What is the evolutionary history for man?

Question

what is the evoulutionary history for man?

Answer 1

in scientificaly based said darwin charles that man is from the monkey...but biblicaly man r from the dust and God breathe it to give him life and look like his image..

Answer 2

We evolved from apes, monkeys, all the way down to fish I think.   There's an advert for Carlsberg that shows it

Answer 3

All life is related, as nowadays can be proven beyond any doubt by the fact that we know the structure of DNA down to the last atom.

Humans did not evolve from monkeys; humans, apes and monkeys all descended from a common ancestor that existed several million years ago; the last estimate I'm aware of is 14 million years, about 50 million later than the last dinosaurs.

There seems to be a lot of biblical nonsense (a redundant phrase) in this section, and that is disappointing. Knowledge does not come from the "revelations" of ancient witch doctors but from hard work in the real world!

Answer 4

primitive primates monkeys apes ape-men caveman types modern looking people basically

Answer 5

Your question is too broad and it would be impossible to cover all the evolved attributes and the environments that were necessary in promoting the evolution of "man" in the space provided for an answers' answer.  That said; let me cover the history of the hypotheses that cover one of our earliest and most important steps in our evolutionary history, that being the adoption of bipedalism and some other adaptations which were associated with this evolutionary environment.

The earliest hypothesis put forth to explain this was the savanna hypothesis, which became discredited when the archaeological record of hominids showed sites previous to the time of savannas being the primary landscape feature in Africa, namely sites that preceded 3 mya (million years ago). Archaeology at this point has even unearthed a few hominid sites that are proposing that early hominids were present even as far back as 6 mya, and if this is the case then the savanna is truly an impossible environment to have allowed our evolution. It was Raymond Dart who first proposed the savanna hypothesis and he did so because he had discovered a significant number of hominids that had lived in South Africa. The archaeological evidence for his site proposed a savanna environment. Being one of the first hominid sites to be found, he was free to conjecture whatever ideas he saw fit from his evidence and hence the birth of the savanna hypothesis. Over the last 25 years, as the savanna hypothesis has been increasingly discredited because of the discovery of sites that date back to earlier times that did not have a savanna environment. With this, contemporary anthropology has more and more began to describing our evolutionary environment as being that of a mixed hypothesis, which is a primarily arboreal environment with savanna patches between forests. As some Chimpanzee groups live in this "mixed" environment, whereas Bonobos live in a swampy/arboreal environment and display much more incidences of bipedalism, it is my humble opinion that the mixed hypothesis is also flawed in its reasoning, yet that is where anthropology stands on the subject. Other contending hypotheses for the origins of man are:

The ice age hypothesis, which states that Northern Hemisphere ice ages made the African environment drier suddenly, thus forcing the rapid evolution of our species.

The arboreal hypothesis, which states that our constant tree climbing allowed for the adoption of a more upright posture. There are a lot of arboreal monkeys/apes however, which are by no means showing the same tendency so I don't buy this one.

The hypothesis of neotony, which simply states that some undefined rapid environmental change pushed our ancestor towards more generalized neonatal characteristics (baby characteristics) in order to expand our biological toolkit for adaptation.

And my personal favourite, the aquatic hypothesis, which does NOT propose that our hominid ancestors swam in the open ocean as many of its opponents will have you believe. In fact there is a lot of geological evidence that shows that the Great Rift Valley flooded around 8-10 mya and that this would have resulted in an island (Danakil) remaining in Eritrea. The aquatic ape hypothesis postulates that the apes that were in this area were forced together onto this Island as the water rose during this period of flooding and as the population became too dense for the remaining terrestrial resources to support this population of apes, that they began to experiment with new food sources. Over the years one food source that became more and more abundant were the shellfish in the adjacent tidal areas and it was these resources, which these apes began to exploit (like the crab eating macaques do in South East Asia). As this environment was exploited more and more as a food source, the most successful apes were the ones that had advantages (ever so slightly) towards holding their bodies erect as they searched for crabs or oysters (excellent protein/fat source for brain development I might add) in the tidal regions and over many generations (at least 1 million years of isolation) bipedalism, a reduced size of our hair, the ability to control our breath, increased fatty tissue, a diving reflex and a whole host of other characteristics came about in these now early hominids. Similar adaptations took place in a whole bunch of other fully aquatic mammal species like seals, dolphins and whales. The difference with hominids, however, was that the waters receded after we had only made a partial adaptation towards aquaticism, and as of such they were suddenly left with a new set of characteristics that now had to be applied within the terrestrial environment where these hominids now found themselves. If these characteristics were not beneficial then hominids would have gone extinct then and there, but as history has proven, this little, naked hominid stood the test of time and was able to apply his new biological toolkit to adapting to new environments throughout the globe.

So these are the proposed hypothesis regarding the origins of man, and I can't wait until more archaeology is done in the Danakil hills of Eritrea, and hopefully somewhere there were the conditions appropriate towards preservation so that just a few of our earliest hominid relatives can be unearthed thus allowing this hypothesis to spread throughout the archaeological/anthropological community and dethroning the old-boys-club of archaeology who are ardently holding onto this ridiculous "mixed" hypothesis simply because their life's work has been put towards ideas that depend on it and they don't want to feel like they wasted away their careers. (Interestingly enough the old-boys-club, which preceded the current one, fought intensely against the "out of Africa" hypothesis being proposed by Raymond Dart and even created the Piltdown hoax to slow the truth from emerging until after Dart's death) So the old-boys-club of anthropology does have a history of fraudulently blocking progress in accepting new theories when these theories significantly threaten the contemporary beliefs which many have based their own careers.  The Aquatic Ape hypothesis is one such idea which, if proven correct, would do just this.  Move on and stop creating barriers towards the other hypothesis and the expansion of academic thought in this area. I say this because in the vast majority of undergraduate courses the ONLY perspective that is addressed is the savanna come mixed hypothesis and none of the other hypothesis are even mentioned. Teach these students how to think! If the hypotheses are wrong then the evidence will prove it and the hypothesis will fade, but do this without bias you old-school anthropology hypocrites!

As you can see this debate on our evolutionary environment is based around our first step in becoming "man", that of bipedalism and speciating into our hominid origins.  But, this environmental discussion does also allow conjecture regarding a lot of other significant changes that should have been occurring during this same time such as our increased brain size and the ability to hold and control our breath, which has consequently allowed the evolution of our complex language abilities. (Complex language came much later but had to be preceded by breath control)  This preliminary environment that allowed for our bipedalism was also undoubtedly responsible for the evolution of our reduced hair in follicle expression, our increase in subcutaneous fat stores and the change of our primary skin excretions from endocrine to eccrine, which subsequently became our sweat cooling system when we had to readdress living in a terrestrial environment and is actually much more wasteful of resources and makes humans more susceptible to dehydration and sun stroke then other large terrestrial mammals.

Anyways, our evolutionary history from ape to man is a long story and I have only written the first page of a topic which could easily be written into a thousand pages in its most simple description.  It is an important page though!