Man and Monkeys

Common responses to evolution questions:

Teacher: What do you know about evolution?
Student: It says that man came from chimps/monkeys.
Teacher: So what questions do you have?
Student: If man came from chimps/monkeys, then why are there still chimps/monkeys alive today?

One of the biggest obstacles to teaching the theory of evolution in biology class is getting students over the false preconceptions of what the theory really says. In order to kick off our "Darwin Day" activities, I had each of my classes reflect on these statements, and describe whether they thought the following statement was true or false: "The theory of evolution states that man evolved from monkies/chimps."

This statement is false. Evolution (descent, with modifications, from common ancestors) gives us a picture of the history of life on earth that looks much like a family tree. If we use this analogy, then humans occupy a distinct branch of that tree. Chimps, being our closest living "relatives" would occupy a second branch that is near but distinct from ours. If we go back down that family tree a ways (back in time) there is a "common" ancestor that both chimps and humans evolved from. If we continue traveling backwards, we would come to an earlier ancestor that all primates evolved from. In this way, as we travel backwards, we would continually come to points where we share a common ancestor with all mammals, all vertebrates, all animals, all multicellular lifeforms, and eventually we would reach the trunk of the tree that represents the common ancestor to all life.

To use the vocabulary of this analogy, then, chimps would represent our "cousins" rather than our "grandparents". But, in reality, all organisms would represent differing degrees of cousins. The ancestral species--the true "grandparent" on our family tree--would be represented by a species that shares similarities with both chimps and humans, but is probably distinct from anything living on Earth today. So humans DID NOT "come" from chimps/monkeys. Humans and other primate species DID evolve from a common ancestor. But the same can be said for any two organisms or any variety, human, chimp, monkey, or otherwise.