What do you think of the hypothesis that not only humans have a common ancestors with apes, but?

Question

the earliest humans mated with early chimps to finally produce two different branches, one leading to chimps the other to humans?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/17/tech/main1627644.shtml

Answer 1

Old theory...

Still in the news...

Well, everything is possible, if it was possible we would already have hybrid human/sheep, human/dog for a while...

Answer 2

Key word. " Earliest humans ". So? The truth does not care what I think. I am a scientist and if evidence of this becomes preponderant, I will be convinced by the evidence.

Answer 3

genetic theory, not a fact, and really not a convincing theory.  If you take it to the next step, there should be this still occuring today in some form or another.  Where are the sparrows and crows mating, separating and then remating to form 2 new distinct species?

why didn't they continue to mate together?  you would think that if it worked they would have continued to do so.

nearly all life on this planet share a huge amount of genetic material.

i do not believe that the evidence supports evolution (defined as the changing from one species into multiple species through the process of natural selection). but much more likely there is mutation, selection and adaptation that may result in a wide variety of species within defined genetic set (see the development of dog species for example).  this accounts for changes within and between species without creating new species from old species, if the new were so much better adapted to survival, how can the old continue to exist at all?

chimps and humans share about 96% genetic material, sounds impressive, until you find out that the remaining 4% is really 35 million base substitutions plus 5 million additional insertions or deletions!  a HUGE amount.  

chimps and humans only share 29% of proteins, and have 71% different.

unlike convention evolutionary theory, which is vertical in nature, this is more of a horizontal approach to evolution.

some food for thought.

http://scienceagainstevolution.org/v10i1...

Answer 4

no

we are two different species

we can't have kids together

the only thing that came from humans and chimps mating was AIDS

Answer 5

I agree, this question takes the article out of context. The article isn't saying that humans and chimps bred, it's saying that we had common ancestors that bred, diverged, and then got together the breed again. It's 5.4 million years ago that they say this happened- very plausible because 5.4 million years ago we weren't exactly humans. We were little hominids that lived in trees and ate fruit.

I'm not even going to go into the fact that most people who don't believe in the "theory" of evolution barely understand the basic principles of science, let alone how to think critically. That said, so what?

It's not really that controversial, and who cares if our common ancestors got it on? It's not like our dna is "polluted" or anything. Whatever. If that's what happened, that's what happened, and today we're two totally distinct species that don't recognize one another as potential mates.

Answer 6

So, what else is new????????????

Answer 7

Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes (Chimpanzees) shared a common ancestor millions of years ago something like 7 million years ago! Neither species existed during their divergence. Obviously you need to brush up on your evolution!

P.S. Your link would have been better had it not been so dumbed down. The study would have been more sound had they been able to extract DNA from ancestral populations (hopefully in the near future) of both species and compared them instead of using current/modern DNA as a time line. Also, you have taken the article out of context by phrasing your question that way.

Answer 8

that's bull...., that's believing in science instead of the bible. The only problem with that is, if we evolved from apes, who created the apes????

Answer 9

All right, first of all the article is full of inconsistencies.  One blatenly mistaken paragraph is this one:

"The work has inspired both admiration and skepticism. Many paleontologists have a hard time believing that some of the fossil humans that are known to have lived during that era could have been pairing up with apes."

The very next quote says:

"It's a totally cool and extremely clever analysis," said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard who wasn't involved in the study. "My problem is imagining what it would be like to have a bipedal hominid and a chimpanzee viewing each other as appropriate mates, not to put it too crudely."

both of these quotes contradict each other and both are flawed in an evolutionary perspective.

First let me pull out the cotradiction:

"fossil humans that are known to have lived during that era" vs "a bipedal hominid"

fossil humans did not appear until approximately 100,000 years ago and the second statement is the correct term.  The reproductive party in question for this DNA study is most likely "a bipedal hominid"

Now the flaws:

Ignoring the first flaw of calling this ancient hominid a "fossil human" both of these sources make a crucial error in the second party of this proposed relationship.  The first calls it "pairing up with apes" and the second says "a chimpanzee".  Yes, chimpanzees are Apes, but neither of these terms are even closely comparable to what the actual reproductive party involved was, namely our common ancestor.  The first error was by the author of the article, a layman, so it doesn't surprise me that he could mistake an ape with common ancestor, but the second quote, supposedly from a biological anthropologist was either badly misquoted or else he made a serious flaw in his statement.  Surely a biological anthropologist would be fully aware that the common ancestor was NOT a chimpanzee and to insinuate this was as bad as the layman implying that modern humans were present at this time!  In fact chimpanzees (and Bonobos) have experienced 5-7 million years of their own evolutionary path which carried them far from what our common ancestor was as well.  Even between Chimpanzees and Bonobos there are differences between their short evelutionary diversion of 3 million years.  The Bonobo walks BIPEDALLY a whole heck of a lot, has forward shifted female genetalia (like humans), has a brain capable of gramatical language.  While the Chimpanzee has not exhibited these characteristics as well as the bonobo, but does show more developed spacial/puzzle skills, more tool use and hunts and conducts warfare between troops.  The point of this is that the fact that they are insinuating that the "common ancestor" is any more chimp like then human like is laughable.  It is just as likely, in fact, that the common ancestor between chimps/bonobos and ourselves was bipedal and it was after our division that the chimp/bonobo line went back towards quadruped locomotion.  This is further supported by the division between the bonobo's and the chimpanzees where the bonobo's have retained more of this bipedalism and the chimpanzees have continued to become more quadrupedal.  The most serious problem is that laymen are constantly implying some progressive nature to evolution which, quite frankly, is not true.  Evolution is simply the selection of alleles from within a variable population that results in adaptation towards an environment based on reproductive success.  The DNA evidence simply points out that their appears to be a split between our lines at around 10 million years ago, and then a time of reproducing with each other again some 4 million years later.  Just as likely as the weak argument that the article makes is that they seperated 10 mya and that during that time their was evidently little change between these two groups besides some precursors to bipedalism and when they came back together 7 million years ago one group of either near hominid or early hominid decided that another group which consisted of either partial hominid or near hominid was seen as an acceptable mate and evidently was still capable of producing reproductive offspring since it is present in both of our DNA.  This evidence actually fits in quite well with how I see our evolution as I believe that there was a drastic environmental change that jumpstarted our evolutionary developments at around that geological time, namely the flooding of the great rift valley which bottle necked our ancestors and pushed them towards change and then when the great rift valley dried up and drained these two lines would have re-met each other, one of which would have been more bipedal and probably less hairy, but otherwise quite similiar.  

On a seperate note, within Anthropology Bonobo's are frequently compared to australopithecine for their remarkable similiarities and I could quite easily see these two as seeing themselves as reproductively compatible if australopithecine was still around today and that represents the bonobo being 6-7 million years of seperation from their common ancestor vs australopithecine at 2-3 million years from their common ancestor or collectively 8-10 million years of disparate evolution versus the combined (3-4 million years x 2) 6-8 million years proposed in the article between these similiar common ancestors of our species.

I hope that I was able to make this discussion somewhat clear?  If you need clarification on any of my points please write me.