• Question: who did we turn from monkeys to humans??

    Asked by iluvwilmas to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Marcus on 21 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Marcus Wilson

      Marcus Wilson answered on 21 Nov 2012:

      monkeys and humans have a shared ancestor, we both diverged. so whilst we got bigger brains monkeys also carried on evolving and adpating to their particular situation.

      so looking at our genes and how much they differ from other ape genes we can make a tree to see how long ago we shared a common ancestor sooo; orangutans separated first ( 12-16 million years ago), then gorillas(6-8 million years ago) then (only 1-2 million years ago) chimps.

      but we didnt stop there lots of different bones of our ancestors have been found that look pretty monkey like, from homo heidelbergus, homo habilis and then homo eructus. but all of these guys emreged after we evolved form monkeys

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      Exactly what things we did differently that meant we started to evolve into a different species than the pre-simian ancestor that we and modern monkeys evolved from, we don’t really know exactly. But some key things seem to be i) eating meat – which meant we had more energy and thus our brains could grow much bigger, ii) using tools – so we were better at catching food, making clothes to keep us warm, discovering the secret of fire, iii) standing upright – made us more able hunters.

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