I want to have a science discussion or two...or many!

No, we did not evolve from monkeys. Humans and monkeys evolved side by side from a common ancestor that looked a lot like a shrew that was a tree-dweller. They both branched off from these ancient tiny primates and were never on the same branch together. We are part of the ape family. Apes have no tails, they can swing through branches, unlike monkeys, and I think there is a difference in their noses. I think apes have a difference in the skeletal structure of their noses but I don't remember positively. The body structure of monkeys is a lot more cat/dog-like than apes.
Our brains started to grow, leading us down the path of dominance because we discovered fire and began eating cooked meat. It's easier to digest and left more energy to put into growing our brains.
Other apes have fur, not just the monkeys. Fur protects from the crap that comes out of trees (I assume,) pieces of bark, and stuff like that. Once we were on the ground, we didn't need that protection. The gene is still with us, but is inactive. We know this because of people with hypertrichosis. When fur is not needed anymore, mammals lose it. Look at cetaceans, the whales, dolphins and porpoises. They lost most of their fur. They just have a few scattered whiskers left around their mouths. Naked mole rats lost their fur probably because they live underground and being furless makes it easier to burrow and run through the burrows. I just read that another reason humans could have lost their fur is to be rid of fur-infesting parasites.

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Originally Posted by "Melyssa K" Kennedy

Thanks, Jojan! I'm gonna watch that right now.

Edit: What a fascinating video! More people should watch this, they could learn a lot. I didn't learn much that I didn't already know, other than what certain equations are used for and the numerical values of some of the things he explained. Thanks for sharing, Jojan. Have any more like this?
This guy's brilliant and he's pretty funny for a nerd.

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No other that I have been drawn to as that one. I have seen it a couple of times.

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Originally Posted by Chainsaw

Lawrence Krauss also had a pretty interesting discussion with Richard Dawkins probably on the same topic (based on the titles, haven't watched Jojan's vid yet).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U

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I have not seen that whole video. It is a bit dull when you just sit there. Of course they go a bit into "the meaning of life" and the conclusions about it from biology and physics.

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Originally Posted by "Melyssa K" Kennedy

Our brains started to grow, leading us down the path of dominance because we discovered fire and began eating cooked meat. It's easier to digest and left more energy to put into growing our brains.

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With cooked meat, we did not have to chew the food as much so our jaw muscles did not have to grow so our brain could expand even more. A chimp brain stops growing when they are about 4 years old, while a humans brain grow until we are 20.

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Originally Posted by Jojan

With cooked meat, we did not have to chew the food as much so our jaw muscles did not have to grow so our brain could expand even more. A chimp brain stops growing when they are about 4 years old, while a humans brain grow until we are 20.

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Oh, yeah. That, too. very true. Cooked meat is easier to chew, unless it's cooked too much. When I was a kid, I spent 5 minutes chewing a well-done piece of steak. I was hungry, so I gave up on that piece and settle for the pieces that took only 3 minutes to chew. It's strange that raw meat is mushier but tougher to chew, but it probably has to do with the chemical bonds between the muscle fibers. I bet they are weakened a lot when the meat is cooked.

I have to say I love this thread and to see people still discussing these things. I actually learned a lot. I studied biotechnology, microbiology, and pharmaceutical sciences, so I never learned much of what you are discussing. I was hoping to go to pharmacy school for my PharmD butfor some reason couldn't make it through Physics even though I did well in that class before college. I'm now studying Psychology and hoping to finish my Masters soon.

I love discussing psychology, too. Good luck with your Masters. :)

Coincedentally, I just was made aware of this lecture by @fgs1410 on twitter. It's so fasciniating. Because I have educated myself in the basics of partical physics, I understand this enough to learn from it.

http://richarddawkins.net/news_artic...5#.UO3AZG9ZXSh

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I'e happy to talk about evolution. Do you believe that we evolved from monkeys? Or divine intervention? Or were we, as I believe, genetically mutated on purpose by a higher power to make us a dominant species? You see, if we evolved from monkeys, then the theory has some holes. Let me explain. Monkeys have fur, but why don't we? If we evolved from monkeys, then how come we must wear fur to be warm? Wouldn't we have kept fur, since it is needed. Of course, I look at my relatives and say, "Oh, humans still have fur," but in all seriousness, why? Perhaps we were given no fur in order to foster thought. A person who is cold would improvise to get warm. No other creature does that. I would say that this was set up, because there is no logical explanation as to why we would be furless otherwise.

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(1) No, we didn't evolve from monkeys. We share a common ancestor with monkeys, about 7 million years ago, Pierolapithecus; it's probably the earliest known common link between all of the "great apes" (the Family Hominidae, home to such species as bonobos, humans and gorillas).

(2) Evolution is about adaptation, above everything else; we have in nature what are called "selection pressures" which cause natural events (such as weather, other animals, ecosystems, etc.) to "weed out" those animals which do not properly adapt to the selection pressures; as such, there is not always a straight line in which animals "evolve;" sometimes animals will evolve a feature that is useful in a certain ecosystem, and then (either through a change in climate, or an emigration to a different ecosystem, or a natural event resulting in the genetic isolation of two or more otherwise identical populations) evolve that principle away at a later date. An example can be found in certain cave-dwelling salamanders; they have residual eyes that don't actually work (in some species they work only very weakly, only registering the faintest bit of light, and are not relied upon in any case as the salamander's primary detective sense). This is because they are descended from amphibians that evolved eyes over time, but then at some point their ancestors began to live in and around caves, and as the population drifted into the caves, their eyes became less and less useful, so eyesight stopped being a relevant selection pressure --- whereas, in daylight, a creature with poor eyesight is less likely to survive because predators have good eyesight (and can thus hunt more efficiently than the salamander can avoid being hunted), in a cave, having poor eyesight is almost a zero factor, all other things being equal. So a creature can survive in spite of having poor or even no eyesight, and this will not affect its future survivability in the least, so long as it remains part of a cave-dwelling population.

So the reason we have less hair than ancestors (we still have hair, just not as much --- if nobody ever shaved, you'd see) is because selection pressures changed at a certain point in our biological history, and full body hair became less necessary. It's been speculated, for example, that once early hominids began using tools and finding/creating shelter, body hair became less of a primary factor for trapping heat, and so hair prominence became less of a determining factor for survival (so in fact the opposite of what you proposed --- it's possible that the tools came first, the hair loss came after).

Also, early records of what we consider humans trace to the middle east and areas near Africa. We migrated later to the cold parts of the world. So it would make sense that as humans evolved in the early stages, fur was no longer needed due to the heat and exposure to the sun.

Humans moved out of Africa approximately 70,000 years ago. Once they branched off into Europe and Asia, their skin lightened. It really is interesting all the different types of traits the different human races have evolved and only the tiniest pieces of DNA are different between them.

I'm really good at history, and I know a shit ton of cooking. More than static_martyr, at least. Static, I challenge you to a dual. A dual of history. I will school you under the table cause I freaking ROCK at history.

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I'm really good at history, and I know a shit ton of cooking. More than static_martyr, at least. Static, I challenge you to a dual. A dual of history. I will school you under the table cause I freaking ROCK at history.

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A dual, or a duel? Either way, I'm not very good at history. I am really good at books, though. I kick ass at books. And toys. I'm really good at toys.