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You might want to debug your process for figuring out which information sources to trust because "humans didn't descend from apes" is about on the level of "bir

You might want to debug your process for figuring out which information sources to trust because "humans didn't descend from apes" is about on the level of "birds aren't real"

defrost 3y ago
Maybe reread the comment and ask yourself whether they may have meant humans are not descended from monkeys or any other primate living today. We do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.
- Aachen 3y ago
  I also, like the person above, heard we're not descendants of apes and, while it seems odd, took that as my best available knowledge. I never considered that this makes a ton of sense: of course we didn't evolve from apes, after which the apes just stopped evolving and froze their DNA and never had mutations again. Of course they'll be different from their ancestors. But that doesn't mean that our common ancestor was an alligator or something and we developed all ape-like features independently of each other. That's what I took it to mean (when I heard this, idk, maybe as a teenager more than ten years ago), but your comment makes a lot more sense.
  - defrost 3y ago
    No drama, we've all written poorly phrased comments and|or read one too fast and gone for that [reply] like HN was a prize fight :)
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    We didn't just evolve from apes, we are apes. Just as we are animals. But obviously we also frequently use the words "animals" and "apes" with an implied "non-human" qualifier. And yes, almost certainly any common ancestor of both human and modern day non-human apes was likely to have been just as different genetically to us as it would be to our primate cousins, though obviously it's possible genetic change occurred more rapidly in one branch vs the other.
    - bdcp 3y ago
      Wow a whole discussion based on semantics
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago
        Sometimes it feels like 90% of evolutionary biology is arguing about semantics and how to classify things.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    I think you're misremembering. It's usually "humans aren't descendants of monkeys".
    - Aachen 3y ago
      Could be. In my language, we don't differentiate between monkeys and apes. (Like how in English you call any lightness of blue blue, but not any lightness of orange (darker: brown) or red (lighter: pink). Russian would call the blues, sinii and goluboi, as different as orange and brown are to us.) I couldn't tell you the difference in English, so I probably wouldn't have remembered if it was one or the other ...if I got the information in English in the first place
- nerdponx 3y ago
  It's just a weird argument to make because nobody is claiming that we are descended from chimpanzees, monkeys, etc. As far as I know from history, that same strawman argument was used extensively during the evolution debates of the 1930s in America.
  - defrost 3y ago
    It's a place to tread carefully in the context of discussing a multiregional human origin theory. I can't read minds but they may have intended to point out that while humans did not evolve from any of our modern cousins (modern apes, modern monkeys) we all evolved from some common ancestor (generally classed | accepted as an 'ape' albeit not a modern one) and it's conceivable that common ancestor may have had its own diaspora from which various human groups evolved in differing regions of the world. Not my argument, mind you. This all being distinct from Snopes trial era memes, etc.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      That widely dispersed ape we evolved from is already a well-established species called Homo erectus. The conflict this thread is discussing is between the (strong) multiregional human origin model (MRO/MRE) that used to argue that these aboriginal are where modern dispersed populations come from. This view is now considered completely dead on the basis of genetic evidence alone, with dozens of other lines of evidence refuting it. Weaker versions still exist though. The oppositional view was that humans evolved solely in a small part of Africa and spread from there, with no little/no admixture from other archaic humans, called the recent single origin model (RSO). This view is not widely held today either. Modern anthropologists and evolutionary biologists usually believe that humans evolved out of a complex mix of archaic humans broadly distributed across Africa into anatomically modern humans (AMHs). Eventually AMHs left Africa and admixed with other archaic humans in a fairly minor way, forming modern human populations. Differences between academics usually come down to what they think of that within-Africa population structure, or thetiming/significance of archaic admixture. Chinese academics tend to follow in the footsteps of Xinzhi Wu, a prominent Chinese academic that was a strong MRO advocate before his death. That includes the authors of this paper.
nerdponx 3y ago
Given the reference to a common ancestor, I suspect that they means something more along the lines of "birds aren't reptiles", which is or is not true depending on what you mean by "reptile".
pvaldes 3y ago
The term ape has being used traditionally in different ways with slightly different meanings.

You might want to debug your process for figuring out which information sources to trust because "humans didn't descend from apes" is about on the level of "birds aren't real"

defrost 3y ago

Maybe reread the comment and ask yourself whether they may have meant humans are not descended from monkeys or any other primate living today. We do share a common ape ancestor with chimpanzees. It lived between 8 and 6 million years ago.

Aachen 3y ago
I also, like the person above, heard we're not descendants of apes and, while it seems odd, took that as my best available knowledge. I never considered that this makes a ton of sense: of course we didn't evolve from apes, after which the apes just stopped evolving and froze their DNA and never had mutations again. Of course they'll be different from their ancestors. But that doesn't mean that our common ancestor was an alligator or something and we developed all ape-like features independently of each other. That's what I took it to mean (when I heard this, idk, maybe as a teenager more than ten years ago), but your comment makes a lot more sense.
- defrost 3y ago
  No drama, we've all written poorly phrased comments and|or read one too fast and gone for that [reply] like HN was a prize fight :)
- wizofaus 3y ago
  We didn't just evolve from apes, we are apes. Just as we are animals. But obviously we also frequently use the words "animals" and "apes" with an implied "non-human" qualifier. And yes, almost certainly any common ancestor of both human and modern day non-human apes was likely to have been just as different genetically to us as it would be to our primate cousins, though obviously it's possible genetic change occurred more rapidly in one branch vs the other.
  - bdcp 3y ago
    Wow a whole discussion based on semantics
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      Sometimes it feels like 90% of evolutionary biology is arguing about semantics and how to classify things.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  I think you're misremembering. It's usually "humans aren't descendants of monkeys".
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Could be. In my language, we don't differentiate between monkeys and apes. (Like how in English you call any lightness of blue blue, but not any lightness of orange (darker: brown) or red (lighter: pink). Russian would call the blues, sinii and goluboi, as different as orange and brown are to us.) I couldn't tell you the difference in English, so I probably wouldn't have remembered if it was one or the other ...if I got the information in English in the first place
nerdponx 3y ago
It's just a weird argument to make because nobody is claiming that we are descended from chimpanzees, monkeys, etc. As far as I know from history, that same strawman argument was used extensively during the evolution debates of the 1930s in America.
- defrost 3y ago
  It's a place to tread carefully in the context of discussing a multiregional human origin theory. I can't read minds but they may have intended to point out that while humans did not evolve from any of our modern cousins (modern apes, modern monkeys) we all evolved from some common ancestor (generally classed | accepted as an 'ape' albeit not a modern one) and it's conceivable that common ancestor may have had its own diaspora from which various human groups evolved in differing regions of the world. Not my argument, mind you. This all being distinct from Snopes trial era memes, etc.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    That widely dispersed ape we evolved from is already a well-established species called Homo erectus. The conflict this thread is discussing is between the (strong) multiregional human origin model (MRO/MRE) that used to argue that these aboriginal are where modern dispersed populations come from. This view is now considered completely dead on the basis of genetic evidence alone, with dozens of other lines of evidence refuting it. Weaker versions still exist though. The oppositional view was that humans evolved solely in a small part of Africa and spread from there, with no little/no admixture from other archaic humans, called the recent single origin model (RSO). This view is not widely held today either. Modern anthropologists and evolutionary biologists usually believe that humans evolved out of a complex mix of archaic humans broadly distributed across Africa into anatomically modern humans (AMHs). Eventually AMHs left Africa and admixed with other archaic humans in a fairly minor way, forming modern human populations. Differences between academics usually come down to what they think of that within-Africa population structure, or thetiming/significance of archaic admixture. Chinese academics tend to follow in the footsteps of Xinzhi Wu, a prominent Chinese academic that was a strong MRO advocate before his death. That includes the authors of this paper.

nerdponx 3y ago

Given the reference to a common ancestor, I suspect that they means something more along the lines of "birds aren't reptiles", which is or is not true depending on what you mean by "reptile".

pvaldes 3y ago

The term ape has being used traditionally in different ways with slightly different meanings.