeys about 20-odd millions years old.

Apes radiated to fit many environments and one population around seven million years ago adapted to savanna environments, adapted to using tools and the higher cooperation we call "culture".  The result were us.

wl

Answer 7

The question was where do monkeys come from? The ancestor of all primates, including monkeys, emerged in Africa. Presently, there are two great Infraorders of monkeys, New World (Central and South America) and Old World (Asian, Southern Europe and Africa): Platyrrhini and Catarrhini. Since they have been apart so long, they have a number of traits that distinguish each group (to say nothing of great divergence among the many different groups -- orders, families, genuses, and species -- within each) such as the inability of Old World monkeys to grasp things with their tails. But just like humans, New World monkeys share a common ancestor with Old World monkeys, from whom they split even earlier than humans, about 40 million years ago, when the ancestors of New World monkeys are thought to have migrated across the much narrower Atlantic at the time -- probably on floating trees much the way that recent Tsunami victims were found clinging to trees thousands of miles from their origin (not unlikely as primates evolved in trees and all New World monkeys are aboreal). According to fossil and DNA evidence, humans share much more DNA with Old World monkeys, from whom the ancestors of humans and other apes split about 20 million years, from a common ancestor scientists call Proconsul. Humans and apes themselves split from a common ancestor about 5 to 8 million years ago.

"Our understanding of the fossil record shows that distinctively human traits appeared neither recently nor all at once. Rather, they evolved piecemeal over a period of roughly 5 million years. By 4 million years ago, humans were habitually bipedal (walking on two legs) yet had brains roughly a third of the size of a modern human's (about the size of a modern ape's brain). By 2.5 million years ago the manufacture of stone tools was common. Large increases in brain size occurred even later. Complex behaviors such as adaptation to a wide range of environments and cultural diversification emerged only within the last 100,000 years."

Similarly, the traits of all the different living primates  -- including both humans and the different orders, families, genuses, and species of monkeys -- emerged over the whole 50 million years from a few common traits shared by all primates to give us what we have today.

The common traits shared by all primates such as fingers, opposable thumbs, eyes on the front of the face and ability to locate sounds with even greater accuracy than dogs, for example, arose out of the problems faced by tree life. Without ancestors who lived in trees there would be no humans. Specializations such as our foot and bipedal locomotion, as opposed to another set of hands, are very recent developments resulting from our ancestors moving out of the trees onto the African savanna and facing a whole different set of requirements and the opportunities their adjustments opened up.

Our modern species, Homo sapiens sapiens, whose evolution has been speeding up in recent decades, are actually more different from early Homo sapiens than early Homo sapiens are from the species that preceded them. So we can see that even humans are not the same thing that they were when they first appeared 200,000 years ago.

Answer 8

We don't "come from a monkey." That claim is a red herring put out by creationists to confuse and waste people's time.

From the National Academy of Sciences:

"If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

     Humans did not evolve from modern apes, but humans and modern apes shared a common ancestor, a species that no longer exists. Because we share a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas, we have many anatomical, genetic, biochemical, and even behavioral similarities with these African great apes. We are less similar to the Asian apes--orangutans and gibbons--and even less similar to monkeys, because we share common ancestors with these groups in the more distant past.

     Evolution is a branching or splitting process in which populations split off from one another and gradually become different. As the two groups become isolated from each other, they stop sharing genes, and eventually genetic differences increase until members of the groups can no longer interbreed. At this point, they have become separate species. Through time, these two species might give rise to new species, and so on through millennia. "

http://www.nap.edu/html/creationism/appe...

From Straight Dope:

Why isn't this argument used against evolution? Well, it is--it's just used incorrectly. Let's start with a quote from the recently re-released publication, Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences (Second Edition).   In the section on "Human Evolution," the publication notes, "today there is no significant scientific doubt about the close evolutionary relationships among all primates, including humans."

Evolution doesn't work as a simple find-and-replace function. Have you ever seen the evolutionary "tree" diagrams in a science book?  Those trees show how different species branch off and go in different evolutionary directions. That doesn't necessarily mean everything else dies. As the National Academy of Sciences document notes, archaeological finds "reveal a well-branched tree, parts of which trace a general evolutionary sequence leading from ape-like forms to modern humans."

The NAS publication actually answers your question directly in its Appendix of Frequently Asked Questions. It says:

"Humans did not evolve from modern apes, but humans and modern apes shared a common ancestor, a species that no longer exists. Because we share a recent common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas, we have many anatomical, genetic, biochemical, and even behavioral similarities with these African great apes. We are less similar to the Asian apes orangutans and gibbons and even less similar to monkeys, because we share common ancestors with these groups in the more distant past.

"Evolution is a branching or splitting process in which populations split off from one another and gradually become different. As the two groups become isolated from each other, they stop sharing genes, and eventually genetic differences increase until members of the groups can no longer interbreed. At this point, they have become separate species. Through time, these two species might give rise to new species, and so on through millennia."

In other words, the "ape-like" animals that eventually gave rise to humans split up into several branches, all of which evolved in different directions. Some of those lines became become extinct; others survived. One of the surviving groups includes you and me (and in theory P.E. teachers, although one wonders). Other survivors include the various species of monkeys and apes we find today.

So, John, I've convinced you, right? Attaboy--always nice to have another ally in the fight against ignorance. Incidentally, you can find the NAS publication on the web at http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism/. Lots of good info in there!

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mevo...

Answer 9

i believe in creation...evolutions theory has holes. and God made the worls and everything in it

Answer 10

Everyone knows where the monkey came from.

Charley Darwin's mother gave birth to the first one.

Answer 11

Monkeys come from Asia, Africa.

Answer 12

Adam and Eve were the first monkeys

Answer 13

That is YOUR problem, belief. Belief is the disease and evidence is the cure. We are apes and share a common ancestor with modern apes. The common ancestor was an ape, or very ape like. We can go back all the way to the first bacterial boring's in rock, if you want to.

You see, we have evidence; you have nonsense!