# Somebody screws up teaching evolution **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 27, 2018, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994 "2018-09-27T04:02:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/61 "2018-10-02T08:42:25Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > “if we evolved from monkeys how come there are still monkeys?” is how it is often framed. It is clear that the Q&A is designed to deal with that in a simplistic manner and uses the word “monkeys” accordingly. Because we both evolved from different monkeys. That’s both simplistic, simple, and correct. > [@](#): > > If you accept that the quiz setters were using the word “monkey” to mean modern monkeys (which they clearly are) I don’t think that’s clear at all. If you substitute “humans” to make the phrase read “humans are descended from humans”, you can’t twist that to mean that they clearly imply that humans are descended from _modern_ humans, which they aren’t, because humans from 100,000 years ago _obviously_ don’t count. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/62 "2018-10-02T08:47:22Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > As for picking a different question? Well it is an important question and some variation of it always pops up from those ignorant of how evolution works. To not answer it would be, almost literally, to ignore the 800lb gorilla in the room. > “if we evolved from monkeys how come there are still monkeys?” is how it is often framed. It is clear that the Q&A is designed to deal with that in a simplistic manner and uses the word “monkeys” accordingly. This isn’t a situation such as mentioning the last common ancestor between a human and a blue whale, which looked very little like a human or a blue whale. Look at the New World Monkeys. Look at the Old World Monkeys. Both groups–even though they seperated millions of years before Old World Monkeys and apes–very clearly, obviously, and unambigiously look like monkeys. This means that the common ancestor between the two would also have been clearly, obviously, and unambigiously a monkey to any human observer. Artistic reconstructions are of course to be taken with a mountain of salt, but still if someone had seen living examples of [these two early primates](https://www.nature.com/news/fossils-indicate-common-ancestor-for-two-primate-groups-1.12997), I have no doubt that not only would they call the monkey a monkey, they would also call the ape a monkey. The answer to the question is w-r-o-n-g. A succinct correct answer would be: “Humans did not evolve from any currently living species of monkey, however we did evolve from a now extinct species of monkey thst lived around 25 to 30 million years ago.” See how easy that is? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/63 "2018-10-02T10:44:05Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Because we both evolved from different monkeys. That’s both simplistic, simple, and correct. and incomplete and ambiguous. Certainly no better or clearer than the answer given. At the very least you are going to have to go further into cladistic and taxonomic theory to clarify that the scientific use of the term “monkey” means something very different from the lay person’s understanding that “monkey” means the new world and old world monkeys that we see today. and it is the lay person that is the target of the quiz. > [@](#): > > I don’t think that’s clear at all. If you substitute “humans” to make the phrase read “humans are descended from humans”, you can’t twist that to mean that they clearly imply that humans are descended from _modern_ humans, which they aren’t, because humans from 100,000 years ago _obviously_ don’t count. I have no idea what point you are making here. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/64 "2018-10-02T11:16:56Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > This isn’t a situation such as mentioning the last common ancestor between a human and a blue whale, which looked very little like a human or a blue whale. Look at the New World Monkeys. Look at the Old World Monkeys. Both groups–even though they seperated millions of years before Old World Monkeys and apes–very clearly, obviously, and unambigiously look like monkeys. This means that the common ancestor between the two would also have been clearly, obviously, and unambigiously a monkey to any human observer. Why are you trying to convince me of this? I accept it and have known this for a long time. The point is that, for reasons of shared clarity and brevity, neither the questioner nor the lay-person answering it is using the term “monkey” in it’s complete scientific sense. > [@](#): > > Artistic reconstructions are of course to be taken with a mountain of salt, but still if someone had seen living examples of [these two early primates](https://www.nature.com/news/fossils-indicate-common-ancestor-for-two-primate-groups-1.12997), I have no doubt that not only would they call the monkey a monkey, they would also call the ape a monkey. and? again I’m not arguing with any of this, merely that the questioner and answering lay person are 99.9% certain to be using the term “monkey” to mean the monkeys that we see today. As they share that understanding of the term then the answer is good enough to make the point. > [@](#): > > The answer to the question is w-r-o-n-g. A succinct correct answer would be: “Humans did not evolve from any currently living species of monkey, however we did evolve from a now extinct species of monkey thst lived around 25 to 30 million years ago.” See how easy that is? I’ve already said that the answer given is ambiguous and incomplete I can come up with many other ways to improve it as well. What I don’t agree is that this is “screwing up the teaching of evolution”. The common understanding of what of what “monkey” means is used in the quiz and is fine for the context of a simplistic quiz. A layperson comes away knowing that we didn’t evolve from the monkeys we see today, a common misconception that has now been clearly stated as false. For you and me? the term “monkey” has a more specific meaning and we can see the imprecision and ambiguity in both the question and answer. Guess what? the quiz is not aimed at us. Come back to me with evidence that this simplistic view is the way in which it is stated throughout a course on evolution and I’ll happily slam that course as inadequate and wrong. Thing is, if you aren’t willing to accept that there is a shared understanding of what the term “monkey” means in the context of the quiz then there isn’t anything else for me to add. What cannot be disputed is that, if the term “monkey” in the quiz is shorthand for “modern monkeys” (which I say it is) and is understood to mean that by both parties then the question and answer is absolutely correct. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/65 "2018-10-02T11:17:20Z")
To me, “monkeys” means _all_ monkeys. If you dig up a 2 million year old monkey, that’s still a monkey. If you tell me that it’s an extinct species it doesn’t make it not a monkey. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/66 "2018-10-02T11:26:07Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > To me, “monkeys” means _all_ monkeys. If you dig up a 2 million year old monkey, that’s still a monkey. If you tell me that it’s an extinct species it doesn’t make it not a monkey. I agree, that is what “monkeys” means to me as well. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/67 "2018-10-02T15:02:16Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Thing is, if you aren’t willing to accept that there is a shared understanding of what the term “monkey” means in the context of the quiz then there isn’t anything else for me to add. This we can agree on. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/68 "2018-10-02T15:13:00Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > …uses the word “monkey” to refer to the extant creatures we see today, which is the way we use the word in 99.9% of situation. And the other 0.1% of situations are presumably when we’re talking about ancestral monkey populations. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/69 "2018-10-02T17:07:54Z")
Let’s look at this as if it were an interactive setting, not a quiz. Say, a presenter at the new children’s center this article was about. A child asks the presenter questions: Child: Did we evolve from monkeys? Presenter: No, humans didn’t evolve from monkeys but we shared a common ancestor with them. Child: What was that common ancestor? Presenter: … I just looked at [an article by Paula Kover](https://theconversation.com/the-five-most-common-misunderstandings-about-evolution-54845) linked in the comments on the first piece at Jerry Conye’s site–it turns out that the screwed-up answer came straight from her. She takes a statement about humans and monkeys and turns it into a question about humans and chimps without seeming to understand that she was doing so. (Something noted early in this thread but assumed to be the fault of BBC editing.) And this was in a format where she wasn’t restricted on lenght or time spent composing the answer. It looks like as a plant biologist she really isn’t in her element discussing animal evolution. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/70 "2018-10-02T17:24:43Z")
Right. A correct question would be: “Did we evolve from chimpanzees?” And the answer would be “No, we didn’t evolve from chimpanzees, we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees but that ancestor was not a chimpanzee.” The problem comes if we insert terms like “ape” or “monkey” or “hominid” or “primate” or “mammal” into the question, because those are terms that cover multiple species, including species that are currently extinct. The common ancestor ancestor of humans and chimps was a hominid, an ape, a monkey, a primate, a mammal, and a vertebrate. The common ancestor of humans and gibbons was an ape, a monkey, a primate, a mammal, and a vertebrate. The common ancestor of humans and baboons was a monkey, a primate, a mammal, and a vertebrate. The common ancestor of humans and the [freaky freaky tarsier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Jz0JcQYtqo) was a primate, a mammal, and a vertebrate. The common ancestor of humans and dogs was a mammal and a vertebrate. The common ancestor of humans and sharks was a vertebrate. It’s because of this phylogenetic terminology that we can confidently say that the common ancestor of humans and other monkeys was a monkey, and that therefore humans evolved from a monkey, because humans are just one particular species of monkey. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2020, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994/71 "2020-01-09T00:45:00Z")
Bumped to complement [this](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=22070585) thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/somebody-screws-up-teaching-evolution/821994.md?page=3)