Human civilizations are extremely complicated, and defy current attempts to understand them. One indirect approach is to leave humans to one side for the moment and to study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas first. Where does that get us? There are two competing ideas.
ONE The huge differences between modern human civilizations and the social behaviour of bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, are a reflection of recent evolution. In the past few million years, since the last common ancestor, human evolution has taken some strange turns, leading to the advanced technological society we see around us. When we study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas we are looking at creatures without key adaptions and when we try to transfer insights to help us understand human social behaviour we end up mislead.
TWO Once we understand bonobos, chimpanzee, and gorilla behaviour, we have the key to understanding all apes, including humans. Human civilisation may be incomprehensible when we come at it cold, but having warmed up on puzzling out the basis of the simpler social behaviours of other apes, we can expect to start making progress.
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
Here is a thought experiment to dramatize the issue: A deadly virus escapes from a weapons lab and kills all humans. Now the talking-animal niche on earth is vacant again. Will chimpanzees or gorillas evolve to fill it, building their own technologically advanced civilizations in a few million years time. If you believe view number two, this seems reasonably likely. If you believe view number one, it seems very unlikely. One is much more interested in the idea that the strange turns in human evolution in the past million years are a one in a million freak and are a candidate for the great filter
“humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.”
More like “any common ancestor of all apes is also an ancestor of all humans”.
(Humans are not apes if you define apes paraphiletically e.g. as ‘the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of bonobos and gibbons, excluding humans’, but then “humans are not apes” becomes a tautology.)
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
Humans might have adaptations which set us apart from all the other apes behavior-wise, but we share a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos more recently than they share a common ancestor with orangutans. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say we split off from the apes millions of years ago, when we’re still more closely related to some of the apes than those apes are to other species of ape.
Edit: already pointed out in the grandparent, I guess this is what I get for only looking at the local context.
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
How you define the word “ape” makes no difference to the facts about our relationships with our ancestors and their other descendants.
Human civilizations are extremely complicated, and defy current attempts to understand them. One indirect approach is to leave humans to one side for the moment and to study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas first. Where does that get us? There are two competing ideas.
ONE The huge differences between modern human civilizations and the social behaviour of bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, are a reflection of recent evolution. In the past few million years, since the last common ancestor, human evolution has taken some strange turns, leading to the advanced technological society we see around us. When we study bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas we are looking at creatures without key adaptions and when we try to transfer insights to help us understand human social behaviour we end up mislead.
TWO Once we understand bonobos, chimpanzee, and gorilla behaviour, we have the key to understanding all apes, including humans. Human civilisation may be incomprehensible when we come at it cold, but having warmed up on puzzling out the basis of the simpler social behaviours of other apes, we can expect to start making progress.
Which of these two views is correct? That strikes me as a very hard question. I’m uncomfortable with the words “humans are still apes” because that phrase seems to be used to beg the question. The more conservative formulation “humans and apes had a common ancestor a few million years ago.” dodges giving a premature opinion on a hard question.
Here is a thought experiment to dramatize the issue: A deadly virus escapes from a weapons lab and kills all humans. Now the talking-animal niche on earth is vacant again. Will chimpanzees or gorillas evolve to fill it, building their own technologically advanced civilizations in a few million years time. If you believe view number two, this seems reasonably likely. If you believe view number one, it seems very unlikely. One is much more interested in the idea that the strange turns in human evolution in the past million years are a one in a million freak and are a candidate for the great filter
More like “any common ancestor of all apes is also an ancestor of all humans”.
(Humans are not apes if you define apes paraphiletically e.g. as ‘the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of bonobos and gibbons, excluding humans’, but then “humans are not apes” becomes a tautology.)
Humans might have adaptations which set us apart from all the other apes behavior-wise, but we share a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos more recently than they share a common ancestor with orangutans. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to say we split off from the apes millions of years ago, when we’re still more closely related to some of the apes than those apes are to other species of ape.
Edit: already pointed out in the grandparent, I guess this is what I get for only looking at the local context.
How you define the word “ape” makes no difference to the facts about our relationships with our ancestors and their other descendants.