Why do we keep on digging up old Apes bones and giving them different names?

Question

This is this just a way of filling in the fossil record. I remember in the fifties there was all this talk about Pithecanthropus Erectus, I wondered what had become of him, and then I found out that he had been given a new name. To make him sound more human he was renamed Homo Erectus. Then we had Neanderthal Man, another missing link in the chain. Then the Cro Magnon Man was slipped in.Who is either an Ape or a Human Being, make up your minds. You cant keep putting stupid names down and calling it the Fossil Record and the lineage of humanity.

Answer 1

They aren't "stupid" names. They have meaning in Latin. ALL living (or extinct) things known to us have a Latin name.

Where they fall in a "chain" is the wrong way to view these early people. More that evolution is a gradual process, not one where a species appears and vanishes suddenly overnight.

I would also not refer to neanderthal or cro-magnon man as "apes". These were human beings. Neanderthals made paintings, musical instruments and had funeral ceremonies. If these things do not identify them as human to you, I don't know what would.

Answer 2

Personally, I think you and your friends ought to stop digging up old Apes bones if you don't know why you are doing it.

As for modern anthropologists being able to distinguish between examples of different species, I should imagine it's the same when you see a new breed of dog that you've never encountered before.  You'd know it was a dog, but you'd realise it wasn't a breed for which you already had a name, so you'd invent a new name.  If someone then showed you a picture of the dog in a book with a different name, I'm sure you'd be willing to adopt the existing name.  

It's the same with fossil bones.  We still don't know what examples along the evolutionary chain we are going to find in the future, so we will be shifting our opinions for many years to come.  Sorry if it offends you.

Answer 3

Wow, you are pretty old if you can remember Pithecanthropus. The fact is that fossils were new back then, but for twenty years, we have had a relatively stable lineage and many additional fossil species. All of these species are apes and hominins, but the debate and changing nomenclature has to do with how closely related they are to other hominins, which is still being debated. Nobody doubts that they are hominins.

Answer 4

they change the names because they change their minds because they didn't know then and they don't know now.

Answer 5

we give them diff names b/c they all have different characteristics.

we are a society that likes to organize things.  put things in order so that they make sense to us in a holistic way, therefore we name things!

different characteristics present in bones means that they are diff species. the lineage in human evolution is a long one with alot of unanswered questions, and alot of undiscovered bones of different species.

i am sure in the future we will keep on finding more bones and naming them different genus and species.... thats what we do!!

Answer 6

Excuse scientists for not assuming that that they know everything before all the digging is done. Science always corrects itself, only the religious pick a stance and refuse to admit when the evidence contradicts them.

The names are just handy tags so people know what set of bones they are talking about. Get over it.

Answer 7

The reason we do this is that in the earliest days of digging up fossils, we didn't know exactly what we had. It's like: imagine that you are putting together a puzzle but you don't have a picture of what the puzzle looks like when it's completed. So you find a blue puzzle piece and think it's part of the sky. But then, you get a bit more of the puzzle done, and  realize that blue piece isn't part of the sky, but part of the ocean, and belongs in a different place on the puzzle. So: when the "Pithecanthropus erectus" was found, scientists thought it was ape-like enough that it was an ancestor of the modern apes. With more data and more fossils collected, they realized that no, it was most likely a direct human ancestor. One reason for this confusion was that anthropologists had hypothesized that human brains evolved to be smart before the trait of walking upright evolved. So they searched for a "missing link" that was like a gorilla with a big brain. But with more fossils collected, they realized that that theory was wrong, and in fact what the fossil record shows is that human ancestors were completely upright walking creatures who were relatively human below the neck, but who were relatively ape-like (small brains) above the neck. So "Pithecanthropus erectus," which literally means "upright walking ape-man," had a name change to "Homo erectus," which means "upright walking man."

Answer 8

why not exactly?