Well I'll Be A Monkey's Uncle 648
killproc writes "A new report suggests that interbreeding between humans and chimpanzees happened a lot more recently than was previously thought. The report, published in the most recent issue of the journal Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest, and probably less than 5.4 million years ago."
There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Funny)
Creationists: No they don't, God created us all as we are now.
Scientists: To clarify, we're actually descended from the interbreeding between our ancestral humans and early chimps, which created a third, infertile "hybrid" species, the human equivalent of a mule. Though incapable of breeding among its own, the hybrid is believed to have survived by mating with its parent human or chimp species.
Scientists: Oh, and our ancestor's were happily getting up to monkey business with their cousins (so to speak) for four million years after the split!
Creationists: Oh right, that clears that up then! Cheers
(Second scientist line ripped off [guardian.co.uk] from the rather good article on this subject on the Guardian's website.)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, nobody thinks humans are descended from chimps. Chimps and Humans have a common ancestor (and now the divergence line is a little more blurred).
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:2)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:2, Insightful)
You post seems to have the base assumption that the 'goal' (or destination perhaps) of evolution is to produce humans (or at least culture/art/language).
That aint the case.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Informative)
1) Only one type of evolution is taught. It's split into two for the convenience of explaining things on small or large timescales (just like macro and micro economics are both just aspects of economics)
2) There isn't a specific explanation of why human evolution took a different path. It's just random. Sorry.
And having said debate numerous times over the years, no one has ever come close to answering that question once.
Hmmmn, sounds like you're making an argument from incredulity [cotch.net]
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Insightful)
Evolution is NOT random (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:2)
When I asked a professor point blank why the need for art and culture would develop through the course of evolution, he responded that he doesn't believe those traits would stem from evolution.
Just means my ancestors were some pretty fucking cool monkeys, baby.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Funny)
Just means my ancestors were fucking some pretty cool monkeys, baby.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no 'law of evolution' kind of thing that says that a species will involve into something more complex or intelligent.
Natural selection simply works because a certain species is capable to stay in existence.
Sometimes being stupid and just breed is more efficient than being intelligent.
Ants have a complex structure which allows them to spread very efficiently. Knowing how to paint for some reason wasn't needed for them to spread widely and thus such an feature would only result in extra lugage to carry around.
Maybe out species at some point managed to stay alive longer by being a little bit more creative than our cousins. That might have been an factor that resulted in more offspring.
Jeroen
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:2)
See today's society.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Interesting)
You're dead right. A hundred or so years ago, stupid people did not live very long. Since the middle of the last century, we've been focussing on safety. Cars have seat belts, ABS brakes and air bags, so stupid people end up surviving road accidents. Machine tools have guards and interlocks, so stupid people don't go chopping off their limbs.
We have interfered with natural selection, allowing unfit people to survive. As a d
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:4, Interesting)
Once you've got a big brain and communication you start to make marks. Various animals, birds in particular, remember visual landmarks. Some smart early human realized he could MAKE visual landmarks for himself and his tribe. Even some other animals do this, scratching trees to mark territory for instance. Now communication and marking combine into what you might call early art. As a bonus it serves as a way of recording knowledge.
When you look at it carefully much of our vaunted uniqueness just looks like things other animals do, taken to the next level.
As for other traits, they've been quite well explained. Chances are if you took another species of great ape, kicked them out of the forest on the savanna and then made them survive through an ice age after a few million years you'd end up with a lot of dead apes and some really smart ones.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Informative)
I think your definition of culture might need some expanding - check out last month's SciAm [sciam.com] about orang culture. Their definition - roughly the ability to pass knowledge to the next generation - fits better, and if
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, we don't know that. Elements of most "special" traits we think humans have are present in other species. Many use ad hoc tools (chimps strip twigs as termite extractors and dolphins have been known to use sea urchins as prods while teasing fish) and there was a furor awhile back about a crow filmed making a hook out of a piece of wire in order to extract food out of a narrow
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:4, Insightful)
Art is simply one way of expressing these abstractions. Same thing with God - you see a bunch of seemingly miraculous things happening... something must be acting to cause those miracles. Ergo, God.
As to ants vs. humans, well, ants don't have the same needs we do because all ants are moderately simple. They just don't have the neuron mass to act independently. Nor is it likely for them to evolve the neuron mass, because of structural issues re: exoskeletons.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ants, on the other hand, are pretty near perfect. They are utterly dominant in their niche, amazingly successful. The ongoing ant-ian evolution involves coming up with new and exciting ways to be dominant in their niche. Better venom, better reproductive turnaround, better coordination, ability to survive in other environments. The ability to create art is hilariously useless to them. Advanced cognition is hilariously useless. Can you imagine the worker ants going on strick because they don't get enough nectar, or get sent into too many hazardous situations? Any ant that started evolving in that direction would be less fit to live, an evolutionary flop.
Intelligence is not the end-all be-all in evolution. Why are chimps not intelligent artisans like us? Maybe because they climb trees better than we do. Why not? They didn't need to pick up tool use, because they could out-climb all their predators, whereas we had to have a big ass club up in the tree with us because panthers could climb better.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think your basic point can also be bolstered through the observation of many other species, who have developed certain behaviors that are for the most part inexplicable, except as a side-effect of the specialization of a part of their physiology.
Dolphins, dogs, cats, and even birds (macaws and other parrots especially) have behaviors that would probably do nothing to improve their survival, yet when one thinks about it - may be linked to a trait that *doe
Re: Why the need... (Score:3, Informative)
---
What was he thinking? Of course it stems from evolution.
Art may be the equivalent of stronger muscles for the mind. Artists may make it possible to do completely new and useful activities.
Or easier to understand bee dances- artists may figure out new ways to communicate ideas for the rest of the social gro
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Informative)
Other animals have language (not as advanced, obviously) [livescience.com], have been known to engage in artistic activity [abslogic.com], and appear to experience emotion [whozoo.org]. (Of course we can't say for sure - but then I can't say for sure whether you experience emotion either.) They also show culture, in the form of complex learned behaviors that differ from group to group.
Evolution produces all sorts of things that are not "needed" for survival, like peacock tails.
what your objection comes down to is... (Score:3, Interesting)
>Something is very unique about humans and the evolution model
>does not seem to e
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Informative)
Let me try again. Fitness criteria do not apply across the board to all species equally. What makes a human fit for a human's niche is not what makes an ant fit for an ant's niche. Different niches, different criteria.
I'll ask you a question again, why don't humans have wings?
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Funny)
You're just as much "the latest expression of the evolutionary process" as the billions of bacteria that live in your ass and without which you couldn't survive.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:2)
Do you believe that chimps are descended from humans, then? It's just as dishonest an interpretation without the implicit assumption that H. sapiens is at the top of the evolutionary ladder.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, by all respects, positive mutations in practice DO happen, and indeed one can point to any number of recent examples just in humans, just recently. Tetrachromaticism in women is recent. So is the immunity to the negative effects of LDH cholesterol developed in a single man in Italy (creating descendants among whom heart disease and strokes are vanishingly shockingly rare).
Second of all, think about it logically. Mutation is random. That means that anything it can do, it can undo. So if it can have bad effects, then it can also have good effects (for instance, if one mutation breaks something by changing a T to an A, then the next mutation can change the A back to a T, thus having a positive effect).
Thirdly, creationists generally also admit that mutations can cause observeable variations in a species: longer beaks, shorter legs, etc. But any of these can have positive effects, so they've just unknowingly admitted to something they elsewhere deny.
Finally, talking about mutation and function in this way is itself misinformed. Whether or not a mutation is "beneficial" or not depends a great deal on context. A particular mutation can have a negative effect in one context, and a positive effect in another one. There are certainly mutations that very clearly are better or worse than what came before in all contexts, but by and large there is no objective measure of whether a mutation is beneficial, neutral, or positive. It all depends on a lot of other factors and how it plays out.
Re:There won't be any controversy here! (Score:3, Informative)
Mutations can be negative and positive - consider sickle cell anemia. its 'negative' unless there's lots of malaria in your area, in which case it's positive!
Read more at the Most mutations are harmful [cotch.net] Evowiki page.
Oh - and evowiki catalogues (and rebuts) most creationist arguments if you want to read up on them!
Alt Headline (Score:5, Funny)
Was Your Ancestor a Monkey F**ker?
Re:Alt Headline (Score:2)
Re:Alt Headline (Score:2)
Re:Alt Headline (Score:5, Funny)
How many beers would it take.... (Score:2)
I mean all that hair and leathery lips! Gotta be some serious drinking before she looks good.
Re:How many beers would it take.... (Score:2)
Re:How many beers would it take.... (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't seem to have slowed Paris Hilton down.
Re:How many beers would it take.... (Score:2)
Re:How many beers would it take.... (Score:2)
(with appologies to Scott Adams)
Re:How many beers would it take.... (Score:2)
Truly you are a brave and horny man:
link [janegoodall.org]: By age five [chimps] are stronger than most human adults. They become destructive and resentful of discipline. They can, and will, bite. Chimpanzee owners have lost fingers and suffered severe facial damage.
Let's do the best to avoid the flamewar (Score:2)
Brilliant, Zonk!
*article submitter
And the results of the cross-breeding... (Score:5, Funny)
Huh? I thought it was... (Score:3, Funny)
Ballmer (Score:2)
Key line from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the critical point that creationists who blather on about "macroevolution vs. microevolution" (a distinction without a difference) and "nobody has ever observed a speciation event" (just not true) willfully miss. Species lines are imposed by observers after the fact; they are not inherent in the nature of living organisms.
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:5, Funny)
'Course, most creationists have probably never heard of Zeno's paradox, and if they had to think about it for a while, they'd probably end up concluding that it's irrelevant since Zeno, Achilles, and the turtle were all going to Hell anyway.
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:2)
Sera
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:3, Informative)
1. It doesn't always hold. Animal species are usually defined as breeding populations; two populations which wouldn't normally interbreed may still be interfertile.
2. Borderline cases exist. The offspring of a horse and a donkey is almost always sterile, but I believe there have in fact been (very rare) fertile mules; on the other extreme, ligers and tigons are usually fertile, but frequently not.
3. It's not relevant at all to organisms which reproduce asexually.
Ther
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, it's easy to characterize them that way, without actually stating any of the problems with them.
"The fascinating machines that biological organisms are just do not compute to me as a product of chaos or random placement."
It sounds like that's because you've bought into the remarkably poor analougy Behe uses in calling them "machines" in the first place.
It's interesting: if you read Behe, it sounds as if the flagella, for instance, is some remarkable single structure which only works in exactly one way: an island of function in a sea. But of course, once you look into the matter more, you find that there are many many different types of flagella with all sorts of variations of structure... and even things which have some of the same structures of flagella, but play different roles.
Once you start finding things like this, Behe's picture of things starts to fall to pieces.
"I also grow tired of the sheer arrogance of the evolution camp who appear to believe as humans that our "science" has moved to the point of infallibility."
Again, this is an accusation that's easy to make, not a fact. I've NEVER met a scientist who believed that their knowledge was complete or infaliable. In fact, scientists are probably better than ANYONE ELSE in the way they are very specific about what the evidence can and cannot tell you about something.
I think what you are mischaracterizing is not them claiming to be infaliable, but them objecting to critics who are plain dishonest about how science works or what the evidence is.
"It's the very questioning of the status quo and accepted theory that continues to allow us to advance our knowledge."
And that's the greatest irony of all. No one is questioning things more rigorously than scientists: any number of vast revisions and innovations within science have happened over just the last few decades.
Creationists and ID proponents on the other hand, are the ones repeating the same darn arguments over and over, completely immune to arguments and evidence contradicting their views. They are the ones who insist that they need not actually learn about what evolution says or what the evidence is before declaring it bunk: and when told that this is ignorant, they scream and whine. But guess what: spouting off about something you haven't bothered to understand IS ignorant.
Re:Key line from TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Again, I think you're simply simplifying these people's views in order to make them easier to attack. Even Bill Maher doesn't JUST think that you must believe in evolution or you're an idiot. He thinks that the particular reasons that people claim evolution is false are idiotic and that you can't just look at a huge body of evidence and go "well
Old news... (Score:2, Funny)
3.5 million years? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:3.5 million years? (Score:2)
Earth Time Line (Score:2)
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
more alt headlines (Score:3, Interesting)
Gr-ape lengths made in human DNA study [canoe.ca]
Men mated with chimps for 1m years [telegraph.co.uk] (now that's endurance!)
A chimp off the ol' block [torontosun.com]
Chimps & Early Man couldn't stop lovin' [sploid.com]
Grandma Manimal [corante.com]
And they keep going and going...
Mod Title Up! (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some pictures of a man/chimp hybrid (Score:2, Funny)
*blush* (Score:5, Funny)
That was weeks ago, and it was on a dare. Let's speak no more of this.
Re:*blush* (Score:2, Funny)
Re:*blush* (Score:3, Insightful)
The zookeeper approaches Rob with a proposition. "Would you be willing to have sex with this gorilla for $500?" he asks.
Rob accepts the offer, but only on three conditions: "First, I don't want to have to kiss her. And second, you can never tell anyone about this." The zookeeper agrees to the conditions and asks about the third.
"Well," sa
obligatory joke. (Score:5, Funny)
During their travels, Sal points to a block of row homes. "See those houses? I was on the construction crew that built those, and maybe half the other houses in this neighborhood. But do they call me "Sal, the home builder?" No."
Later, while crossing a bridge, Sal points to a spot on the river below. "See that? Right there, there was this rowboat with a bunch of kids in it, which capsized. Idiot parents didn't put lifejackets on the kids. So I had to jump in and save the little guys. Seven kids, I pulled out of the water! But do they call me, "Sal, the saver of drowning children?" No."
Later still, they're passing the metropolitan zoo. Sal looks particularly steamed. "Okay. See the primate house over there?"
"I fucked ONE chimp..."
At last! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At last! (Score:2)
Chimp Poontang (Score:2)
Yeah, I heard that once you've had Chimp Poontang you just can't get enough...
Re:Chimp Poontang (Score:2)
Re:Chimp Poontang (Score:2)
I believe you mean "orangutang".
Thanks! I'll be here all week...
Damm Dirty ape (Score:5, Funny)
Chimps ARE NOT MONKEYS (Score:5, Informative)
Apes are differentiated from monkeys by their larger brain size, versatile shoulder joints, and lack a tail.
Re:Chimps ARE NOT MONKEYS (Score:2, Funny)
Heh. (Score:2)
I'm thinking less. (Score:5, Funny)
They should go to the mall sometime and revise their estimate accordingly.
Too soon! (Score:2)
Hold it a second! (Score:5, Informative)
John Hawks [johnhawks.net], a professor of anthropology, has a pretty sound and harsh refutation [johnhawks.net] of the article. It looks like, if John is to be followed, that this is some pretty wishful thinking and sloppy work.
He has a follow-up [johnhawks.net] post on his weblog as well.
Re:Hold it a second! (Score:5, Insightful)
It is controversial, as it doesn't match with the fossil record. But if you knew the guys involved (and the internal vetting process at the Broad), you'd understand that this work has gone through massive peer review by some of the most gifted individuals in genetics I've seen.
I'd guess that John Hawks isn't a genetics specialist (Just as David isn't an anthropologist), so when data starts conflicting, it's hard for anyone to give ground. I think it's exciting, because it allows for more experiments to be divised on both ends, and for more clarification to be arrived.
In other words, the scientific process.
Re:Hold it a second! (Score:5, Insightful)
I also happen to think that as we investigate more and more pairs of close species, we will find this is not at all an uncommon pattern. There are lots of hybrids out there in nature, and you can be sure that genes make it across "species boundaries" with some regularity for quite a while.
One final note to destroy my credibility. Is anyone surpised that people had sex with chimps? (Okay, proto-humans with proto-chimps) We are a couple of horny species. I don't know too much about chimp sexual habits, but we humans sure are a kinky bunch to boot.
Re:Hold it a second! (Score:3, Funny)
History is filled with wrong science being accepted for social reasons.
Re:Hold it a second! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that I'm friends with the author. I happen to have a much greater exposure to the study as it was in progress than anyone outside of the institute who attended all the talks.
More recent evidence (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe it was the shepards? (Score:3, Informative)
I AM a monkeys uncle... (Score:2)
You all have it wrong (Score:2, Funny)
Arrrrrrrr matey...
Misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not saying that human evolution isn't teh pwn, but keep in mind that things don't "branch" like in a tree where the original branch remains. When things branch they move off in different directions and the original species before the branch is lost.
Chappelle calls BS (Score:2)
I Never Thought I'd Say this But... (Score:2)
Now if we could just figureout how to make a human-chimpanzee hybrid with four butts.
Not Chimps but Proto-chimps (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to be too disgusting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to be too disgusting, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not to be too disgusting, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not to be too disgusting, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Monkey Business (Score:4, Funny)
Debating (Score:4, Funny)
1) Earth older than 6000 years? check
2) Support of evolution? check
3) bestiality OMGWTFBBQ!! check
The fundies must be clawing their own skin off reading this!
Chimps are NOT Monkeys!!! They are APES! (Score:3, Informative)
MISLEADING! (Score:5, Informative)
Bah, evolution! Iluvatar created us all! (Score:3, Informative)
The interbreeding occurded in Angband where Morgoth created the orks and in Isengart where Saruman created the Urugh.
Are all songs forgotten since the Eldar left?
*sigh*
I get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
So bestiality is now ok by the Bibleguys? (Score:3, Funny)