“Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, the new find provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor — but each evolved and changed separately along the way.”
“Human exceptionalism received a boost today with the news that human beings apparently did not evolve from apes”
—Is there anyone that can explain where the author got this idea from?
I don’t know what the ‘firstthings’ site is about, but I’ve read a number of articles on this fossil find and this the first I’ve seen of anyone suggesting such a thing - and the suggestion makes zero sense. I think they are really confused.
It used to be thought that the common ancestor would be essentially a chimp anatomically, and that it was humans that did virtually all the changing physically while chimps changed little since the common ancestor. But the fossil evidence indicates that humans changed less than thought while chimps changed more than thought, and so the common ancestor is as close anatomically to humans as it is to chimps. In other words, the common ancestor is probably as much human-like as it is chimp-like and is roughly an even mixture of both, instead of being mostly a chimp.
Perhaps they are confusing statements from scientists that the common ancestor is ‘less chimp-like’ than thought before for ‘not ape-like’?
Betcha this won’t be allowed to be taught in schools
Betcha any teacher that tries will be in hot water
Betcha
I don’t know what the attitude on Free Republic is, but I personally do believe in evolution. There is just to much scientific evidence for it not to be true. This is an interesting discovery though since it shows we evolved not from chimps, but we share a common ancestor with them. Veeery interesting
“Being that we are the image and likeness, we should expect to see traces of this in both our objective (i.e., bodily) and subjective (i.e., mental) states. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that other animals shouldn’t share traces of this absoluteness, only in lesser forms, as they are “descended” from man, rather then vice versa.
“In other words, in relative, horizontal, and Darwinian terms, we may be “descended” from animals (or ascended, really), but in absolute and vertical terms the reverse is true. An ape is a partial manifestation of man; man is not a “perfect ape,” although Keith Olbermann comes close. ~ G.B.
More: http://tiny.cc/xQnTK
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“Also, a key point is that the lower animals are vertically descended from man, whereas horizontally speaking it is the reverse. Thus we see “traces of humanness” in the lower animals, and traces of animality in man.” ~ G. B.
“Yes, to say that Adam “names the animals” is to say that man knows their vertical essences.” ~ Petey
More: http://tiny.cc/SYz9q
bttt