Question: Do we evolve from monkeys, and why are there often many different opinions?

Kevin Mahon answered on 13 Jun 2012:

Great question – I gave this answer to another student with the same question..

“Remember – modern man did not evolve from monkeys and apes. Modern man, monkeys, and apes ALL evolved from a common ape-like ancestor over 20 million years ago, at which time monkeys broke away from us on the evolutionary line.

Humans and apes had common ancestry until about 5-8 million years ago, which explains why we share so much more of our DNA with apes (96-98%), particularly chimpanzees, than we do with monkeys. At that time, human ancestors split off from the apes.

So for the last 5-8 million years, humans, monkeys, and apes have evolved seperately, in different environments under natural selection, which explains why monkeys and apes still exist alongside us.

In that sense, monkeys and apes are just as evolved or ‘developed’ as humans, but they are adapted to the environments in which they live. Our most noticeable difference is the fact the our brains got bigger!”

The important point there being we didn’t evolve from monkeys as you know and see today, monkeys and humans both came from the same ape like ancestor millions of years ago.

If we’re looking at scientific, verified evidence, there aren’t many different opinions. Our descent from primates is viewed as fact.

However this fact doesn’t comply with many religious groups and those who view the world as being formed from intelligent design. While I respect anyones decision to believe what they want to believe, I think we owe it to ourselves to look at the evidence, and in this case the evidence overwhelmingly points to us coming from this ape-like ancestor.