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PaleoFreak — Yes
Published: 2006-06-14 11:34:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 2851; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 36
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There is strange trend in scientific divulgation that obscures our evolutionary origin. Sentences like "we don't descend from monkeys" are too common, and they're wrong.Related content
Comments: 17
I realize you submitted this a long time ago. but I had to comment. this is F#$@ing awesome! I couldn't agree more!
Gods hand?!? Give me a break! LOL
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the ones who say we didnt descend from monkeys mean that the monkey-like creature from which humans and other apes descended probably wouldn't fit our present-day definition of a monkey.
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Let's see some present-day definitions:
From the Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:
Monkey:
"1 : a nonhuman primate mammal with the exception usually of the lemurs and tarsiers; especially : any of the smaller longer-tailed catarrhine or platyrrhine primates as contrasted with the apes."
From Dictionary.com:
Monkey:
"1. any mammal of the order Primates, including the guenons, macaques, langurs, and capuchins, but excluding humans, the anthropoid apes, and, usually, the tarsier and prosimians."
From the compact Oxford English Dictionary:
"1. a small to medium-sized primate typically having a long tail and living in trees in tropical countries."
Wiktionary:
"Any of several members of the infra-order Simiiformes of primates, generally smaller than the apes, and distinguished from them by having a tail and cheek pouches."
Allwords.com:
"any mammal belonging to the primates other than a human, ape, chimpanzee, gibbon, orang utan or lemur, with a hairy coat, nails instead of claws and usually tree-dwelling"
...
Our monkey ancestors fit well these and other common definitions
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The point I was geting at was that in taxonomy you normally only categorize animals that still exist today (perfect nesting, trees, etc.), because many extinct animals, or rather animals that have speciated into different kinds of animals, don't fit into any present day categore most of the time. say, dinosaurs. are they birds, or are they reptiles? they have no category that's applicable to any present critters.
If I ran into the ape-thing we descended from, I would call it a monkey too. I just meant that it probably had combined traits of apes and monkeys, so it's not technically corect to say it's a monkey.
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See the image and go down the tree through the common ancestors. You get traits of apes, then, below, traits of monkeys. The last common ancestor of all extant monkeys, for example, had perfect monkey traits (which extant monkeys had inherited) and was also our ancestor. By looking the shape of the phylogenetic tree of the Primates we can see humans descend from hundreds of ape and monkey species. That's what I pretended to explain graphically.
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hehehehe nice. Apes toooooo common, they might as well say lizards, which I wouldn't mind
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If I go to the F-in Bible Belt, THIS is what I'm wearing.
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Cool. That's the sort of thing I would wear on a T-Shirt if I ever visited Texas.
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That hurt my feelings. 
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So who created monkeys then? o.0 and how long ago???
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OBVIOUSLY Satan is to blame. Um, some...oddthousand years ago...to, uh, test the um, true believers?
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Of course! It's all so obvious now! Satan tweaks DNA to create disease and random species so God isn't to blame!
Try disproving that with your so-called 'logic' (I'm taking the piss on a whole new level right now)
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I'm pretty sure my logic just fell out my ass.
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