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Author Topic:   from ape or not from ape?
Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 1 of 27 (135073)
08-18-2004 7:24 PM


This is really just a short subject thing. I keep getting different versions of what our "common ancestor" with the great apes of today was.
What I was taught is that we shared a common ancestor, but it was not an ape so technically humans did not descend from apes (I should say this is also said regarding monkeys too).
Yet I have now seen some commentary by evolutionists that yeah they were apes, just not the apes of today. Indeed I just read some quote by GG Simpson that says to say "we did not descend from apes" is essentially cowardly and mean-spirited, because or common ancestor was an ape or monkey of some kind.
Just looking for what is the most accurate statement to make on this subject. Not intended for a debate on evolution itself, or what order things evolved... just what is the most accurate statement as it is currently conceived in evolutionary theory.
Thanks in advance.

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by pink sasquatch, posted 08-18-2004 7:32 PM Silent H has replied
 Message 3 by NosyNed, posted 08-18-2004 7:32 PM Silent H has replied
 Message 4 by mark24, posted 08-18-2004 8:07 PM Silent H has replied
 Message 5 by jar, posted 08-18-2004 8:09 PM Silent H has replied
 Message 8 by Dr Jack, posted 08-19-2004 5:59 AM Silent H has replied

  
pink sasquatch
Member (Idle past 6023 days)
Posts: 1567
Joined: 06-10-2004


Message 2 of 27 (135076)
08-18-2004 7:32 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Silent H
08-18-2004 7:24 PM


I've seen some use the term "ape-like", which would seem to cover the uncertainty without being in denial of "ape-ness".
(I prefer to think of myself as descended from a "bonobo-like" creature, since I would much prefer to use sex rather than violence to settle disputes...)

This message is a reply to:
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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 3 of 27 (135077)
08-18-2004 7:32 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Silent H
08-18-2004 7:24 PM


Some precision is needed
I think the problem is that "ape" isn't necessarily a very precise term.
One way to take it would be in current usage. It means one of the great apes. Of course, none of thoes is the common ancestor so it you use that definition then we were not descended from them.
Another way (the opposite extreme) would be a "primate". That is so wide that of course the common ancestor was a primate.
The actual technical classification of the common ancestor won't be established until we have a number of candidate fossils and the technical classification is done.
If we follow the "arrow" back from what we see in the existing fossil record it is pretty clear that we would, if presented with a living example of the common ancestor, use the word "ape" to describe it. So yea, we are descended from "apes" in the vernacular use of the word. But, no, we are not descended from the current great apes or anything really like them. They've been evolving for about 8 Myrs too.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Silent H, posted 08-18-2004 7:24 PM Silent H has replied

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mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 4 of 27 (135097)
08-18-2004 8:07 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Silent H
08-18-2004 7:24 PM


Hi Holmes,
This is more of an excellent question than you realise.
The problem occurs because we define taxa that are extant as being embodied with certain characteristics. Unfortunately the ancestors of that ancient group may not possess all of the synapomorphies (a derived character or character states that unites two or more clades into a monophyletic clade) that any given inferred ancestor may have. If they do not posess all of the characters that define that taxon, then by definition, they cannot belong to it.
The problem is solved by the concept of the "stem", & "crown" groups. This basically states that if an organism posesses all of the synapomorphies associated with a given clade, then it belongs in the crown group (generally considered "modern"), if it doesn't posess all, then it is in the "evolving" stem group. This of course assumes that the taxa have been studied cladogrammatically (!).
The best example I can think of is that, for example, all extant birds (& as far as I can think, all other fossil bird species) possess a fused pygostyle (a bit like our sacrum), whereas Archaeopteryx lithographica possessed a long bony unfused reptilian tail. By this definition, ol' Archie is merely "birdlike" (stem group), & not a crown group bird like everything else alive today that is considered a bird.
I suspect something like this may be at the root of the problem. Our ancestor was a "stem" group ape, & not a "crown" group ape.
The reason I think it's an excellent question is because it highlights that amniotes did NOT evolve from amphibians, they evolved from amphibian-like organisms (stem group). There is no such thing as a crown group amphibian in the late Devonian. There is no such thing as a crown group mammal in the Permian, they are stem-mammals.
Mark
[I qualify this for those that are interested/bothered, there is no such group as "amphibian", it is not monophyletic. But for the sake of ease of explanation I include it]
This message has been edited by mark24, 08-18-2004 07:21 PM

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Silent H, posted 08-18-2004 7:24 PM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 18 by Chiroptera, posted 08-19-2004 10:52 AM mark24 has replied

  
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 5 of 27 (135098)
08-18-2004 8:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Silent H
08-18-2004 7:24 PM


Would a modern ape consider the common ancestor as human?

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

This message is a reply to:
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Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 6 of 27 (135177)
08-19-2004 5:50 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by pink sasquatch
08-18-2004 7:32 PM


I prefer to think of myself as descended from a "bonobo-like" creature, since I would much prefer to use sex rather than violence to settle disputes...
Yeah, I have no problem with whatever the correct terminology is, and bonobo-like would personally be more cool.
Just remember though, all that sex they have is so quick they almost don't qualify for "minute men". Well quantity over quality, whose to judge?

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This message is a reply to:
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Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 7 of 27 (135179)
08-19-2004 5:53 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by NosyNed
08-18-2004 7:32 PM


Re: Some precision is needed
I agree with everything you just said... which is why I am still in confusion as to what I should say. Should I accept the vernacular, or not?
Actually as a side topic... who decides such issues? We have a bureau of standards for many types of measurements. Is there one for proper terminology, as in making terms more precise and not necessarily labelling a certain bone this type or that?
This message has been edited by holmes, 08-19-2004 04:54 AM

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by NosyNed, posted 08-18-2004 7:32 PM NosyNed has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 8 of 27 (135181)
08-19-2004 5:59 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Silent H
08-18-2004 7:24 PM


We are apes, chimpanzees are apes - we share a common ancestor
Chimpanzees are apes, Gorillas are apes, we are apes - we share a common ancestor.
And so on for all of the great Apes.
Now, if the category 'ape' has any validity then it must refer to shared characteristics of the group, and evolutionarily we must expect to find those characteristics in any common ancestor. Thus it was an ape.
Further, if it was alive today we'd call it an ape. That means that the only reason to not call it an ape is that it is extinct - will we stop calling Gorillas apes when they are all extinct?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Silent H, posted 08-18-2004 7:24 PM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Silent H, posted 08-19-2004 6:39 AM Dr Jack has replied

  
Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 9 of 27 (135183)
08-19-2004 6:24 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by mark24
08-18-2004 8:07 PM


So does that mean from your position you'd say we did come from apes, and if anyone was interested it would be stem-apes?
Or would you say... no we did not come from apes, we came from stem-apes?

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by mark24, posted 08-18-2004 8:07 PM mark24 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by mark24, posted 08-19-2004 10:19 AM Silent H has replied

  
Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 10 of 27 (135185)
08-19-2004 6:27 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by jar
08-18-2004 8:09 PM


Would a modern ape consider the common ancestor as human?
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Something like this (a joke) was behind my interest in what is proper terminology.

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by jar, posted 08-18-2004 8:09 PM jar has not replied

  
Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 11 of 27 (135188)
08-19-2004 6:39 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by Dr Jack
08-19-2004 5:59 AM


By any chance, do you have a definition for what an ape is? That would seem to get to what Ned and I have a problem with... the precision of that definition.
Not that I'm debating you are right or not, just asking.
It seems as if Mark may have a difference between types of apes, stem vs crown.
Let me reveal a bit more of my LACK of knowledge on primates. Are there such things as APES (meaing just apes) today, or does everything which is an ape belong to a more specific category? For example you mentioned gorillas. Obviously people call them apes, but are there apes which are not gorillas and in no other category?
This may be a stupid question, but I tend toward the wisdom of asking questions even if they make me look dumb.
Also, what is the difference between a monkey and an ape?
From what I understand monkeys separated from the group that whent on to be apes. And so while people could be said to have evolved from an ape-like ancestor, it was definitely not a monkey.
Yet here is the rub, from what you just said, we had to have been evolved from a monkey too. After all whatever monkeys branched from had to be monkey-like (had such characteristics), just as what apes branched from had to be ape-like. So the common ancestor was a monkey-ape?
You know this really probably comes off like I am mocking you or something, but please don't take it that way. I'm am just trying to understand this and it seems that that is the logical conclusion from what you just said.

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Dr Jack, posted 08-19-2004 5:59 AM Dr Jack has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 12 of 27 (135193)
08-19-2004 7:43 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Silent H
08-19-2004 6:39 AM


Are there such things as APES (meaing just apes) today, or does everything which is an ape belong to a more specific category?
No. Everything belongs to a more specific category. The group apes includes two scientific groups:
Hominidae - also refered to as 'great apes' or 'anthropoid apes'
Hylobatidae (gibbons)
Which, along with the old world monkeys make up group Catarrhini.
If you look at the evolutionary trees you'll see that apes and old world monkeys split from the new world monkeys after all three split from other primates.
So, I'd argue the common ancestor of apes and monkeys was a monkey, since it's descendants include both old, and new world monkeys in an ealier branching than apes from old world monkeys. However the common ancestor of apes and old-world monkeys could not be classified as either on the basis of evolutionary trees (although it might be morphological possible to classify it).
And so while people could be said to have evolved from an ape-like ancestor, it was definitely not a monkey.
People did evolve from monkeys, and from primates and, together with all other mammals, from reptiles and fish and, far enough back, from bacteria. It's just in common parlance we refer to the recent grouping to which we are most closely related. Hominids as a group branched off from chimpanzees as a group, thus hominids evolved from apes.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 13 of 27 (135214)
08-19-2004 10:19 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Silent H
08-19-2004 6:24 AM


Holmes,
So does that mean from your position you'd say we did come from apes, and if anyone was interested it would be stem-apes?
Or would you say... no we did not come from apes, we came from stem-apes?
Actually, we are descended from both.
Imagine a branching evolutionary tree that has all extant apes at the top. Trace back all those branches to the point where they all meet. That ancestor is an ape, & it, & everything else above it are crown group apes, because it & they share all of the synapomorphies that you need in order to be an ape.
Now trace the tree back further, at some point we would join up with the rest of the primates. In between that point & our most recent crown-group ape ancestor, are a series of intermediates that posess some but not all ape synapomorpies. These are the stem group apes. In a cladogram they themselves would be represented by branches.
So we are descended from crown group apes, and further back, stem group apes, too. They just existed at different times. A direct lineage can hypothetically be traced from a primate ancestor, through stem-group apes, to the most-recent crown-group ape ancestor & eventually up to us.
Mark
This message has been edited by mark24, 08-19-2004 09:44 AM

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Silent H, posted 08-19-2004 6:24 AM Silent H has replied

Replies to this message:
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Silent H
Member (Idle past 5819 days)
Posts: 7405
From: satellite of love
Joined: 12-11-2002


Message 14 of 27 (135216)
08-19-2004 10:34 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Dr Jack
08-19-2004 7:43 AM


Last things first...
People did evolve from monkeys, and from primates and, together with all other mammals, from reptiles and fish and, far enough back, from bacteria.
I thought I made this clear I was not debating evolution. I am NOT a creationist.
Within the walls of this website right now are posts from evolutionary theorists who have said at times that we evolved from apes... not monkeys, and in other places that we didn't evolve from apes, but shared a common ancestor.
I am trying to smooth out these rather obvious wrinkles so that I can say with a bit more consistency what our ancestors were, in particular with respect to the branching that led from primate to each of monkey/ape/humans.
Let's not get side tracked into debates on whether something happened, but rather how we deal with nomenclature within evolution.
No. Everything belongs to a more specific category.
Okay, so at this point you are saying that everything right now is an ape or monkey, and all those within our area of "ape", descended from what we would still call an ape.
And further, that apes and monkeys split from a line that would have been called "monkey". This one got a bit fuzzy for me.
Here is a link to someone that appears to disagree with you, adding a category of ponginidae, and saying if we lump things together in hominidae, then humans get a further category of homininae.: Human Evolution [M.Tevfik Dorak]
A relevent quote is:
quote:
Primates (order) include suborders Prosimians and Anthropoids
Anthropoids consist of New World Monkeys and Catarrhini (Old World Monkeys & Apes)
One of the superfamilies within Catarrhini, Hominoidae includes family Hominidae (Australopithecines & Homo) and Pongidae (Chimpanzee & Gorilla). Sometimes Pongidae is included in Hominidae in which case subfamily Homininae is used for Homo. Modern humans and great apes are descendants of a common ancestor, which lived about 5 million years ago.
So here this guy is saying we are not descended from apes, which is counter to what you said, yet I'm not sure if he is right or not.
You don't sound wrong to me, but I need a bit more explanation how this terminology is worked out as there seems to be some inconsistencies.
This message has been edited by holmes, 08-19-2004 09:35 AM

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Dr Jack, posted 08-19-2004 7:43 AM Dr Jack has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by Dr Jack, posted 08-19-2004 11:10 AM Silent H has replied

  
mark24
Member (Idle past 5195 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 15 of 27 (135217)
08-19-2004 10:43 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Dr Jack
08-19-2004 7:43 AM


Hi Mr Jack,
Small point.
So, I'd argue the common ancestor of apes and monkeys was a monkey, since it's descendants include both old, and new world monkeys in an ealier branching than apes from old world monkeys. However the common ancestor of apes and old-world monkeys could not be classified as either on the basis of evolutionary trees (although it might be morphological possible to classify it).
The most recent ancestor of apes, Old World & New World monkeys can't have been a monkey. Not cladistically speaking anyway. If it were, then everything above it would form a monophyletic group & they would all be monkeys, even us. Given that most cladograms agree that OW, & NW monkeys themselves form separate monophyletic groups, there is no such thing as a "monkey"! In the same way as there is no such thing as a reptile because it doesn't form a monophyletic group (hence the term "amniote").
To be cladistically accurate, the most recent common ancestor would best be described as a basal anthropoidean, the group that includes OW & NW monkeys along with the apes.
Mark
This message has been edited by mark24, 08-19-2004 09:46 AM

There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Dr Jack, posted 08-19-2004 7:43 AM Dr Jack has replied

Replies to this message:
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