The Crab Essay, Research Paper
?THE CRAB?
Evolution, there has been continous discussion about this subject. Until the time of Darwin, over 130 years ago, most scientists commonaly considered the living animals and humans to be the evidence of one divine creator; God. However, Darwin claimed that the apes are the ancestors of the humans, which is accepted as evolution, and since then the scientists, religous comunities and the people, who have different thoughts about evolution, are trying to find out which one is correct. Are we descendants of apes or not? This question and the nonsense race between the two arrogant groups to justify their thoughts seem to be last forever. Although there are some similarities between humans and apes, like walking up-right on two feet and toolmaking, the differences such us anatomical structure, language conceptual and genetics are the points that the anty-Darwinists stress on.
The scientists have identified some modulation in human evolutionary history. The development of the two-legged walking is one of the major similarities. Standing up-right in an environment gives them the chance to scan the horizon for predators or let them use their hands in order to carry something around.
The second major similarity is tool making. The invention of tool making has occurred approximately 2,5 million years ago. Both of apes and humanlike creatures have used the stones and bones in order to get food. That act was particularly to make the stones and other objects handy rather than just finding useful ones. In their article ? Up From The Apes? which published in Time Magazine Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman informs that ?the invention of toolmaking – the purposeful craftsmen on stone implements rather than just picking up handy rocks – and the transition to meat eating? (pg, 26, Time, August 23, 1999) However, hominids were able to devise more sophisticated and diverse tools rather than apes that remained at the same level. In addition to this skill of tool making from the stones, they have also used animal bones as a raw material for making a tool by scraping and smashing them. To illustrate, Asfaw?s team found evidences about scraped and smashed animal bones that were used nearly 2,5 million years ago. All these craftsmen on both stone and bones show us the transition to meat eating as it is mentioned in the past passage. If we consider the future route of improvements in the toolmaking of the hominids we can say that there was not such transition period in the given history of apes. This implies the differentiation between the apes and hominids.
Beside these, there are also another differences between the apes and humans. Firstly, there is a huge distinction between their anatomies. The differences between the adult chimps and people are not that unimportant. As the skills and abilities of the human develop the structure and the functionality of its body changes parallel to them. The main change occurs in the brain of the hominids, whereas the ape?s brain remains almost at the same stage of ?thinking?. Prof. D. Starck and his colleagues state that ?The skulls of human and chimps are quantitative only.? On the other hand, apes partially evolve like humans. For instance their skeletons, teeth and braincases have the same anatomical structure that we have.
Secondly, the human conceptual uniqueness that have centered on language conceptualization is different. Previously done experiments showed that the chimps are notably unsuccessful in talking while human can talk. Actually this ability of talking started the enlargement of the gap between ape and human. Words and their images in our brain lead to different thoughts, which create the creativity in us. Since the apes have no ability of talking they are lack of such devising and thinking skills.
Another major difference between the humans and apes is overall genetic difference. Even the genetic differences are remarkably small Mary Claire King and A. C. Wilson have observed some small differences under natural conditions. They have found that the regulatory system is what exactly differs the human from the chimps.
?Much of the genetic system must be devoted to setting the timing of these events-to turning genes on and off-rather than to the determination of specific traits. We refer to genes that control the timing development events as the regulatory system. King and Wilson therefore suppose that the primary genetic differences between humans and chimps lie in this all-important regulatory system.? Mentioned in ?A Matter of Degree? by Gould. (pg. 22, Ever Since Darwin, Gould)
To sum up, there are some dissimilarities and similarities between humans and apes but they do not give the exact answer of the question ?Are we descendants of apes or not?? Plenty of hypothesis and researches are carried out to get it. The discussion between groups sounds incredibly nonsense and seems like that will not stop forever. Not only the scientists and experts but also the creationists and evolutionists are making people confused about this subject. The truth is in the human mind. If we think logically we will be able to find the answer. And people should not spend this much time, money and attention on a subject, which is trifling like this crab.