Without a tail and with a big brain: how far have we gone from monkeys

Anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky about family ties between humans and monkeys, Darwin and archaeological finds

It’s the XNUMXst century, but there are still people who do not believe that man descended from monkeys. The myth is still alive that Darwin proved nothing, made a mistake, and repented at the end of his life. Let’s figure it out.

The person is not unique

There are a lot of mammals on the planet, and they are all related to each other in different ways. There are rodents, bats, carnivores, ungulates, cetaceans, pangolins, and there are primates. There are many primates. And surprisingly, man is one of the great many of these same primates.

It is rather strange to single out a person in a separate group, detachment, family. Modern taxonomists usually place humans in the same family as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. At the detachment level and above, a person is not at all unique, because the systematics of living organisms is determined by their structure, origin, behavior and other features. How do we prove, for example, that the sparrow is related to the titmouse? We look at whether their beaks, paws, claws are similar, how they sing, build nests, hatch chicks, communicate with each other. What are their genetics and biochemistry. Over the past hundred years, these issues have been well understood, and various groups of living organisms have long been in full order.

The order of primates is characterized by omnivorous, arboreal, k-strategy of reproduction, when small cubs are grown for a long time, and most importantly by their special anatomy – a certain structure of teeth, the same genetics and biochemistry. By all these parameters, man is a primate. Although we, of course, have specific features – we are not very furry, very smart, we have a labor brush, small jaws. But, firstly, in all these parameters we are not unique even among primates, and, secondly, in these same parameters, other primates are much more exotic. And if you take some arm or tarsier, then they are much more different from other primates than humans. And man is just one of the monkeys.

Man on the tree of evolution

We have the simplest structure of teeth, the basic arrangement of arms and legs. Against the background of what exists in other primates, this is about nothing. If we take our closest modern relatives, the gorillas and chimpanzees, we will see that they have a complex of walking on bent fingers. This complex is much more specific than our labor complex, it is more responsible. And we can live with a labor complex, or we can, in general, without it. Our brush is very simple, uncomplicated. And if we take some separate bone of ours, for example, a humerus, then it is extremely problematic to distinguish a human one from one that belongs to a chimpanzee.

If it’s a fossil australopithecine, it can be very difficult to know whose bone it is. Although the anthropologist, of course, will distinguish. I’m already talking about something smaller. In terms of the skeletal system, we are very primitive. For example, we have four vertebrae in the coccygeal region. And modern chimpanzees and orangutans have an average of three. That is, we are tailer than chimpanzees. We are behind them, we are primitive.

In terms of biochemistry, we are most related to chimpanzees, a little further – gorillas, then orangutans, a little further gibbons. Then macaques, lemurs, and then, you see, and six-winged, tupai, hares, rodents …

If you draw an evolutionary tree, then we turn out to be just a small branch on a large primate bush, which, in fact, in itself is also a small branch against the background of other vertebrates.

Appearance and inner world

Our genetics and chimpanzee genetics differ by a miserable 2-4%. Of course, depending on how you count, because people are also different, and chimpanzees are different from each other. Some people are more like chimpanzees than others. Finding genetic differences between humans and apes is a very difficult task.

In 2022, an article came out about how some very small mutations allowed our brains to grow exponentially and propelled us to the pinnacle of evolution. But even small mutations are expressed in large external changes. For example, in the reduction of wool. Obviously the monkey is hairy and humans are not. However, if you count the number of hair follicles on the skin, then in humans and chimpanzees it is about the same. Even so, a human’s chest is furrier than a gorilla’s. And even the forehead is actually hairy – it has as many hair follicles as there are on the scalp. But neither we nor chimpanzees, for example, have an undercoat – all anthropoids do not have it at all.

In behavior, the difference between a person and a non-human, it would seem, is also obvious. We are smart, talking, mega-communicative. In practice, the differences come down to a very small number of properties. Because if we evaluate the behavior of humans and chimpanzees with the same methods, then we will see a lot of similarities. True, a person is much calmer, he controls his inner urges. Because his thinking is still a little better developed. The person is much more boring. He is very inclined to teach and learn, to negotiate, and not to beat each other in the face. And chimpanzees are the same, but in the opposite direction. More aggressive, constantly switching, learn simply by observation, and not purposefully.

If you teach a monkey to speak sign language, then it will do it no worse than a person – at the level of a two-year-old child. But monkeys have a brain three times smaller! So the differences are not qualitative, but rather quantitative. The main behavioral properties that we used to consider ours: kindness, humor, the ability to deceive, swear – in humans and monkeys are strictly the same.

Some of the nuances of our evolution still find some additional confirmation in studies, for example, in genetics. Recently, an article was published about the genetics of the disappearance of our tail. For a long time it was believed that the tail disappeared as if gradually, but scientists have proven that, in fact, there are very few mutations. That is, literally a couple of them led to the fact that the tail – bam – and disappeared. The evolutionary process can sometimes happen very quickly if the mutations provide some advantage.

Man and Ape: Paleontological Evidence

Man is still a monkey, and as we found out, not even very unique. This is especially cool in terms of paleontological data. For two hundred years, paleontologists have been digging up all sorts of “spare parts” from the earth, comparing them with each other. And now we have a complete sequence of intermediate forms from Purgatorius, who lived 66 million years ago and was the size of a rat, to us. In some periods of time, only teeth were found, there are no complete skeletons, because monkeys jumped on trees and, unfortunately, far from always fell into the paleontological record. Moreover, most of the history took place in the tropics, where paleontologists simply did not dig much. But even with all that, we have an insane amount of paleontological data.

Archicebuses, Saadanius, Proconsuls, Australopithecus, Pithecanthropus, Protosapiens, Sapiens – the changes from one form to another were smooth, we can observe this from the finds and, knowing the data on the climate, living conditions, explain why they occurred. First, our ancestors got down from the trees, then they changed their diet, took the cobblestones in their hands and began to settle from the tropical zones to others. This is a huge amount of information.

From Darwin to synthetic theory

To argue that man did not evolve from a monkey is somehow even naive. It’s as weird as arguing that I’m not descended from my parents. Then you can provide certificates from the maternity hospital, birth certificates as much as you like, but people will say that everything is fake. Those who still cherish the myth that man did not descend from apes and that Darwin was wrong behave in much the same way.

And what about Darwin? Darwin lived 150 years ago. Darwin developed the concept of natural selection. And already a hundred years after Darwin, a synthetic theory of evolution was formed. Half a century has passed since then, and science has already reached such a high level of development that it is somehow strange to remember Darwin and what he said there in the context of the origin of man.

Impossibility of transformation

“Then why aren’t modern apes turning into humans now?” they ask me. I would like to answer this way: “Now there are millionaires, so why have you, who personally ask me this question, still not evolved to their level?” There are many different ecological niches, different evolutionary paths. And even one ecological niche can be adapted in different ways, it depends on some momentary nuances, on the presence of the necessary mutations, on the historical component. For example, in the same African savannah there are baboons, which are relatives to us, and some antelopes, and hedgehogs, and turtles, and birds – anyone. And all this in the same savannah. It would seem, why doesn’t everyone turn into giraffes? Let’s argue with foam at the mouth that giraffes did not come from anyone at all and that they are the pinnacle of evolution. This would be obvious nonsense. Every living being has its own evolutionary path.

Modern monkeys evolved into marmosets because their ancestors did not evolve quite the way we do. They had other prerequisites, their own mutations. And man evolved into man. And there is no evolutionary force at all that would move someone towards a person. Because in the very question – why the monkey does not evolve into a man, it is implied that it is cool to be a man, but not a monkey.

In fact, a lot of the traits in monkeys have evolved much further. The structure of the hand, teeth, spine and in some places, by the way, the brain. Because they had different tasks, they ate differently, they moved differently, they were of a different size. The same gibbons differ much more from the source than we do: they are more evolutionarily advanced. They are very kind, by the way, and they can sing well. Why didn’t those who asked me about monkeys evolve into gibbons?

We are monkeys, where to go. And yet we are a little special monkeys. We can think about other monkeys, study other monkeys. And plan your monkey future. This is amazing! Do better with this, and not with faith in all sorts of myths.