Full Circle after 5.6 million years?

I just heard on the BBC news that apes climbed down from the trees, following a change in climate. 2.8 million years later, I am told that man in causing climate change.

Roll on another 2.8 million years, and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees and become apes again...

Originally posted by Duncan Clarke
I just heard on the BBC news that apes climbed down from the trees, following a change in climate. 2.8 million years later, I am told that man in causing climate change.

Roll on another 2.8 million years, and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees and become apes again...

We never stopped being apes. Our ancestors which went into the trees were not apes, or even primates, they were a sort of tree shrew 65 million years ago.

Originally posted by DeepThought
We never stopped being apes. Our ancestors which went into the trees were not apes, or even primates, they were a sort of tree shrew 65 million years ago.

Or even earlier, they lived along side dinosaurs, too small to even be noticed by those behemoths. When Dino's went bye bye THEN the shrew sized guys started filling out, making new species and so forth.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Or even earlier, they lived along side dinosaurs, too small to even be noticed by those behemoths. When Dino's went bye bye THEN the shrew sized guys started filling out, making new species and so forth.

From Adam's rib? How does that compute? Sorry, I don't have an answer since I'm Agnostic....

Originally posted by Duncan Clarke
I just heard on the BBC news that apes climbed down from the trees, following a change in climate. 2.8 million years later, I am told that man in causing climate change.

Roll on another 2.8 million years, and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees and become apes again...

That isn't how evolution works. Species don't de-evolve. +, technically, we are a type of ape.

Originally posted by humy
That isn't how evolution works. Species don't de-evolve. +, technically, we are a type of ape.

http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_8.htm

Yep.

-m.

Originally posted by humy
That isn't how evolution works. Species don't de-evolve. +, technically, we are a type of ape.

Who says climbing up into trees is de-evolving? If the whole world becomes tropical forests due to global warming, and it kills of civilization, we could well evolve into tree climbing creatures. But it wouldn't be de-evolution.

Originally posted by Duncan Clarke
I just heard on the BBC news that apes climbed down from the trees, following a change in climate. 2.8 million years later, I am told that man in causing climate change.

Roll on another 2.8 million years, and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees and become apes again...

"Modern" man has been around only 200 thousand years...that is man that lived in groups and had fire. The earth is 4.2 Billion yrs. old and 99% of all life forms are no longer extant.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Who says climbing up into trees is de-evolving?

That is not what I meant to imply although I can see now how you could be easily mistaken to think it was.

His quote was:

"Roll on another 2.8 million years, and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees and become apes again..."

But then it wasn't the "and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees" that caught my attention but rather the "and become apes again" which seems to imply to me that;

1, we are not really a kind of ape

and

2, if we are not really a kind ape, we could de-evolve back into apes again.

It is this second implication 2, not the "and maybe man will be climbing back up into the trees" quote, that promoted my quote of:

"...Species don't de-evolve. ..."

Sorry for the confusion 🙂