91–100 of 142 posts
The whole idea that humans have evolved from apes is something so stupid that I still cannot digest since the first day I heard of it in primary school. But besides the bone structure, we do have some resemblance, especially the impaired brain functionality to actually believe that shit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if we don't know all the details about our evolution, then we should just say that we know nothing and ignore all the things we actually do know are very very likely? Nothing wrong with studying and figuring out how things work, you should not look at it with an all or nothing attitude. But assuming from the very start that all human species ancestors are some kind of ape is just so ridiculous that it can only sink…
> assuming from the very start that all human species ancestors are some kind of ape No one makes that assumption. We know from copious hard evidence that humans and modern apes are closely related, and from more limited hard evidence that there were other animals with features similar to both humans and apes long ago. More recent human ancestors were not apes (they were more human-like), and way distant past ancesto…
Well established? It's simply not proven, period. You should only teach kids what you are 100% sure about, and when you're not than you have to honestly say that it's an assumption. Otherwise it is not teaching but conditioning.
> Evolution wasn't just made up, it was figured out from the evidence, just like gravity, electricity, chemistry, etc.
Gravity, electricity, etc.. are things you can prove, not the evolution of an ape into a human. I have no clue why so many people desire to believe that our ancestors were apes, I think it's rather pathetic, and most likely due to conditioning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that there’s a continuum in reality. Biological tradition developed around classification of life into categories but life doesn’t come in neat packages.
Just because there is a continuum does not mean specific points along the continuum cannot be identified and tagged as distinct from all other points. There are humans and there are dolphins two different species. It is analogous to the colour spectrum, there is red and there is blue two different colours.
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I'd love a layperson's identification guide.
Why is a homo floresiensis (aka "hobbit") not just a small person? Surely there are people alive today that could mistaken for "hobbits".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#Anatomy
Maybe a visual diff tool.
I did just found some charts showing the evolution of select skulls. Hmmm. I guess I want more.
How do {archaeologists?, paleoanthropologists?} even know where to look for these things? "There's a whole bunch of land, let's dig... [throws dart at map] here."
The corollary of this is pretty awe inspiring - we find only a fraction of a percent of the fossil record that exists, and the fossil record that exists is only a fraction of a percent of everything that happened, all the species that existed, etc. The fact that we can still derive meaningful knowledge out of that compounded fraction of fraction of a percent is amazing; and the quantity of mind blowing things that ha…
The concept of species is a construct of language.
How do {archaeologists?, paleoanthropologists?} even know where to look for these things? "There's a whole bunch of land, let's dig... [throws dart at map] here."
How do {archaeologists?, paleoanthropologists?} even know where to look for these things? "There's a whole bunch of land, let's dig... [throws dart at map] here."
The discoveries also make it seem like they just found a hominid skull, but in actuality they find hundreds of fossils (animals mostly, a few hominids) and it takes years to sort and identify the fossils. It always amazes me that the expert can take a small bone fragment and determine hominid vs deer vs monkey. Even further, which type of hominid they found, even from something like a skull fragment.
How did they determine its age?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> assuming from the very start that all human species ancestors are some kind of ape No one makes that assumption. We know from copious hard evidence that humans and modern apes are closely related, and from more limited hard evidence that there were other animals with features similar to both humans and apes long ago. More recent human ancestors were not apes (they were more human-like), and way distant past ancesto…
> Teaching well-established scientific knowledge in schools is essential Well established? It's simply not proven, period. You should only teach kids what you are 100% sure about, and when you're not than you have to honestly say that it's an assumption. Otherwise it is not teaching but conditioning. > Evolution wasn't just made up, it was figured out from the evidence, just like gravity, electricity, chemistry, etc.…
Forget teaching science at all, then. That's not how scientific knowledge works.
Evolution is not "proven". No empirical science theories are ever "proven". But evolution as a theory is pretty much as good as it gets. Yes, some details get reworked from time to time, but the fundamentals are our best bet.
> Gravity, electricity, etc.. are things you can prove
No. How do you "prove" gravity or electricity?
> not the evolution of an ape into a human
Other people have told you multiple times no-one believes apes evolved into humans, so please stop arguing against this strawman. Modern apes and humans share a common ancestor which was neither ape nor human, and the evidence for this is pretty strong.
Scientists are quick to claim descent because it is exciting. Louis Leakey made a career of it. While it is clearly a hominid fossil so there is no question of familial relatedness, human descent is a different question and absent genetic data we would need many hundreds or even thousands of fossils to be more definitive and there will always be gaps where we try to fill in missing data. As we have acquired and published additional finds over time, we have learned that the hominid tree is much more like a bush with numerous evolutionary 'dead ends' (kind of a biased term implying they somehow weren't good enough), so I think it is safe to say that the tree will remain in constant revision as new discoveries are made.