Are humans apes?

[mistermack]

Not at all. Just a word to the wise.

My full apologies then. I shouldn't be so touchy.
I'm happy to learn from anyone, and don't care much if I get something badly wrong.
So long as I understand a little bit more afterwards, that's fine by me.
.

[mistermack]

Still would love to know how significant the experts in the field think the chromosome fusion event was in human evolution.

So would I. I personally feel that it MUST have come into it at some point.
Because you end up with two seperate populations, one with fused chromosomes, one not. If it had NO effect at all, you would most likely have two populations, both with mixtures of fused and non-fused, which diverged for another reason.

If a mixed population of fused and non-fused initially diverged for another reason, say geographical or climate reasons, the fused chromosomes may have gradually become a partial block to healthy reproduction in both populations, after a large number of generations.
The fused may have won out in our line, and the non-fused in the other line.
This could have reinforced the split, making it non-reversible.
.

[hackenslash]

Not at all. Just a word to the wise.

My full apologies then. I shouldn't be so touchy.
I'm happy to learn from anyone, and don't care much if I get something badly wrong.
So long as I understand a little bit more afterwards, that's fine by me.
.

No apology necessary, mate.

It should also be noted that challenging what people say is a very good way of learning, as it can highlight deficiencies in our own understanding that we may not have been aware of, and having them addressed directly is the quickest route to rectfiying them, not to mention those shifts in understanding provide great points of reference for further learning, and any good teacher will tell you that the most important thing in learning, and the hardest to achieve, is generating useful points of reference.

[GenesForLife]

Still would love to know how significant the experts in the field think the chromosome fusion event was in human evolution.

So would I. I personally feel that it MUST have come into it at some point.
Because you end up with two seperate populations, one with fused chromosomes, one not. If it had NO effect at all, you would most likely have two populations, both with mixtures of fused and non-fused, which diverged for another reason.

If a mixed population of fused and non-fused initially diverged for another reason, say geographical or climate reasons, the fused chromosomes may have gradually become a partial block to healthy reproduction in both populations, after a large number of generations.
The fused may have won out in our line, and the non-fused in the other line.
This could have reinforced the split, making it non-reversible.
.

We will not be adequately placed to derive a conclusion either way though, unless we identify what drove the speciation event, only in that context will we be able to place the fusion event wrt evolutionary significance. One slightly inadequate, but potentially the best experimental option we could have in the future would be to try and generate chimpanzees with fused chromosomes, as and when the necessary technology becomes available, to see if it could have any effects that lead to reproductive isolation.

This could offer a marker, even if not an exact estimation.

[mistermack]

We will not be adequately placed to derive a conclusion either way though, unless we identify what drove the speciation event, ....

Yes, that's the HUGE question that we would all like to an answer to.
Going on the confused nature of the latest estimates, it does seem that the "event" was actually a long, drawn out process, lasting possibly as much as four or five million years, with multiple episodes of crossing, before it became final.
In the last ten years, the "split " estimates seemed to be constantly coming down, to as low as five million years, and now seem to be going in the other direction.

The riddle of knuckle walking in Gorillas and Chimpanzees seemed to indicate that all three groups may derive from an ape that was originally habitually more upright. With the gorillas, and later the chimpanzees, reverting to walking on all four, by knuckle walking.
However, the Ardi fossils seem to indicate an animal that could bend it's fingers right back to walk on the palms, on top of branches, like monkeys. So it's a very blurry picture, with clues pointing in opposite directions sometimes.

Africa is a gigantic continent, and the timescale is huge, so there is scope for many more species to have existed than we yet know of.
We may never get near the full story.

[GenesForLife]

Erm, I would like to point out just one more thing, the 6mya point of divergence that is estimated is with the concestor we share with the Chimpanzee, which is our closest living relative, in other words, that concestor needn't be our MRCA, which easily could have been shared with Homo erectus et cetera. The fusion event per se could have happened at any time after the human lineage split from the concestor we share with the chimps to where we definitely know that fusion had taken place, which at the latest would be in the case of Homo sapiens.

[GenesForLife]

See this for an illustration.

Code: Select all

----------------------- Chimpanzee Lineage
     |___________________ Human Lineage Species One (1)
         |______________________Human Lineage Species (2)
             |_________________________ Human Lineage Species (3)
                  |_____________________________ Human Lineage Species (n)
                       |_______________________________ Homo Sapiens.

We know that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees had 2n=48 , we know H.sapiens has 2n=46 due to a fusion event.

What we do not know is when the fusion took place, it could have taken place anywhere in the common ancestors between species 1 and 2, 2 and 3 until n and H.sapiens, the only way to resolve this issue would be to recover DNA from samples of those relatives we share concestors with on our lineage.

[jcmmanuel]

In fact it isn't a good idea to call humans apes. I believe this habit stems from the long tradition of conflict-based rhetoric and thought. This always comes at a price. When most theists stopped calling atheists 'nihilists', they didn't all of a sudden become trustees of atheists. Neither will atheists become trustees when they finally stop trying to sell us evolution theory as something that requires an atheist mindset (the opinion of Dawkins - and this is the Huxley tradition of course - which was not something C. Darwin agreed with). The humans = ape saying is something that came along with this tradition of seeing things only in terms of conflict.

Technially we (homo sapiens and the Great Apes) originate from a common ancestor Therefore, it may be technically justified to say - in a particular sense, in terms of ancestry, that we are, or 'were', apes. Yet it is questionable how helpful it is to put it like this. The human race is separated from this common ancestor some 10 to 15 million years - this is a gigantic time span that no human being can even grasp (neither do we grasp what 13,7 billion years means in terms of the universe). If you think about it, even serious 'intelligent' signs of culture are very hard to find more than 11,000 years ago, and for primitive ones, you will hardly find them more than 30,000 years ago (i'm not talking about stones that look like axes, I'm talking about the signs of simple designs and so on). So even while I fully believe science is right on evolution theory, that doesn't mean the 'ape' story sounds convincing to me. It isn't just 'believers' who often feel like this is an insult to our human dignity - I know non-believers who feel that way too. Many people think the 'boasting with apes' thing is a bit frantic. We suspect this has more to do with using evolution theory for other purposes than being honest with each other as human beings who are all in the same boat. Or, to put it in yet another way: calling yourself 'just an ape' may well serve to avoid thinking about human responsibility. I mean: it CAN be used this way. But by no means are all human beings compelled - nor should they be compelled - to do the 'ape game'.

Let me summarize: The split between us and the Great Apes happened some 10 or more millions of years ago, and today we know we are all cultural beings. There was no human culture 10 million years ago. Therefore it is natural for human beings to find it a bit frantic when people want to see mankind as 'apes'. This has nothing to do with beliefs, it is not an atheism vs. theist thing, it is a matter of how people experience life, it is a matter of how people think of human dignity.

And if someone really wants to posit that we are descending from apes, it may be a good idea to specify what exactly you mean in terms of the 5 kingdoms: we are talking about the "family" of apes then, not the ape "genus".

[GenesForLife]

In fact it isn't a good idea to call humans apes. I believe this habit stems from the long tradition of conflict-based rhetoric and thought. This always comes at a price. When most theists stopped calling atheists 'nihilists', they didn't all of a sudden become trustees of atheists. Neither will atheists become trustees when they finally stop trying to sell us evolution theory as something that requires an atheist mindset (the opinion of Dawkins - and this is the Huxley tradition of course - which was not something C. Darwin agreed with). The humans = ape saying is something that came along with this tradition of seeing things only in terms of conflict.

Mind offering a set of citations supporting this? I will of course explain later in the post why the use of ape in a scientific sense, especially from an evolutionary point of view is justified.

Technially we (homo sapiens and the Great Apes) originate from a common ancestor Therefore, it may be technically justified to say - in a particular sense, in terms of ancestry, that we are, or 'were', apes. Yet it is questionable how helpful it is to put it like this. The human race is separated from this common ancestor some 10 to 15 million years - this is a gigantic time span that no human being can even grasp (neither do we grasp what 13,7 billion years means in terms of the universe). If you think about it, even serious 'intelligent' signs of culture are very hard to find more than 11,000 years ago, and for primitive ones, you will hardly find them more than 30,000 years ago (i'm not talking about stones that look like axes, I'm talking about the signs of simple designs and so on). So even while I fully believe science is right on evolution theory, that doesn't mean the 'ape' story sounds convincing to me.

Cladistics 101, cladogenetic events that take place put the descendent clades, and the species that are part of said clades, in a nested hierarchy, to illustrate this point let us start with humans and consider hypothetical descendant species A,B,C and D, let us name them homins. The homins will now be a separate clade, but because of the nature of evolution they will still be part of the human clade, and effectively humans, in much the same way as birds are dinosaurs, so, considering the nature of cladistics, the idea of homins finding the idea that they are humans an affront to dignity is laughably asinine from a scientific point of view, among other things.

By the way, a clade is defined as "a group consisting of an organism and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch", courtesy everyone's favourite online encyclopedia.

It isn't just 'believers' who often feel like this is an insult to our human dignity - I know non-believers who feel that way too. Many people think the 'boasting with apes' thing is a bit frantic.

And this is of consequence to the scientific validity of terminology and cladistics how exactly?

We suspect this has more to do with using evolution theory for other purposes than being honest with each other as human beings who are all in the same boat. Or, to put it in yet another way: calling yourself 'just an ape' may well serve to avoid thinking about human responsibility. I mean: it CAN be used this way. But by no means are all human beings compelled - nor should they be compelled - to do the 'ape game'.

Bzzz, acknowledging that humans are apes IMO provides no more an excuse for abdication of responsibility than acknowledging that we are cellular does the same, the only gibberish I've seen coming forth wrt the asinine preoccupation with "monkeys" is an appeal to emotion, based on the idea that humans are somehow superior to the rest of the biosphere and in some cases are considered to be separate from it.

Let me summarize: The split between us and the Great Apes happened some 10 or more millions of years ago, and today we know we are all cultural beings. There was no human culture 10 million years ago. Therefore it is natural for human beings to find it a bit frantic when people want to see mankind as 'apes'. This has nothing to do with beliefs, it is not an atheism vs. theist thing, it is a matter of how people experience life, it is a matter of how people think of human dignity.

In other words an appeal to emotion, often driven by the equivocation of the term 'ape' in the scientific context with commonly perceived definitions, as wrt monkeys, for instance, appeal to emotion happens to be a logical fallacy, by the way.

And if someone really wants to posit that we are descending from apes, it may be a good idea to specify what exactly you mean in terms of the 5 kingdoms: we are talking about the "family" of apes then, not the ape "genus".

You may want to note that traditional Linnaean taxonomy is only so good as to facilitate studies of organisms with arbitrary degrees of similarities, in nature, all that exists is species, of course, these species are linked by evolution to other closely related species by more recent ancestors, and to more distant relatives by more distant ancestors. That is all.

The term 'Ape' by the way in traditional taxonomic terms refers to superfamily Hominoidea, and if people confuse it for something else it is just a case of the fallacy of equivocation, and mind you that fallacy is very common, ranging from terms like theory to terms like random.

[hackenslash]

In fact it isn't a good idea to call humans apes.

Is it a bad idea to call ducks birds? Please justify this statement.

I believe this habit stems from the long tradition of conflict-based rhetoric and thought.

What you believe is of little consequence, as you will soon learn.

This always comes at a price. When most theists stopped calling atheists 'nihilists', they didn't all of a sudden become trustees of atheists.

When did that happen? In reality, most theists don't actually know what an atheist is, so it would be a bit hard for either of those events to have actually taken place.

Neither will atheists become trustees when they finally stop trying to sell us evolution theory as something that requires an atheist mindset (the opinion of Dawkins

We will most definitely require a citation for that. I'm pretty familiar with most of what Dawkins has said, as are most of the members here, having mostly been members of his forum before it went tits-up, and I am certainly not aware of any instance of him suggesting that evolution requires an atheist mindset (whatever the holy fuck an atheist mindset is. Perhaps you could explain that for us).

- and this is the Huxley tradition of course - which was not something C. Darwin agreed with). The humans = ape saying is something that came along with this tradition of seeing things only in terms of conflict.

Thank you for playing. Here's what you could have won.

It was Carl Linnaeus, a creationist, who first properly classified humans as apes.

Technially we (homo sapiens and the Great Apes)

You haven't actually bothered reading this thread, have you? I already dealt with this specious fucking nonsense upthread. We ARE great apes, so there is no 'homo sapiens [sic] and the great apes', there is only the great apes, of which Homo sapiens is a member.

originate from a common ancestor Therefore, it may be technically justified to say - in a particular sense, in terms of ancestry, that we are, or 'were', apes. Yet it is questionable how helpful it is to put it like this. The human race is separated from this common ancestor some 10 to 15 million years - this is a gigantic time span that no human being can even grasp (neither do we grasp what 13,7 billion years means in terms of the universe). If you think about it, even serious 'intelligent' signs of culture are very hard to find more than 11,000 years ago, and for primitive ones, you will hardly find them more than 30,000 years ago (i'm not talking about stones that look like axes, I'm talking about the signs of simple designs and so on). So even while I fully believe science is right on evolution theory, that doesn't mean the 'ape' story sounds convincing to me.

Thankfully, rigorous taxonomies don't rely on what is convincing to you, but on what is in accord with reality. It is extremely helpful to put it like this, because that's the fucking way it is. That's all there is to it, and your personal objections are utterly irrelevant.

It isn't just 'believers' who often feel like this is an insult to our human dignity - I know non-believers who feel that way too. Many people think the 'boasting with apes' thing is a bit frantic. We suspect this has more to do with using evolution theory for other purposes than being honest with each other as human beings who are all in the same boat. Or, to put it in yet another way: calling yourself 'just an ape' may well serve to avoid thinking about human responsibility. I mean: it CAN be used this way. But by no means are all human beings compelled - nor should they be compelled - to do the 'ape game'.

Pathetic appeal to emotion, and utter fucking nonsense to boot. Your use of the word 'just' gives away your anthopocentric bias, which is horribly misplaced. There's nothing special about humans in the grand scheme of things, and we're certainly not some sort of superior life form when compared to other primates, an attitude you demonstrate with every word you type here. In short, you're talking shit, and that shit has no bearing on reality. We are apes. That's all there is to it.

Let me summarize: The split between us and the Great Apes happened some 10 or more millions of years ago, and today we know we are all cultural beings.

Let me summarise more accurately. The split between us and the great apes never fucking happened. Please make the effort to read all the posts in the thread before you decided to enter the fray with this scientifically illiterate guff, so that you can learn what reality actually says about this topic, as elucidated by people who clearly understand the subject matter a good deal better than you do.

There was no human culture 10 million years ago. Therefore it is natural for human beings to find it a bit frantic when people want to see mankind as 'apes'. This has nothing to do with beliefs, it is not an atheism vs. theist thing, it is a matter of how people experience life, it is a matter of how people think of human dignity.

You're right, in that it's nothing to do with atheism versus theism, it's about ignorance versus reality. It also has fuck all to do with dignity. It's about what reality tells us.

And if someone really wants to posit that we are descending from apes, it may be a good idea to specify what exactly you mean in terms of the 5 kingdoms: we are talking about the "family" of apes then, not the ape "genus".

Oh, dear. Now you're going to erect some horribly misused technical terms into the discussion to attempt to hide your ignorance. It won't work in this place, because we actually know what those terms mean. 'Ape' is neither a family nor a genus. Ape is a non-technical term that refers loosely to the super-family Hominoidea. Homo sapiens is a member of that superfamily, as well as a member of the family Hominidae, the tribe Hominini, the subtribe Hominina and the genus Homo.

LRN2SCIENCE.

[jcmmanuel]

In other words an appeal to emotion, often driven by the equivocation of the term 'ape' in the scientific context with commonly perceived definitions, as wrt monkeys, for instance, appeal to emotion happens to be a logical fallacy, by the way.

This summarizes the gist of my issue. I'm not arguing that my point is of any relevance to you because there are many ways to look at a problem, and what's problematic from a social point of view for instance is of course not necessarily (or even: rarely) a problem from, let's say, a biological point of view. Science is actually many different things, the study of cultures is part of it. In the scientific study of cultures (sociology, anthropology) the discussion is not *defined* in terms of biological ancestry, because it is the human being from our current understanding that is the object of study (ad fontes, as the renaissance adepts would have said) - not to mention that we are also subjects in these studies. From my point of view, nothing you say here is necessarily wrong, and my approach is emphasizing on a different aspect of mankind - which may sound like I 'refuse' the biological point of view perhaps, but this is not the case, I just refuse to think being a species tells us the entire story of who the human being is.

The term 'Ape' by the way in traditional taxonomic terms refers to superfamily Hominoidea, and if people confuse it for something else it is just a case of the fallacy of equivocation, and mind you that fallacy is very common, ranging from terms like theory to terms like random.

The word Ape has 4 or more different meanings in scientific literature, not to mention populist speak, so this comes as no surprise. But the same could be said about the word 'human'. And it isn't just a matter of making this observation, but also to maintain that all or most of these meanings deserve their space within a particular context. The question "Are humans apes?" was too generic to allow for just one answer.

[mistermack]

At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if you don't want to consider humans as apes. So long as you're not teaching science. Most people with a bit of a clue of the subject wouldn't agree, but who cares?
If the word apes isn't used as a rigid classification tool, it's not that important.
And in general usage, most people use the word in a way that excludes modern humans. So long as you're not claiming some sort of scientific justification, you're just using the words as most people do.

[JimC]

In some ways, jcmmanuel is making a useful obeservation when he notes that placing humans in a larger monophyletic group, and insisting on calling the group apes is quite deliberate. Evolutionary biologists and scientifically-minded atheists (2 groups with a broad but not 100% overlap...) are indeed looking to make a vital point; we are clearly and unmistakenly apes, by the most correct scientific description, and the traces of our evolutionary past are shown in the broad commonality of anatomical and physiological details. We separated from our most recent common ancestor with the chimpanzees some 6 million years ago (not the 10 million he plucked from somewhere...)

Certainly, it is true that our relatively recent run-away explosion of cognitive and cultural complexity is critical. It makes for a vital difference in the way we operate in this universe compared to our close relatives, but we will never have a true appreciation of what it is to be human without taking careful note of our hominid heritage.

[jcmmanuel]

At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if you don't want to consider humans as apes. So long as you're not teaching science. ... And in general usage, most people use the word in a way that excludes modern humans. So long as you're not claiming some sort of scientific justification, you're just using the words as most people do.

Exactly what I meant. Thanks for attesting the fact that making sense in terms of humanism isn't that dificult.

In some ways, jcmmanuel is making a useful observation when he notes that placing humans in a larger monophyletic group, and insisting on calling the group apes is quite deliberate. Evolutionary biologists and scientifically-minded atheists (2 groups with a broad but not 100% overlap...) are indeed looking to make a vital point; we are clearly and unmistakenly apes, by the most correct scientific description, and the traces of our evolutionary past are shown in the broad commonality of anatomical and physiological details. We separated from our most recent common ancestor with the chimpanzees some 6 million years ago (not the 10 million he plucked from somewhere...) Certainly, it is true that our relatively recent run-away explosion of cognitive and cultural complexity is critical. It makes for a vital difference in the way we operate in this universe compared to our close relatives, but we will never have a true appreciation of what it is to be human without taking careful note of our hominid heritage.

JimC, An estimation between 5 and 10 million years is classic and also cautious. Saying 6 million years is certainly possible but it is not an observation, rather a calculation based on the average mutation rate o 0.71% / million years - I myself prefer not to present calculations as facts, call it a matter of style. The outcome of a calculation over a large time span is always a bit tricky.

But apart from this, same remark as to 'mistermack': you reformulate my point very nicely. I have no problem at all with all of us being 'apes' if that is the chosen jargon preferable from a scientific point of view. But I know from experience that it is far from useful to formulate it this way in every possible conversation, because in the end this sort of promotes (sometimes unwittingly, sometimes in service of 'an agenda') the idea that science is there to dictate how we should feel about ourselves, or how we should qualify human life and so on. Science is not being served this way, rather does this distract a number of people from science (for comprehensible, non-religious but rather social or humanistic reasons) while others then parade as the 'smart guys' as opposed to the 'unscientific' plebs. These rhetorical positions are well known today and very popular, but they do not serve mankind, nor is it doing a great service to promote the way of science.

I think I also agree with your last statement ("but we will never have a true appreciation of what it is to be human without taking careful note of our hominid heritage"), at least up to some point. Many if not most of our most recent improvements in the domain of medicine for instance find their origins in the understanding of our evolutionary condition, the understanding of DNA in relation to evolution etc. If that's what you mean with 'appreciation', well, yes, certainly so. But there is also the appreciation of what we 'are' today - regardless the question how well we understand the underlying (physical) 'wiring' and how it came about. The question "Are humans apes?" evokes the question what kind of 'be-ing' are we talking about exactly? Biological being? Then yes, we 'are' apes. But there's not only science. Sapientia et doctrina (wisdom and knowledge).