A challenging question about Darwin's theory, or not?

[Sabotab]

Hello everyone, im not a scientist, not even close, but i had to find a forum of which i could post my question.

Im not here to second guess Darwin's theories, yet i do find it disturbing:

 

The famous evolution picture (monkey to man) has a couple species in between, where are they? what happened to them?

Now its only the monkey and the man, also, if the whole theory is true, how come monkeys stopped evolving into the "in between" species?

 

Im grateful for any feedback.

Have a good one.

[Strange]

Humans did not evolve from monkeys but from a common ancestor. Some of the other species between that common ancestor still exist, others have evolved into new species and others have become extinct.

[Daecon]

There are lots of great apes. Chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, humans. They all have a common ancestor. Humans didn't evolve "from" chimpanzees any more than gorillas evolved from orangutans.

 

Just look at dogs, they all have a common ancestor - the wolf.

[Raider5678]

The real question is why are morons still alive? Clearly someone chasing a "lightning man" and building "thunder axes" should have gone extinct, but instead the keep breeding. Now in 200 years, morons breeding with morons, and smart people breeding with smart people, nothing changes because how smart you are isn't really something that decides if you die out, but rather that you get left behind in evolution.

[EdEarl]

 

Im not here to second guess Darwin's theories, yet i do find it disturbing:

Is your feeling of being disturbed by the science of evolution because you are uninformed or otherwise? If your concern is from being uninformed, there are all kinds of free information on the WWW, from research papers to video documentaries. If you are afraid to know because of fundamentalist religious teachings, then consider that the Catholic church has accepted evolution. If your concern is fundamentalist, then your church has probably vilified Catholics, and you don't care what they believe, and it's pointless for me to continue, because your mind is unchangeable.

 

The real question is why are morons still alive? Clearly someone chasing a "lightning man" and building "thunder axes" should have gone extinct, but instead the keep breeding. Now in 200 years, morons breeding with morons, and smart people breeding with smart people, nothing changes because how smart you are isn't really something that decides if you die out, but rather that you get left behind in evolution.

Hmm. "lightning man" and building "thunder axes" sound Viking. I suppose by moron you mean someone born who is not very smart. Both genius and moron are accidental variations in the human population. It's sort of like one hit the Powerball jackpot and the other was bashed in the head by a mugger. During their lifetime, the ones that reproduce children will pass their genes along, and the others won't. In hundreds of generations (not 200 years) natural selection assures that those better at survival will have the most children and their genes will multiply, while others will dwindle. Evolution does not always choose the smartest; it chooses the ones having the most children over many generations. If it always chose the smartest, there would be no pill bugs, bacteria, or trees.

[swansont]

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Moderator Note

Let's stay on topic, please. Tangential questions are a distraction, as are challenges about possible religious motivations. This is a question about evolution, posted in the biology section.

[Phi for All]

The famous evolution picture (monkey to man) has a couple species in between, where are they? what happened to them?

 

Remember that evolution takes place constantly, with small changes. It's not easy to point to a place in an evolutionary line and claim there should be another species between.

 

Have you seen a color wheel with hues in the thousands? If you can find one that doesn't have white lines between them to distinguish them, it's almost impossible to tell where blue ends and indigo begins, or just exactly when does orange become yellow. That's how it is with evolution. It doesn't usually change a species abruptly enough to point to a definite delineation.

 

Over vast amounts of time, however....

[TyrantLizardKing]

You kind of got this a little bit fundamentally backwards. Think of evolution as a tree, if that helps. We can narrow it down to primates. The first true primates to evolve were probably something akin to lemurs. Think of this as the trunk (this is vast over-simplification, but picturing it may help you). Now lemurs and monkeys probably arose from a common ancestor a few million years after, think of the tree branching into two huge limbs. The trunk of the left is lemurs and the right one is monkeys. Please take into account that these are not the same species of lemur that existed at the base of the tree, nor five inches away. These are entirely new species that arose from ancestry. Now, let's get back to our monkey branch. Since there are a lot of different monkey "types", there are a bunch of different branches that space out, much like the twigs of an oak tree. Let's focus on one larger branch, this has two sections in it. The common ancestor of both apes and monkeys. Remember, these are not the same species of monkey that were around 10 twigs ago. The ape branch is now branching like a limb of a tree, while the monkey one is still growing (also, so are lemurs on the other side of the tree). Now here we get to the different types of apes that were around earlier in the fossil record. Let's focus on one little section of branches, this includes our early ancestors and the early ancestors of chimpanzees (mind you, these are not actually humans and chimpanzees, but rather different species that are genetically and somewhat phenotypically similar to an extent). This is where you might find some of those inbetweens that you asked about, on the human side of the branch. You get species like Homo erectus that look like a human, vaguely, but a lot hairier and smaller, as well as having some distinct ape like features. The monkeys of today are still evolving, but of course you cannot see it. It's a gradual, very long pace. The monkeys of today are suited well to their environment, so they are not currently developing any human-like traits due to their arboreal nature. Hope this helps.

[StrontiDog]

“The famous evolution picture (monkey to man) has a couple species in between, where are they? what happened to them?”

 

 

In a way, the picture to which you are referring has nothing to do with Darwin. Lest we forget, that was a 1965 illustration by a rather well-known artist named Rudolph Zallinger. It was commissioned by Time-Life Books as a fold-out for one of their Life Nature Library books. The original has 15 renderings representing the artist’s conception of what was. . .50 years ago. . .the latest and most up-to-date overview of evolutionary developments.

There has been criticism from the beginning for the first three images . Zallinger was an accomplished natural history painter, and he drew what he knew. He drew recognizable, more-or-less modern monkeys and apes.

It was never meant to be anything more than a visual aid. If you do a little research into “March of Progress”. . .the title of the work, you’ll find it fascinating.

 

I hope this helps.

[Strange]

Very interesting. I didn't know the origin of that picture. There is more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Progress

 

The "Original Intent" section nicely summarises why the OPs comments are irrelevant and based on total misunderstanding of what was represented:

 

Contrary to appearances and some complaints, the original 1965 text of "The Road to Homo Sapiens" reveals an understanding of the fact that a linear presentation of a sequence of primate species, all of which are in the direct line of human ancestors, would not be a correct interpretation. For example, the fourth of Zallinger's figures (Oreopithecus) is said to be "a likely side branch on man's family tree". Only the next figure (Ramapithecus) is described as "now thought by some experts to be the oldest of man's ancestors in a direct line" (something no longer considered likely). This implies that none of the first four primates are to be considered actual human ancestors. Likewise, the seventh figure (Paranthropus) is said to be "an evolutionary dead end". In addition, the colored stripes across the top of the figure that indicate the age and duration of the various lineages clearly imply that there is no evidence of direct continuity between extinct and extant lineages, and also that multiple lineages of the figured hominids occurred contemporaneously at several points in the history of the group.

[bluescience]

Well most of your question can be answered if you just think of how evolution works. As an environment puts pressure on the individuals of a species, certain difference in phenotypes allow certain individuals to have a greater probability of surviving and thus allowing them to reproduce more successfully, allowing that positive special phenotype-that allows them to survive better- to reoccur more often in its offspring, thus eventually bringing out a change in the species.

 

 

But for this process to happen there has to be a pressure on a species to survive, allowing special phenotype to enter a gene pool and become more widespread in a species. The reason why we have so many different living species, is because every different specie has had different pressures from the environment in their evolutionary lines to cause them to become like that...although there are very rare cases of change without environmental pressures.

 

So to you answer your questions, monkeys simply didnt have the same environmental pressure as humans, to evolve the same way as we did.

Edited April 22, 2016 by bluescience

[Velocity_Boy]

It's a common misconception of laymen and many other folks---including, very significantly, Creationists!--that we home sapiens are descended from apes. From monkeys.

 

It didn't happen this way and the Theory of Evolution explains how it did not very explicitly.

 

We only shared a common ancestry with apes and chimpanzees and baboons. From which we "broke off" some six million years ago.

 

There was no "missing link." Another misconception. There was no "ape to man" morphology. There was no "first man." Or, last ape.

 

We are primates. We are of the species hominid. We are of the species homo. Of which there have been some 27 different subspecies.

 

IN this regard, we are truly the Last Apes Standing! To put it very generally and in a non-science and mundane term.

 

Probably the first subspecies of homo that one could say arguably resembled us today lived around 100,000 years ago. Just before we made our way out of Eastern/Central Africa and headed for Europe. Homo habilis...or "handy man." (He built and used tools!)

 

Evolution is a theory, yes. But in science the word theory carries far far more weight than it does on common everyday vernacular. Like when you say "I have a theory why my boss is such a jerk: he's not getting any sex from his wife!"

 

IN science, a Theory is a collection of facts. All of which became such by experiments and observations and by passing all challenges and tests thrown at them when they were simply ideas or hypotheses.

 

A theory than can be said to be MORE than just a single fact.

 

Evolution has passed every single test or challenge or debate ever thrown at it. With flying colors. (I think I just paraphrased Dawkins! LOL)

 

There really is no other theory or even hypothesis that comes close. Not even a distant second, really.

 

Of all the tens of thousands of fossils we have found over the decades--and yes we have those Transitional Fossils that the Creationists say we don't) not one of them has ever contradicted our understanding of how Evolution works. Rather, they have all confirmed it. Over and over. And we now have far more evidence than Darwin did 150 years ago when he wrote his landmark book, "On the Origin of Species."

 

So don't worry about Evolution being thought of as weird or spurious, and don't expect it to be overturned. Odds of than happening are very very slim, on the order, I would say, of close to A Million to One.

 

Like this!

 

1,000,000 to 1.

 

 

[Dinosaur19006]

There are obvious facts of evolution, with two excellent examples, supported by many fossils..

 

Eohippus to the modern horse

Early primates to modern man & other modern primates.

 

The above facts cannot be denied & Darwin-like explanations provide an excellent theory based on those facts.

 

The reasonable way to attack Darwin-like theories is to provide an alternative explanation which seems to be a better explanation for those facts.

 

Such an explanation would be called creationist evolution.

 

Scientists do not consider god did it as a better explanation due to lack of evidence for the existence of god.

[MonDie]

A species splits when the population of animals gets split into smaller populations that are "reproductively isolated", meaning they can no longer interbreed. Because they don't interbreed, there is no transfer of genetic traits (" gene flow") between populations. Each new population has its own "gene pool" that accumulates different genetic mutations and does "natural selection" differently. This is why the populations develop differences over time. The in-between animals are called "hybrids". Hybrids aren't healthy and may be sterile. The mule is the hybrid of horse and donkey. The mule is sterile, so it cannot interbreed with donkeys or horses or other mules.

Humans began this process, but now our populations on different continents are merging back together. Being born tan is an adaption to places with intense sun exposure.

Edited June 12, 2016 by MonDie

[Endy0816]

A species splits when the population of animals gets split into smaller populations that are "reproductively isolated", meaning they can no longer interbreed. Because they don't interbreed, there is no transfer of genetic traits (" gene flow") between populations. Each new population has its own "gene pool" that accumulates different genetic mutations and does "natural selection" differently. This is why the populations develop differences over time. The in-between animals are called "hybrids". Hybrids aren't healthy and may be sterile. The mule is the hybrid of horse and donkey. The mule is sterile, so it cannot interbreed with donkeys or horses or other mules.

 

Some hinnies can.

Edited June 12, 2016 by Endy0816

[MonDie]

Oops

Edited June 12, 2016 by MonDie