Sex at Dawn

[JackLuis]

9 Interesting Things We've Learned About Sex From Studying Our Ancient Ancestors

“Human beings aren’t descended from apes,” declared Christopher Ryan at his TED conference talk Thursday afternoon. "We are apes.” The question he explored during his talk was, “What kind of ape are we in terms of our sexuality?” Quite an interesting and horny ape, it turns out.

More sex facts for the masses.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Human beings and apes are descended from the same ancestor, so we are not descended from apes, they are very distant cousins of ours.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The article is nonsense in plenty of ways. People husband what belongs to them. Put a child in fostercare, and she's forgotten almost immediately.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

If you haven't read his book, do so. It's both enlightening and vastly entertaining, a real hoot!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If it had any validity marriage and romantic love woulda vanished long ago. People love the delicious psychosis of romance and mutual idolatry. Only on LIT do folks wanna be JUSTA NUTHA PIECE OF ASS.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Human beings and apes are descended from the same ancestor, so we are not descended from apes, they are very distant cousins of ours.

All life on earth has common descent, but there are lots of branches. The descendents along any particular branch are called a clade. Apes are a clade and humans are part of it. Humans and chimps also collectively form a clade. That is, you can't exclude humans from being apes and have the word "ape" have any biological meaning.


But we are descended from apes. Our parents are/were apes and we are descended from them.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

People get together more to fuck with each other than to fuck each other. you can quote me

 

[voluptuary_manque]

All life on earth has common descent, but there are lots of branches. The descendents along any particular branch are called a clade. Apes are a clade and humans are part of it. Humans and chimps also collectively form a clade. That is, you can't exclude humans from being apes and have the word "ape" have any biological meaning.


But we are descended from apes. Our parents are/were apes and we are descended from them.

That is evolutionary nonsense. The great apes are as evolved as we are, just in a different direction. They are forest primates and we are savannah/seashore primates. We didn't start out as knuckle walkers and learn to stand up. From a common ancestor one branch became more arboreal and became the apes. The other became less and turned into us. Do please get your evolutionary facts straight.

 

[NaokoSmith]

That is evolutionary nonsense. The great apes are as evolved as we are, just in a different direction. They are forest primates and we are savannah/seashore primates. We didn't start out as knuckle walkers and learn to stand up. From a common ancestor one branch became more arboreal and became the apes. The other became less and turned into us. Do please get your evolutionary facts straight.

I'm with the bear. He's bigger and can read Tolkein, doing the voices in different regional accents.

 

[Safe_Bet]

That is evolutionary nonsense. The great apes are as evolved as we are, just in a different direction. They are forest primates and we are savannah/seashore primates. We didn't start out as knuckle walkers and learn to stand up. From a common ancestor one branch became more arboreal and became the apes. The other became less and turned into us. Do please get your evolutionary facts straight.

I'm just surprised he didn't throw Adam, (St)Eve and Noah in there.

 

[Handley_Page]

All life on earth has common descent, but there are lots of branches. The descendents along any particular branch are called a clade. Apes are a clade and humans are part of it. Humans and chimps also collectively form a clade. That is, you can't exclude humans from being apes and have the word "ape" have any biological meaning.


But we are descended from apes. Our parents are/were apes and we are descended from them.

I don't think so.
To say we descended from Apes is a vast over-simplicity.

Go back far enough up the evolutionary tree (5-8 million years) and you'll find a couple of biped types. These seemed to divide into sub-types.
Down one branch you get us; down the other you get the Apes & Monkeys.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

That is evolutionary nonsense. The great apes are as evolved as we are, just in a different direction. They are forest primates and we are savannah/seashore primates. We didn't start out as knuckle walkers and learn to stand up. From a common ancestor one branch became more arboreal and became the apes. The other became less and turned into us. Do please get your evolutionary facts straight.

Sorry, you are confused. The branches are far more complex than that. Primates are a clade in themselves. Monkeys/apes are another clade. Apes are another clade, and includes gorillas, chimps, gibbons, etc. Great apes are another clade, that excludes gibbons. Then the ancestors of orangs branched off, then ancestors of gorillas, then chimps and humans split about 6-8 million years ago.

There are some controversies in human evolution but this isn't one of them. Richard Dawkins's The Ancestor's Tale is an excellent book on the topic.

Happy to help.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

VP needs to dig out the molecular clock evidence that dates speciation of hominids and apes (primates). Smack is pretty much all he has.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

I don't think so.
To say we descended from Apes is a vast over-simplicity.

Go back far enough up the evolutionary tree (5-8 million years) and you'll find a couple of biped types. These seemed to divide into sub-types.
Down one branch you get us; down the other you get the Apes & Monkeys.

First, the descended-from-apes line is being misunderstood. I was being very literal. Humans are apes, your parents are human, you are descended from them, therefore you are descended from apes. QED.

As to your history of evolution, you are wrong. There is a lot of genetic evidence on this topic. The split between chimps and human ancestors was more recent than the split between gorillas and the human/chimp clade. The primate article on Wikipedia has an excellent cladistic diagram of the relationships between current surviving primates.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

A bit more. What I am saying is not remotely controversial among biologists. Morphological similarities had biologists already believing this before DNA science took off. With DNA evidence, the argument is ironclad. This idea that humans split off before apes and monkeys doesn't have a lick of support for it.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Depending on whether you are a lumper or a splitter, it is possible to clump the apes and humans together. For that matter you can, genetically clump everything that isn't either a plant, protist, eubacteria, archeobacteria or a fungus together, too, but that isn't particularly helpful. Today when we see a primate that is tailless (like we are) and that either brachiates or knuckle-walks, we say "ape". But if you look at this chart, hominids haven't been apes for around 5.4 M years. And the proto-chimps fossil record is scant so we don't know how they maneuvered. Do we share common ancestry? Of course. Was that ancestor an "ape"? Only if you choose to define it as such.

And Dawkins is hardly a definitive source. The man's understanding of evolution is great for polemical purposes but his reputation among working biologists isn't very high, cf E.O. Wilson, et al.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Sarich

Dear Reader spare yourself the BS (bear shit) and read Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson.

 

[lovecraft68]

Who cares where we came from? We're here now, that's what matters.

Whether our ancestors were apes or just looked like them is irrelevant.

Again, more money wasted on the past that could be put to good use for the present.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Depending on whether you are a lumper or a splitter, it is possible to clump the apes and humans together. For that matter you can, genetically clump everything that isn't either a plant, protist, eubacteria, archeobacteria or a fungus together, too, but that isn't particularly helpful. Today when we see a primate that is tailless (like we are) and that either brachiates or knuckle-walks, we say "ape". But if you look at this chart, hominids haven't been apes for around 5.4 M years. And the proto-chimps fossil record is scant so we don't know how they maneuvered. Do we share common ancestry? Of course. Was that ancestor an "ape"? Only if you choose to define it as such.

And Dawkins is hardly a definitive source. The man's understanding of evolution is great for polemical purposes but his reputation among working biologists isn't very high, cf E.O. Wilson, et al.

That cladistic chart you link is a fine one, and it confirms exactly what I am saying. I am defining the term "ape" cladistically- it is all the primates down the northern branch on that tree after the old world monkeys split off. This defines the term "ape" genetically. Since evolution is a genetic process this makes sense to me.

I do not know how you are defining the term "ape". I don't know what you mean to say that humans haven't been apes for 5 million years. By my cladistic definition, they are still apes and their descendants always will be part of the ape clade. You can't evolve your way out of a clade. You can only spawn new clades.

From what I can tell, you are simply carving out a definitional exception for humans. A lot of people do this, but the distinction is arbitrary, smacking of vanity more than science.

If you want to continue this, I strongly recommend trying to define the term "ape" in a meaningful way, and justifying the human exclusion.

As for Dawkins, I cited his book as a good source for human evolutionary history. I think he is unmatched for clarity in writing about evolution for lay audiences, but you are welcome to other sources. Nothing Dawkins says that is relevant to this discussion is different than what you would get in any other reputable source on evolutionary history. Genetically, we are apes, full stop. Your own quote kicking off this thread says as much, so I am confused why you find this controversial.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Who cares where we came from? We're here now, that's what matters.

Whether our ancestors were apes or just looked like them is irrelevant.

Again, more money wasted on the past that could be put to good use for the present.

I disagree. Understanding human evolution is critical, as it shaped our brains and bodies. It's very hard to make sense out of human biology or psychology without an understanding of evolution. That includes the psychology and biology of human sex, which was the opening post.

 

[Safe_Bet]

That cladistic chart you link is a fine one, and it confirms exactly what I am saying. I am defining the term "ape" cladistically- it is all the primates down the northern branch on that tree after the old world monkeys split off. This defines the term "ape" genetically. Since evolution is a genetic process this makes sense to me.

I do not know how you are defining the term "ape". I don't know what you mean to say that humans haven't been apes for 5 million years. By my cladistic definition, they are still apes and their descendants always will be part of the ape clade. You can't evolve your way out of a clade. You can only spawn new clades.

blah, blah, freak'in blah...

Dude... is "clade" your Secret Word Of The Day? Is a duck going to drop down next, Groucho???

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Dude... is "clade" your Secret Word Of The Day? Is a duck going to drop down next, Groucho???

It's relevant to the discussion. If you want to contribute something besides juvenile resentment at the use of a scientific term in a discussion of scientific concepts, be my guest.

 

[lovecraft68]

I disagree. Understanding human evolution is critical, as it shaped our brains and bodies. It's very hard to make sense out of human biology or psychology without an understanding of evolution. That includes the psychology and biology of human sex, which was the opening post.

Studying the present will help the future more than being locked into the past.

What your brain is like now is going to help medicine more than what your ancestor 1000 times removed is going to.

But they need a reason to keep spending a ton of money to all try to "prove" what will never be proved.

On the flip side I feel the same way about "Creation" and God. All the religions think they have the answer.

Well guess what? No one is going to know until it is too late to come back and tell anyone.

Sides, everyone knows we are descended from the shoggoths who were bread to specifically serve the great old ones.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Sides, everyone knows we are descended from the shoggoths who were bread to specifically serve the great old ones.

Cthulhu fhtagn!

 

[NekoParks]

Cthulhu fhtagn!

You forget the epithet Great, Dead, or Dread... Tsk, tsk...what kind of cult member are you?