Answer
As an analogy, you can liken this to how most Americans are decended from Europeans... yet there are still Europeans.
We did not evolve from today's monkeys and apes. We have a common anscestry with them.
Evolution acts like a tree. It splits. Let's say we have one group of animals, and something happened to split the population... a flood, group split due to size, lack of food, whatever... If the two groups don't interbreed, mutations build up in the subsequenct generations and causes speciation, ego we end up with multiple groups of species which all came from one species.
We see the intermediary speciation in horses, zebras, and donkeys. They can still interbreed, but the outcomes are usually sterile. Given more time, horses, zebras, and donkeys will no longer be able to produce any offspring at all.
Firstly, it must be understood that evolution is not a past occurrence, but an ongoing process that is a universal facet of Biology. Everything evolves, by its very nature of being alive. Evolution is part of the process of adaptation, which is one of the basic characteristics of life. That much said, Homo sapiens did not evolve from apes. Homo sapiens is one of the twenty-four extant species of apes. Monkeys and apes did evolve from a common ancestor, but neither apes nor monkeys are descended from one another. The relation of apes (including humans) to monkeys is akin to first cousins: a person is not descended from one's cousin (hopefully), but shares a common ancestor (grandparents) with them.
Note that there is a discussion in the field of cladistics about whether the ancestor common to both the New World monkeys and the Old World monkeys could not be called 'monkey' as well. If one applies strict monophyletic labelling then apes are monkeys since they evolved from monkeys, and humans, being apes, are also monkeys.
Humans share a common ancestor with other apes and monkeys, they're not direct descendants of them. Nonhuman apes and monkeys are more like our cousins than our grandparents.
The ancestors of all primates are extinct species. This didn't have to be the case, as one could have survived until now, but it just so happens that none of the currently living primates were among that early group. That early group diverged in a period between 58 mya (million years ago) and 40 mya. There are three major clades (groups of organisms that share a single ancestor) to be concerned with at this point. One became the New World monkeys, living on the American continents. Another was to become the Old World primates, including monkeys and apes throughout Africa and Europe. A third would become various species of monkeys that lived in Asia, but those are all extinct for various reasons. Note that all humans belong to that second group, wherever they might have migrated since.
Later, those Old World primates further developed new species (which doesn't automatically make the older species 'obsolete' or 'doomed' in any way) and created more clades, including apes and monkeys. Later, the ape lineage itself split into two clades: the "lesser ape", the current descendants of which are called gibbons, and the "great ape", which includes all other apes like gorillas, chimps and humans.
The closest living relatives to humans living today are the chimps, of which there are two species: Pan troglodytes (the common chimp) and Pan paniscus (the bonobo chimp). I'll use this divergence as a good spot to explain how the split might happen.
Let's look at the common ancestor of humans and chimps. At some point, some members of this species got separated for whatever reasons from the others for a very long period of time (hundreds of thousands of years, at least). One species continued as it did or adapted to changes, depending on what happened to where they lived. The other adapted in the new place where they lived. Again, it's not completely necessary that this happen. It's entirely possible, though unlikely, that each group would remain unchanged until years later, when they meet back up and begin sharing genes again as they mate. But it didn't happen that way and the two groups diverged genetically until they were two separate species. This continued among the chimps at least until we have the two species today, though there could have been others that didn't survive until now, either because they died off or they reintegrated back into one of the other species at some point.
This happened to humans, as well. An interesting factoid to know is that a small percentage of DNA in all current humans who are not directly of recent African descent comes from the Neanderthal.
As an exercise in logic, You postulate that we evolve and ask how what we evolve from could still be around. This is the same argument as asking "If skyscrapers developed from huts, then why are there still huts?"
One possible answer to that is that huts still have their place.
I think it is because some of them kept climbing the trees and others started to use 2 legs and stand straight there fore after doing that for a few years there semen would start to mature like that and there parents would have also made them procreate. They then probably stoped picking ticks off each other for food and started living like humans live today
That's an excellent question. Man did not evolve from monkeys and apes. Man, monkeys, and apes ALL evolved from a common ape-like ancestor over 20 million years ago, at which time monkeys split off from the evolutionary line. Monkeys are strictly New World primates, found only in Central and South America. Apes are strictly Old World primates, found only in Africa and Asia. 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, 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 along separate evolutionary lines, which explains why monkeys and apes still exist. In that sense, monkeys and apes are as evolved as humans, but they are adapted to the environments in which they live. A good site where you can learn more about human evolution is the Smithsonian Institution Human Origins Program webpage. http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/ A Thought From Yivo 13 I think that when we evolved from primates the primates had evolved from somthing else, and when we evolve again primates will become the next humans.
Some apes *are* humans - notably all humans, since they are descended from apes. But evolution is not a ladder: it is a branching tree. While some apes evolved to become humans, other lineages of ape went in other directions, and became chimps, bonobos, gorillas, and so on.
The question is a common but inaccurate belief. Humans are primates, we didn't evolve "from" them. Secondly, the question assumes that if evolution were to occur, the entire species would have to evolve instead of allowing a species to branch off. This isn't the case. The common belief in the scientific community is that we are most closely related to chimpanzees, not that we evolved from chimpanzees. We had a common ancestor. Two species branched off from this ancestor and each branch continued to evolve and branch until arriving at what we see today. Evolution is not about a constant increase in "complexity," which is commonly assumed. If this were the case than there would be only a single species on the entire planet, us, yet single-celled organisms still vastly outnumber us. Evolution is about an increase in diversity. If an available niche is open, a species will evolve to fill it, even if it must become "less complex" to be best suited to it. The human line branched off and evolved in a different direction than that of the other primates, but we didn't evolve "from" them.
Just because something evolves and changes doesn't mean the old one goes totally away. A technology example: people still have wall phones even though mobile cell phones are better in many ways. Just because a new car comes out, not everybody runs to the store to trade in old reliable.
This is a common misconception - Humans did not evolve from apes, they ARE apes, and furthermore: apes such as chimps and gorillas are NOT the same as they were when we diverged from our common ancestor 6-8 millions years ago. They have evolved and split off the same as we have.
You can also read "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin and well worth the read even if it is a little deep! Not all apes were fortunate enough to evolve into humans. Some lagged behind. See 2001 Space Odyssey, where the smart, sensitive monkey kills the dumb, mean monkey with a tapir femur, because a big black rock sent by God told him to.
Men, just like chimpanzees, are apes. Now substitute chimpanzees for man, and you'll see why the question is based on an misunderstanding of what common descent means: why are there still apes if chimpanzees evolved from apes?
Evolution produces diverging lineages - but each lineage remains part of the group it descended from. Chicken are still birds; birds are still dinosaurs; humans are still mammals - but not every bird is a chicken; not every dinosaur has been a bird; not every mammal is human.
Another way of rephrasing the question would be this: why are there still Europeans if Americans descended from Europeans? Or: why do you have cousins if you descended from your grandparents?
That we came from monkeys or apes, we came from a common ancestor from apes.
man evolved from apes
Man did not originate from apes per se, rather we share a common ancestor with them. This is a common misconception about evolution. Humans evolved to fit their environment, apes evolved to fit theirs.
Monkeys / apes or homosapiens
darwin This was in his work 'The Descent of Man.'
An 'ape' is any member of the Hominoidea superfamily, which includes lesser apes like the gibbon, and the greater apes, such as chimps, gorillas and humans. This kind of relation shows that all of these share a single common ancestor. This ancestor is what we evolved from.
God created only the man in is likeness, blessed him with the power of intelligence, wisdom and to create. . Even though monkeys have 99.9% identical DNA and there is definite proof for the theory of evolution where man evolved from apes.
Anthropoid is term used for human like . It includes apes , gorilla chimpanzee and monkeys and man . It is part of order Primates . They are characterized by flat face , downward nostrils stereoscopic vision due to forwardly located eyes .
Scientists don't think humans evolved from monkeys. They do believe that humans are more closely related to modern apes than to monkeys, but they don't believe we evolved from apes either. Humans and modern African apes both evolved from a common ancestor. The understanding of human evolution comes from the evidence presented in the fossil records and similarities found with genetic research. Many scientists believe in Darwin's theory of evolution which states that organisms evolve over time to be able to adapt to the changing environment. He based his theory on the birds in the Galapogos Islands. There were birds on the mainland and on the island that were or used to be the same species, but the birds on the island had different features. They had these different features because of their environment. That is why some scientist believe humans evolved from monkeys, they think we learned to stand up straight and use weapons because it would ensure better survival in our environment.
It dealt with evolution. Whether man was descended from apes therefore monkeys.
No, foxes are not primates. Primates include man. the apes, monkeys and other similar animals.
None. Humans are per definition both the descendants of monkeys and monkeys themselves. Had monkeys not evolved, then man could not have evolved, anymore than a grandson can exist whose grandparents did not.