From the course unit: Darwin claimed that bipedality would have been the first indication of apes evolving into humans. But after searching for evidence of increasing bipedality, the best scientists can do is claim that hominids were facultatively (optionally) bipedal. All apes today are facultatively bipedal. Is that a convincing argument that humans and apes are closely related? What other fossil evidence shows us the distinct difference between apes and humans?
Tag: apes
Are animals just as smart as people, but we are unfair to them?
Michael Egnor looks at such claims. Including apes as co-authors on a primatology research paper created quite a stir—among humans.
Michael Egnor: How NOT to debate materialists
Egnor: Although ape brains do differ somewhat from human brains in cortical anatomy, it is the similarity between the brains of apes and men, rather than the differences, that provides striking evidence of human exceptionalism.
Michael Egnor: Why human-ape similarity argues for human exceptionality
When everything is the same except the one thing that matters most, we can be sure we are onto a real difference.
New book from Harvard U Press: Childhood, not evolution makes us human
Two things: If the significant changes happen to humans between birth and seven years of age, it is not q theory of evolution at all, but of intellectual and cultural development. Also, Tomasello seems not be following the party line that apes are just like us but we refuse to recognize the fact. That’s borderline heresy.
A site that compares humans and great apes
In considerable detail.
Why can’t we make apes behave like people?
Many researchers think that apes are just like us and that
we’re not doing the right things to make them start behaving that way…
Here’s a pop Darwin look at the origin of religion
At the BBC, a writer offers an explanation of the Christian practice of Communion, Darwinism-style. Along the way, he discovers that apes are spiritual.