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The idea about human evolution that stumps creationists (1 Viewer)

CEngelbrecht

CEngelbrecht

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07w4y98
Semi-Aquatic Human Ancestors

This is the idea, that answers all questions about human evolution left over from Darwin and Wallace, leaving creationist cultists with nothing. And yet, by the will of the entire field of paleoanthropology, you're still not supposed to know about it. Because it was the wrong person that made the headway.

 
Mammals evolved on land. Some went into water. None came from water, at least as mammals. Everything came from water at some point. To my casual recollection, no aquatic mammal has come back to land.

Evidence looks one way when it comes to mammals and water.
 
ecofarm said:
Mammals evolved on land. Some went into water. None came from water, at least as mammals. Everything came from water at some point. To my casual recollection, no aquatic mammal has come back to land.
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Actually several. Elephants, rhinos, tapirs, suids and shrews have recent semiaquatic ancestry too.



Which begets no controversy within paleontology. So, elephants have a trunk because they were treading water 37 million years ago. As soon as we're talking about apes going into water, paleoanthropology's tripping.

ecofarm said:
Evidence looks one way when it comes to mammals and water.
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We're talking human aquaticism within the last few million years, not back from when our ancestors were fish 290 million years ago. Plus we never left the water.

gettyimages-638927972_0.jpg
 
CEngelbrecht said:
As soon as we're talking about apes going into water, paleoanthropology's tripping.
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Humans split from modern apes at ~lemur. Apes going semiaquatic is not necessarily indicative of human ancestry.
 
Now that we know why paleoanthropologists object to using apes as a proxy for human ancestry, everyone go tell your grandparents: "people didn't come from apes". We didn't. We came from lemurs, as did apes and monkeys. Thousands of primate species came from a species of lemur. Most didn't make it this far. Modern apes, monkeys and us all arrived separately. It didn't go monkeys -> apes -> people; that's stupid and I'm embarrassed for mankind for ever having thought so.
 
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ecofarm said:
Now that we know why paleoanthropologists object to using apes as a proxy for human ancestry, everyone go tell your grandparents: "people didn't come from apes". We didn't. We came from lemurs, as did apes and monkeys. Thousands of primates came from a species of lemur. Most didn't make it this far. Modern apes, monkeys and us all arrived separately. It didn't go monkeys -> apes -> people. That's stupid and I'm embarrassed for mankind for ever having thought so.
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No, no, listen. We don't descend from lemurs, nor do we descend from apes, that's a common misphrasing. What we do is we have common ancestors with extant lemurs and apes. Lemurs and apes are our distant cousins, not our distant great-great-something-grandparents. Both lemurs and apes as they exist today have had their own unique evolution completely seperate from ours, since our lineages split. We also have common ancestors with all the fish living in the sea, that just goes very, very far back. We also have common ancestors with a banana plant, which is why we share ~46% of our DNA with them. All of that goes back 100s of millions of years. Our last ancestor with lemurs goes back maybe 60 million years, while our last ancestor with e.g. the chimpanzee goes back maybe five million years. Life is a tree, not a line. That is a perfectly reasonable part of the consensus.

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treeolif.jpg
 
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CEngelbrecht said:
No, no, listen. We don't descend from lemurs, nor do we descend from apes, that's a common misphrasing. What we do is we have common ancestors with extant lemurs and apes. Lemurs and apes are our distant cousins, not our distant great-great-something-grandparents. Both lemurs and apes as they exist today have had their own unique evolution completely seperate from ours, since our lineages split. We also have common ancestors with all the fish living in the sea, that just goes very, very far back. We also have common ancestors with a banana plant, which is why we share ~46% of our DNA with them. All of that goes back 100s of millions of years. Our last ancestor with lemurs goes back maybe 60 million years, while our last ancestor with e.g. the chimpanzee goes back maybe five million years. Life is a tree, not a line. That is a perfectly reasonable part of the consensus.
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My point being no ape was an ancestor of man, so we can't use apes to tell our ancestry. That's why paleo-anthropologists object to using apes; they're a proxy.

Your graphic (Pearson) is incorrect. Man and apes do not share a primate ancestor. Our nearest common ancestor was not a primate (or just barely, a pre prosimian).
 
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CEngelbrecht said:
We can use the fossil ape species found, sure.
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Can't use apes that weren't human lineage. Only one species was. No modern ape or monkey had anything to do with human evolution.
 
ecofarm said:
Your graphic (Pearson) is incorrect. Man and apes do not share a primate ancestor. Our nearest common ancestor was not a primate (or just barely, a pre prosimian).
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There is no reason to question, that it was indeed a primate. Whether it was Ardipithecus or Sahelanthropus or Dryopithecus or whatever fossil ape is what can be debated.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
There is no reason to question, that it was indeed a primate. Whether it was Ardipithecus or Sahelanthropus or Dryopithecus or whatever fossil ape is in the wind.
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The Pearson graphic is very wrong.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Those are the ones attributed to the human lineage. Our ancestors must have lived, 'cause we're here.
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One cannot look to modern apes, or any of their ancestors (past lemur, when lemur was the most advanced species on Earth), for anthropology. No ape, except us, has anything to do with humans post lemur evolutionary split.
 
ecofarm said:
My point being no ape was an ancestor of man, so we can't use apes to tell our ancestry. That's why paleo-anthropologists object to using apes; they're a proxy.

Your graphic (Pearson) is incorrect. Man and apes do not share a primate ancestor. Our nearest common ancestor was not a primate (or just barely, a pre prosimian).
Click to expand...

Really? That’s not what I remember from my evolutionary biology course. Granted, that was well over 20 years ago. Have there been new discoveries or am I misremembering?
 
Skeptic Bob said:
Really? That’s not what I remember from my evolutionary biology course. Granted, that was well over 20 years ago. Have there been new discoveries or am I misremembering?
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It has been moved back periodically. Most recently, perhaps 6 years ago, it was pushed back a bit more, to a pre lemur, not quite a prosimian iirc. It's not really a lemur. That's the closest thing existing to point at and say "that's where primates started".

A member here took the news to mean evolution happened in reverse. Humans, then apes, then lemurs... then presumably fish.
 
ecofarm said:
One cannot look to modern apes, or any of their ancestors (past lemur, when lemur was the most advanced species on Earth), for anthropology. No ape, except us, has anything to do with humans post lemur evolutionary split.
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Are you basing that on anything other than wishful thinking? The family relations between the various primates including us was originally based chiefly on the skeletal similarities, being more or less derived of each other, and most of those conclusions from the 19th century and onward have in recent decades been confirmed genetically. Which is also the case for the family relations throughout the rest of the tree of life.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Are you basing that on anything other than wishful thinking?
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Look at the graphic you posted in post 14.

Humans should be separate from apes, not "and". Humans should be 7. The graphic is misleading with the "and". It's separate lineage.
 
ecofarm said:
It has been moved back periodically. Most recently, perhaps 6 years ago, it was pushed back a bit more, to a pre lemur, not quite a prosimian iirc. It's not really a lemur. That's the closest thing existing to point at and say "that's where primates started".

A member here took the news to mean evolution happened in reverse. Humans, then apes, then lemurs... then presumably fish.
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Yeah, but that debate doesn't change the family relations between humans and other apes. The other apes have the same common ancestors with lemurs 60 or so million years ago.
 
CEngelbrecht said:
Yeah, but that debate doesn't change the family relations between humans and other apes. The other apes have the same common ancestors with lemurs 60 or so million years ago.
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There is no relation after 60 or so million years ago. They're not us. They never were. We can't use their behavior or paleontology as a proxy for ours.
 
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