Chimps & Evolution

by Amazing 2 Replies latest jw friends

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  Amazing

  Hi Everyone: Below I discussed Carbon-14 dating and its accuracy in showing how Homo Sapiens is much older than what groups like the Watch Tower Society believe and teach.

  Here are some fascinating facts about one of our 'cousins' on the evolutionary scale. This is fairly short and fun to read. I have added some comments in brackets [ ... ]:

  "Chimpanzees are NOT monkeys. The chimpanzee is humankind's closest living relative and a member of the great ape family, which also includes gorillas and orangutans. Chimpanzees and humans are "sibling species" -- two species that are virtually identical in their genetic makeup. Chimps share 98.4% of human DNA.

  "Wild chimpanzees are indigenous only to Africa, can have a life-span of more than 50 years, and weigh up to 200 pounds. Note: Chimpanzees have demonstrated cooperative problem-solving, the representational use of numbers, and the ability to comprehend and use language, including proper syntax!

  "As with humans, the mother-infant bond among chimpanzees is extremely close. The chimpanzee mother nurses her infant for four to five years. [The same as ancient human women have done, such as Israelite mothers.] The growing chimpanzee child then spends a prolonged childhood, until age ten or eleven, living with his or her family.

  "Wild chimpanzees make and use a variety of tools for gathering and preparing food. For example, the chimpanzees of West Africa practice a stone tool culture. Their hammers and anvils, used to crack hard nuts, are similar to the tools of our own hominid ancestors!

  "Chimpanzees seek out and use certain plants medicinally, to treat symptoms of various illnesses. Scientists following chimpanzees in the rainforest have been led to a variety of formerly unknown plant species that have pharmaceutical uses ranging from antibiotics to antiviral agents." [Source: http://www.cwu.edu/~cwuchci/kinfaq.html]

  Fascinating ... perhaps more of the proverbial 'missing link' than fundys like to believe! - Simply Amazing
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  Simon

  And they were not our closest relatives, right?
  Most of the closer-to humans have died out. Interestingly, even the cookie-quoting blue Creation book admits (about australapithecus I think) that "they were a branch of the human family that died out".
  What, God created several types of humans or did we evolve?
• 

  JanH

  And they were not our closest relatives, right?

  Closest living relatives. I had previously heard that was Swedes, but hey, now I'm relieved.

  Most of the closer-to humans have died out. Interestingly, even the cookie-quoting blue Creation book admits (about australapithecus I think) that "they were a branch of the human family that died out".

  
  Actually, if it hadn't been for the sparsity of the homonid fossil record, to categorize all our ancestors and kins would not have been possible. There is no single species in our ancestry that we can call the "first human", since this person would always be difficult to distinguish from its parents. Where to draw the line is always arbitrary.

  Actually, we can see this in a fascinating example in synchronous time as well. In North Europe we have two species of gulls, which I am lead to believe are called black backed gulls and herring gulls in English. These are totally separate species; they don't crossbreed. However, as you go westward, you encounter various crossbreeding subspecies of herring gulls, slightly varying but interbreeding with their neighbours. This goes all through North America, crossing the Bering Strait, again through the vast Sibiria (the picture is somewhat more complicated, actually, since there are other species inbetween, but is essentially correct).

  Step-by-step over this distance, we find slight variation, indeed approaching the black backed gull. Until, when we come back to North Europe, you find that through this step-by-step variation, we have two separate species, herring and black backed gull, not crossbreeding, but able to corssbreed with its siblings west and east, respectively.

  This is supposed to be a text book illustration:

  An amazing confirmation of the fact of evolution, and you can see it alive today, all over the northern hemisphere.

  - Jan