This is not a recent question for students at all levels in this world. The question is not yet solved but scientists are very close to answering this question. Not only students but also other people also want to know this answer. The question is “ why chimpanzees are not evolving into humans in recent years? Did human evolution occur from chimpanzees or apes? or What is the facts of Monkey to Human Evolution? To answer this question we have to be very careful because this answer is sensitive for some groups of people in the world, especially for those who don’t want to believe the theory of evolution proposed by darwin.
We all around find chimpanzees but we did not see them to be a human beings anymore. If chimpanzees or monkeys are the ancestors of human beings, why are they still chimpanzees or monkeys? Why Monkey to Human Evolution did not occur in recent years?
Why they aren`t going to be human beings again?
Some people believe that humans are not evolved from the chimpanzee or monkey. They have many question to get the answer of that question!
Recently, in Bangladesh the debate between the ruling party and a group of people are increasing about this issue.
To discus about this topics, we have to know two words, Anagenesis and Cladogenesis.
The question is; did the human being evolve in a straight line with one species to another species? The answer is NO. The humans have evolved in a different way other than straight line of evolution. This straight line of evolution from one species to another species is called the Anagenesis.
The humans have evolved in the Cladogenesis way, that means not a straight line of evolutionary changes of one species to another, rather it had a branched evolution.
What is Cladogenesis?
The Cladogenesis is the branching evolution which leads to the two or more lineage ( type of species) from one common ancestor in the past. Cladogenesis is important pattern of the biological diversification. Basically Cladogenesis results in two new sister species. The common ancestor of chimpanzee and humans were gone extinct which was developed by the Cladogenesis evolution pattern. The fossils and the genetic evidences shows that the two species of chimpanzee and humans are diverged from a common ancestor in 6 million years ago (aprox). The common ancestor is not a single species but a set ancestral populations that split to give rise the two set of populations. In the present case one set of population became the modern-day humans and the other set of population became the modern-day chimpanzee. The multiple evidence shows that the Anagenesis and Cladogenesis occurred in human lineage after the splitting of human and chimpanzee lineage.
Question: Did humans evolve from chimps?
Answer: No. Just as you and your cousins share a common ancestor who lived hundreds of years ago and are long dead, all living humans share a common ancestor with all living chimps that lived millions of years ago, and that common ancestor is no longer exists.
To understand this; lets give an example, like you and your cousin share a same ancestor of your grand-grand -grandfather long ago, it does not mean that you evolved from your cousin but you and your cousin had a common ancestor of your grand-grand grand father. It means that your grand-grand grand father is the common ancestor and you and your cousin evolved in your own way. Similarly the humans and the chimpanzee had a common ancestor who had extinct long before ago and humans and chimpanzee are cousins each other.
Question: How similar are chimps evolution and human evolution?
Answer: It depends on what feature you are looking at.
Chimpanzee and humans are very similar in regards to the genetic characteristics. We can differentiate the relative brain size of humans is significantly larger than that of any other primate, including chimps. This is one of the important difference between the chimps and the humans whereas the intellectuality also higher in humans than the chimps. The overall the body anatomy, they are different. The genetic study says that the humans and chimps are almost similar but humans has 23 pair of chromosome and chimps has the 24 pair of chromosomes. In the nucleotide position, they share the same sequence of DNA in the chromosomes.
Question: Did Monkey to Human Evolution really Occur?
Answer: It depends on what trait or gene you are considering. For brain-related traits and genes, human DNA has generally shown more evolutionary change than chimp DNA.
Certainly humans evolved more than the chimps in all traits or sector. The season of this evolutionary changes is cause by the food habits.
Question: What causes the humans more evolutionary changes than chimps?
Answer: Eating meat in the food menu makes the humans more brain function and larger brain size which causes more intellectuals than the chimps. The human brain size is 1500 cm3 (1.5 L) whereas the chimpanzees and gorillas brain size are 400 cm3. We know the bigger the brain size the more intellectuals are the species. The Australopithecus species also had the smaller in brain size. The most ancient species of homo had also more smaller in brain size than the recent homo species.
What causes the increased brain size for the humans? Is there any link for the “Monkey to Human Evolution” process?
There are two hypothesis (1) relaxed selection; this can cause the increase in brain size. Example; if all the lion are eliminated or no threat of lion for the zebras, then the brain size of zebras will increase due to the relaxed selection in the brain. Like the humans the relaxed selection also cause the human brain to be bigger in size. The dietary changes or the food habits of eating the meat causes the humans brain to enlarges. The nutrient in the meat cause more protein to stock in the brain tissue and causes the brain larger in size.
All the members of the superfamily Hominidae, all the apes living today and all the tailless primates that have lived in the past grouped together.
Among the hominoids, humas and our recent fossil ancestors are most flat faced and larged brain and small toothed. Mordern chimps are much more like fossil apes, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons than humans. Scientific hypothesis shows that modern chimps are much similar to the ancient common ancestors than humans. Hence it is concluded that the modern chimps and ape are not the ancestors of modern humans.
Ref: For more details of this article of Monkey to Human Evolution Facts Please read this research article http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
