Before anyone comes for me, I grew up southern baptist – went to a private christian school & was homeschooled for a few years. The extent of my “science” education when it came to evolution & the origin of the universe was “if we came from monkeys why do monkeys still exist?” and “look at this galaxy that’s shaped like a cross, isn’t god amazing!!” I’m an atheist now and would like to have some sort of understanding of how our world came to be, but trying to figure it out as an adult with no real foundation has been incredibly difficult, and none of it’s making sense. I also know I’m asking a lot as all 3 of those subjects are pretty extensive, so if you know any good videos or books I’d love some recommendations!
In: Biology
So, here is why there are monkeys. Organisms are constantly evolving. Genetically, our closest ancestors are chimpanzees and bonobos, but we didn’t come from them. A couple million years ago there was a group of apes that wasn’t human or chimp or bonobo. At some point a population of this group split off, maybe food got scarce so some decided to head off in a different direction to look for more. Who knows really, but they split up and went their different ways and didn’t see each other much again. So now as millennia go by, the group that left has been isolated from the original population. During that time, small changes (evolution) have been happening in both groups. But the changes are different depending on the environment and resources that both groups are dealing with. Carry this on a few million more years and they’ve become completely different species. One group split off many more times, most of the split off groups eventually dying out, leaving humans. The other branch probably branched multiple times in that time (I’m less familiar), but two of the branches continue to survive, the chimps and bonobos. Since they split from each other after the human branch split, we’re equally related to both, but they are more closely related to each other. But all three species have continued evolving since they split from a common ancestor. When a species evolves, it isn’t a direct line where all of one species turns into another. It’s two or more populations of a species splitting up and those populations slowly becoming differentiated over time.
Latest Answers