When we start talking about evolution, one of the first things that comes to mind is that humans have evolved from apes, chimpanzees, and monkeys. In other words, we are the current descendants of apes.
Throughout the history of life, there have been many species of organisms that have evolved from one species to another, completely replacing the original species. For example, birds are the current descendants of dinosaurs, some types of toads, butterflies etc. Similarly, humans have evolved from chimpanzees over millions of years.
So the question is: if we evolved from monkeys, why do they still exist today? Aren’t humans supposed to completely replace monkeys and chimpanzees?
To answer that question, we need to delve deeper into the basic knowledge of human evolution with two things below:
Although everyone thinks that smart humans evolved from monkeys, in fact, this is not true or at least, not entirely true because it depends on how people perceive the word “monkey”.
Humans and apes now both evolved from the same now-extinct ancestor about 25 million years ago. This evolutionary relationship is strongly reinforced by DNA analyzes and the fossil record.
One study found that chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys both share nearly 93 percent of their ancestral DNA. Based on the differences and similarities between the two types of DNA, the researchers estimated that Rhesus monkeys and humans diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago.
Humans and apes now both evolved from the same now-extinct ancestor about 25 million years ago.
What’s interesting is that, roughly speaking, the ancestors of humans and monkeys are now (along with apes and chimpanzees) a primate !
More specifically, humans did not evolve from the apes and chimpanzees that exist today; instead, humans and monkeys (i.e. apes, chimpanzees, and other primates) are like siblings from the same parent.
The following section will explain more about the relationship between humans and monkeys at the present time.
Assume that a monkey has two children, named Dave and Scott.
Dave is a common monkey, while Scott is an intelligent monkey, or at least, much smarter than the average monkey.
Both Dave and Scott are adults and married. Dave married a normal female monkey, while Scott married a more intelligent female monkey than the common species. Dave has a normal baby monkey, while Scott has a smart baby monkey. This was repeated over and over for generations, resulting in the production of numerous progenitors of intelligent monkeys and numerous progenitors of common apes.
The difference in intelligence of these two species became more and more obvious until the two species no longer came from the same species. In other words, the common monkey is still called “monkey”, while the intelligent monkey becomes a completely different species and is given a different name .
The most interesting thing about this evolutionary process is that, if the lack of food sources caused the two animals to compete, the smart monkeys would be smarter than the common monkeys , leading to the normal monkeys gradually becoming more and more intelligent. extinction.
However, if the two species do not have to compete for the same food source or do not suffer from food shortages, then the two species can co-exist with separate lineages, where one animal is more intelligent. the other species.
This is exactly what happened to humans and chimpanzees: humans are intelligent monkeys and chimpanzees are common.
Question “If humans evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?” similar to the question “If you are a descendant of your grandfather, why do you still have cousins living around you?”.
In short, species that shared a common ancestor in the past can coexist, like humans and monkeys. From an evolutionary perspective, monkeys are our cousins, so we should get acquainted with the human “family tree” and learn about it as much as possible.