c.grant

To me the difference between us and the apes looks alot different between say 2 species of the cat family .All have progrested into pretty much the same sort of behaviour to survive ,although sizes differ hugely .There does not seem to be a huge difference in there mental capability. I agree that developing complex language is probably the key to speeding up our development but look how different we look to the apes ,there are similarities but it just doesn't add up . How far behind would you say chimps are to us 10 thousand years 100 thousand, 1 million years behind us in development. say they are 50-100 thousand years behind is this an acceptable difference in which one species of a family could develop infront of another .I cannot see it else where in nature . Take the whale family, all I am aware of seem to be extremely intelligent none far exeeding the other though in the same way humans do to apes:confused:

I do not have a scientific background but all the same I have a question that I think there is no straight forward answers too . Why are we so dominant on this planet? Nothing living even comes close .From my knowledge of the history of earth nothing has ever been so far and above the rest in terms of intelligence and adaptation to different environments in such a brief existence on our planet than the human race . I talking about everything we have achieved ,how we have moulded the planet as tool makers, our views on religion, science our seriously complex social structures our rapid mental development . The world we have built today is simply amazing from a evolutionary point of view . Forget about the politics of what people think we have done right or wrong how we have abused the planet about global warming. No actually global warming ,look what the out come could be if we are responsible for this ,that just shows how quick we have managed to alter this planet because of our impact on the planet ,not clever I agree but an amazing feat for one species. What can a chimp do without human training it cant even start a fire and they are possibly the closest competition we have got . We are possibly superior by a country mile to all that has existed before! To me though this does not seem natural. Has there been some sort of intervention along the line? This could explain our evolutionary jump forward or are we evolutionary anomalies ? or is this the shape of the next phase of evolution for other species as well in time? THIS QUESTION IS BASED ON 33 YEARS OF LIVING LIFES EXPERIENCES not from a singular subject point of view e.g science,religion p.s I don't buy the thumb theory as the total answer.