When I was young, in the Chinese biology class of primary school, we are simply taught that we are evolved from monkeys, and the monkeys are like siblings of human beings. I was fascinated by this idea. At that time, though I did not know the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin, I thought it is quite reasonable, because it just lives up to the Chinese ancient mythologies and other fictional stories. For example, in the The Journey to the West, the monkey King was born from a stone, and after education, his appearances and behaviors were just like humans. Also, in other fictional stories, the animals, plants and other creatures were trying hard to become human beings. I think on one hand, it is a very modest model of evolution, and the creatures all enjoy a process of development. On the other hand, these stories reflected a hidden value that human beings were the blessed creature and the most superior species in the world, so that all the other species spend millions of years and sacrifice a lot to become human beings.
Later when I learned the evolution theory, I realized that monkeys are not our ancestors. More accurately, we and chimpanzees are the closest relatives, and we share a similar ancestor a very long time ago. We both evolved from ancient apes and we are like two branches. In the article of NewScientist, the author tried to explain over when our lineage split from chimps. According to this article, it could be dated back to prehistory, millions of years ago, before the ice ages, the epic migration out of Africa, and so forth. The methods the scientists used include the study of fossil records, DNA clues, and so forth.
This evolution includes the changes in both physical and behavioral traits. Bipedalism is considered to be an important trait for human. It means the ability to walk on two legs. Australopithecus is believed to be the earliest bipedal hominid. Scientists have proposed different theories to explain why Australopithecus began to walk upright. For example, it might be the influence of the environment. Because of the climate, the woods and the forests shrank, and the grasslands expanded. People have to get down the trees and move from the forests to the grasslands. To walk upright could help hominids to observe the environment, especially the predators hidden in the grasses. Another theory is that human beings need the hands to do other jobs, like collecting the fruits, making tools and even holding babies. In the process from apes to hominids, other physical changes also happened, such as the shape of the spinal column, which would be held vertically to be suitable for the bipedal habits, the proximal portion of the femur, the shape of the canine teeth, the skull or brain size, and so forth.
At last, nowadays, when we refer to humans, there might be different meanings. One is mentioned above, and it is about the evolution of hominid. The other is the modern human beings, belonging to the homo sapiens.
References
Our true dawn: Pinning down human origins. (2012). Retrieved from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628921.500-our-true-dawn-pinning-down-human-origins/
Overview of Hominin Evolution. (2012). Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/overview-of-hominin-evolution-89010983
Your post is very interesting! I really enjoyed reading about what you have learned based on Chinese ancient mythology. It is something I had never heard of and it is very cool the stories that were passed on to you in relation to this topic! I really enjoyed what you said about the stories reflecting a hidden value of humans being a blessed creature. These are stories I had never heard of and I’m glad I was informed on them by your blog post! Your comparison of humans and chimpanzees being two branches was really great, too. It was very cool to read your post of information that we had learned this week integrated with additional information that you shared. Your post was extremely informative.
Hi, your post is really interesting and communicative of how human evolution is not taught and understood equally around the global and how primates are misunderstood. I think evolution is also telephone based storytelling, based on your thought of how monkeys would be our closest relative. I found your blog even more interesting because you were able to bring other sources from other class at MSU which probably gave you an insight of how monkeys were related to us. I think creation of phylogeny tree help us connect to over non-human primates and studying them would help us understand the change in modern humans and how with new technology has changed the growth of our evolution and how our environment would affect it as well when most population does not live near nature centric environment.