Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: Ruthwick on 23/01/2021 09:37:42

Title: How did humans evolve? (Please don't say from monkeys)
Post by: Ruthwick on 23/01/2021 09:37:42
Post Big Bang, after some millions of years, it is known that unicellular organisms had marked its way into existence. Please share your thoughts on how and what might be the path that living organisms took to be where it is now. Please share your inputs and we can discuss further. (PS: Please ignore any language mistakes. Hope the content is understandable)
Title: Re: How did humans evolve? (Please don't say from monkeys)
Post by: Bored chemist on 23/01/2021 12:52:28
We certainly didn't evolve from monkeys.
We evolved from apes.

It's really very complex. This is a better summary than I could write
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree
Title: Re: How did humans evolve? (Please don't say from monkeys)
Post by: alancalverd on 23/01/2021 15:45:34
"How" doesn't seem all that mysterious either.

Gorillas spend most of their time on the ground, and chimpanzees use tools and collaborate for hunting. A combination of bipedal motion, collaboration and weapons (both projectile and hand-held) allowed our "third way" ancestors to thrive on forest margins and eventually to move out into the grasslands, and it turns out that chimps and gorillas can learn to swim quite efficiently, suggesting that early hominids a much bigger ecological niche in which to evolve without competition from specifically land- or tree-living apes .   
Title: Re: How did humans evolve? (Please don't say from monkeys)
Post by: Kryptid on 23/01/2021 20:29:17
You could write a whole book (or even series of books) talking about the process of evolution all the way from unicellular life up to humans. So I think that might be a bit of a broad discussion for a single thread.

We certainly didn't evolve from monkeys.
We evolved from apes.

If I'm looking at the phylogeny correctly, it seems that the apes (Hominoidea) evolved from catarrhine monkeys (Catarrhini). So it could be said that we evolved from both monkeys and apes.