If you can look past the monkey and chimp talk, this is fun…
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The Dispersal of Darwin
If you can look past the monkey and chimp talk, this is fun…
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I guess the references to monkeys are referring back to the words used by general society when The Origin of Species was published.
Even to this day many people have the misconception that humans evolved from chimpanzees, rather than from a common ancestor.
And at an even more basic level, many people do not understand the difference between a monkey and an ape; I’ve lost count of the number of times when a chimpanzee or gorilla is shown on TV and people call them monkeys – this is really basic knowledge that anyone with even the slightest impression of an education should know.
I cringe when at the zoo visitors call the orangutans monkeys!
But apes *are* monkeys, at least according to some taxonomies: http://evolvingthoughts.net/2011/04/is-brian-blessed-a-monkey-or-an-ape/
They are related to each other, indeed they fall into the same order – Primates, suborder – Anthropoidea, and infraorder – Catarrhini which contains all Old World monkeys, apes and humans, but from here the groups split into the family Cercopithecoidea which are the Old World monkeys, and the family Hominoidea which are the apes and humans.
So the monkeys and apes DO share features and an evolutionary history that allow them to be classified together in the infraorder Catarrhini, but they’re technically in different families. All members of a family will share features with other members of the family, but don’t have features that are common to members of another family.
Likewise, you wouldn’t call a tiger a wolf even though they both fall into the order Carnivora.
See this table for the Primate taxonomy: http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/table_primates.htm
I still don’t believe and can’t accept that we are descended form monkeys or apes or chimpanzees. I firmly believe that we are greater than these mammals because there is a God who created us 🙂
Carl – That’s your opinion, of course. I agree, we are not descended from monkeys or modern apes or chimpanzees.
We do all share a common ancestor, however. If you choose to ignore what science shows us, that’s your choice.
I just liked the song!
Wonderful, George! Right now I am working on a Wallace letter, and he is describing to a friend what he has to eat while in the Amazon (1852), and writes “Think of this when you are enjoying your tea and short-cake.” Love it!
I loved the song! @ Carl: you are of course free to believe what you think is right. That said, and no disrespect intended at all, personally, I am much more in awe of a God so powerful, so incredibly, immensely smart who was able to come up with matter. That matter, in turn, with the capacity of self-organizing into life and life eventually able to generate mind, than in a mere magician who just said, “Let it be!”…. Just sayin’…. (:-)…