Evolution from monkeys

[Animavore]

You're still not accepting that u r playing a semantic game

I'm not playing a semantic game. Humans are classified as monkeys by new standards which are taught in schools. I posted a video explaining all this far better than I can a few pages ago but you're all resisting watching it.

[pErvinalia]

I can't watch it as I'm on mobile internet for the last few weeks.

[Animavore]

And the idea that we are highly adapted fish comes from Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. These aren't my ideas and I'm not trolling anyone.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

"1.a small to medium-sized primate that typically has a long tail, most kinds of which live in trees in tropical countries."

Humans are not fish. No matter what definition you use, humans are not fish.

However, the definition of monkey is something else. Xamonas is trying to use it in a way that it was never intended to be used. Let me quote the definition of 'monkey' as taken from a dictionary. Read it at the top of this page.

The word 'monkey' is one in common useage, and is not a primatology taxonomic classification. The correct use of the word is according to that definition. By that definition, the animals apes evolved from were monkeys. On the other hand, apes are not monkeys, because the definition contains the description of a tail.

I also don't live in a tree.

The word monkey has both vernacular AND taxonomic meaning.

If you take the vernacular definition, we are not monkeys but evolved from something that could be described as a "primitive monkey". But that is of no scientific worth.

If you take the strict, taxonomic definition, we are not monkeys AND did not evolve from monkeys, as the two clades that make up that definition do not contain the clade Hominoidea, to which we, and our fellow apes, belong. Rather, there is one branch at the point where the Simians (Simiiformes) split into Platyrrhini (new-world monkeys) and Catarrhini and a second where the early Catarrhines split into four superfamilies, two of which are now extinct, the other two being old-world monkeys and apes.

The Simian and Catarrhine ancestors of monkeys and apes are not currently defined as monkeys taxonomically. It is only by choosing to adopt the vernacular definition for these species that it is valid to claim that apes and humans evolved from monkeys. To do so is, in my onion, scientifically invalid and a little disingenuous.

It's all hair-splitting. But the fact remains, say "monkey" to a zoologist and he understands that to mean a very specific group of animals not including apes or any of their ancestors.

[Animavore]

If you take the strict, taxonomic definition, we are not monkeys AND did not evolve from monkeys, as the two clades that make up that definition do not contain the clade Hominoidea, to which we, and our fellow apes, belong. Rather, there is one branch at the point where the Simians (Simiiformes) split into Platyrrhini (new-world monkeys) and Catarrhini and a second where the early Catarrhines split into four superfamilies, two of which are now extinct, the other two being old-world monkeys and apes.

Wrong. Whatever the New and Old World monkeys evolved from must of been a monkey itself. They could not of evolved separately into monkeys independantly. Apes evolved after this split, from monkeys. You're going exactly off the old system that the video I posted sets out to refute.

[pErvinalia]

If you take the strict, taxonomic definition, we are not monkeys AND did not evolve from monkeys, as the two clades that make up that definition do not contain the clade Hominoidea, to which we, and our fellow apes, belong. Rather, there is one branch at the point where the Simians (Simiiformes) split into Platyrrhini (new-world monkeys) and Catarrhini and a second where the early Catarrhines split into four superfamilies, two of which are now extinct, the other two being old-world monkeys and apes.

Wrong. Whatever the New and Old World monkeys evolved from must of been a monkey itself.

Why? New and old world monkeys are just their names. That's not a indicator of the genetic relationship between them. I.e. semantics over cladistics.

[Animavore]

If you take the strict, taxonomic definition, we are not monkeys AND did not evolve from monkeys, as the two clades that make up that definition do not contain the clade Hominoidea, to which we, and our fellow apes, belong. Rather, there is one branch at the point where the Simians (Simiiformes) split into Platyrrhini (new-world monkeys) and Catarrhini and a second where the early Catarrhines split into four superfamilies, two of which are now extinct, the other two being old-world monkeys and apes.

Wrong. Whatever the New and Old World monkeys evolved from must of been a monkey itself.

Why? New and old world monkeys are just their names. That's not a indicator of the genetic relationship between them. I.e. semantics over cladistics.

Here's the transcript of that vid since you can't watch it.

http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/Ura ... yMate.html

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You're still not accepting that u r playing a semantic game

I'm not playing a semantic game. Humans are classified as monkeys by new standards which are taught in schools. I posted a video explaining all this far better than I can a few pages ago but you're all resisting watching it.

OK. I just watched it.

A few points.

Firstly, I quite agree with him that paraphyletic groups are an abomination. New-world monkeys and Old-world monkeys should not be grouped together in any sensible system of taxonomy - and these days they are not! Monkey, as a scientific term, is defined as the combination of the two groups but is not a true clade.

However, where I disagree with him is that the only way to rectify this is to extend the term "monkey" to include every other species required to combine the two groups into a single clade. This is his solution to the perceived taxonomic problem of monkeys existing in two disconnected clades. Another solution - the one currently adopted by mainstream zoological taxonomy - is to simply treat the two clades as being separate entities and accept that "monkey" does not describe a proper clade in exactly the same way that "fish", "reptile", "amphibian" and scores of others do not. THAT is the status quo.

It may well be that his ideas prevail and the scientific definitions are redrawn (I can see several advantages to that but I am sure that things are not as cut-and-dried as he claims in his video) and if they are, I would have no objections to agreeing that we are descended from that redefined clade of monkeys, or that we are still members of it. However, until that day, we are not descended from monkeys but from common, primate ancestors of both old-world monkeys and apes.

Also, some of his supporting evidence was weak and contrived. What fucking difference does it make that the word "primate" is actually Latin for "Monkey"? It is equally true that "Equilateral" and "Isosceles" mean exactly the same thing "Equal Angled" in Latin and Greek respectively yet I don't hear mathematicians using that as an argument for calling any triangle with two or more sides equal, "equilateral"!

And he is American. So when he refers to mankind evolving from monkeys being taught in schools, he is referring to American schools (and not even all of them given his comments about Texas!) As far as I know, it is not part of the Science curriculum in the UK.


So we are back where we started. According to current, taxonomic definitions, we are not descended from monkeys. If the scientific definition of a monkey is extended, then we may well be but that hasn't happened yet.

[pErvinalia]

...

[Animavore]

So we are back where we started. According to current, taxonomic definitions, we are not descended from monkeys. If the scientific definition of a monkey is extended, then we may well be but that hasn't happened yet.

Sure. I'll be waiting for you when you get here.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

So we are back where we started. According to current, taxonomic definitions, we are not descended from monkeys. If the scientific definition of a monkey is extended, then we may well be but that hasn't happened yet.

Sure. I'll be waiting for you when you get here.

I don't personally give a shit either way. It is only semantics. We are descended from monkeyish primates of some kind - and before that a whole zoo full of more primitive creatures right back to the earliest primordial DNA goo - what they are called is irrelevant to what they were or what we are. But just because some bloke on teh interwebz thinks, with some justification, that they should be called monkeys, doesn't change the fact that, at the moment, they are not.

[Animavore]

So we are back where we started. According to current, taxonomic definitions, we are not descended from monkeys. If the scientific definition of a monkey is extended, then we may well be but that hasn't happened yet.

Sure. I'll be waiting for you when you get here.

I don't personally give a shit either way. It is only semantics. We are descended from monkeyish primates of some kind - and before that a whole zoo full of more primitive creatures right back to the earliest primordial DNA goo - what they are called is irrelevant to what they were or what we are. But just because some bloke on teh interwebz thinks, with some justification, that they should be called monkeys, doesn't change the fact that, at the moment, they are not.

The idea isn't from the internet guy who made the video. He's a student himself and he obviously just decided to make a video on what he's currently being taught. If you look at the picutres as he's talking he shows quotes from at least three scientists/primatologists referencing the resistence met with calling humans monkeys. Also, the fact that it is being taught in schools as a new standard, and given the text books in schools are usually follow behind emerging concensus by around five years, suggests that this idea is already widespread and/or gaining traction within the community.

[Brian Peacock]

I had to disabuse my niece of certain misconceptions this summer when she said, "If we evolved from chimps why are there no half-chimp, half-human monkeys?" I gave her the rundown on evolution as an ongoing, branching process etc, and though I didn't take her to task on her sources (she's only 11) we all know of the impoverished loam in which the seed of that question is rooted. Suffice to say she's a confirmed, mass-attending catholic who goes to a catholic school. But the seed of my explanation will only out-compete and bear fruit over that seed of woeful, wilful ignorance if its watered.

[Animavore]

The Catholic Church accept evolution and it's taught in Catholic schools though. They're not creationists.

[Brian Peacock]

I know, but there is still a coceptual conflict between the bible stories 'explaining' human origins and evolution (& cosmology etc). The religious 'explanations' shouldn't be taught as science, but there's plenty of scope in a faith-school environment to downplay and undermine the facts in favour of the fantasies.