Primates

I believe that humans are the first primates to have evolved to our current level of cultural sophistication. There are two reasons I chose this:

1) I would imagine there would be "signs" of a previous species having dominance - archeological ruins, skeletal remains etc.
2) If another primate had achvieved our current stage of evolution, they would have competed directly with our own primate ancestors, and we ourselves would probably not have evolved as far as we have.

Just my thoughts, with little scientific fact at hand to back me up, btw.

If your considering those findings to be primates, than think again. They are just unusual creatures from the Garden of Eden. If they are really part human, "where's the proof?"

Oh gawd.

Re: Primates


Well, not history, but anthropology (specifically geology), which tells us primate evolution toward homo sapiens begins with Australopithecus about 4 million years ago. They are distinguished as "human-like" because they walked upright, but had a small brain and did not produce artifacts.

The very thing that distinguishes intelligent life from non-intelligent life are its artifacts: the use of tools, the manipulation of available resources, art, etc. The first beings that produced artifacts are members of the genus Homo. Like Grand Duke said, if there was evidence to the contrary, it would have shown up in the fossil record.

Re: Primates


Considering the marks we've left on the planet in just the last hundred thousand years, I'm pretty sure we're the first to acquire our brand of skills.

How many artificial satellites orbit the Earth these days... tens of thousands? And they'll be there for eons.

If anyone came before us, they sure didn't act much like us, or we would see the signs all over the place.

Speaking as a gorilla on permanent vacation with my harem in this tropical paradise, I might say to you stressed out technofreaks with your guilt fuelled religious fantasies.....

"Sophisticated ? ...Wise up!"

Intelligence isn't the 'goal' of evolution, successful reproduction is. It would seem we are the first species to have found ourselves in a situation where increased intelligence was such a useful attribute, with strong selection pressures towards it.

We know that we can reduced intelligence through artificial selection pressures, we did it to sheep and cows in particular, so my slight tangent question is:

If we set up a situation with strong selection pressures towards intelligence, and selected another species to experience it, how long would it take until the species had a comparable intelligence to us?

Cyracuz,

Maybe English is not your first language, but you display some muddled thinking here which makes it difficult to take take your question seriously.

Fristly the age of the earth can be measured in billions but not trillions of years. Secondly it would be quite sensational if there was evidence of homo sapiens-like primates existing before modern man, not the reverse. By "a time before history" I assume you mean a time before modern man came on the scene. History doesnt have a start date.

So to answer your question: no there wasn't. Sorry to disappoint you.

I find the question a bit anthropocentric. Why is our form of intelligence to that of other animals?

Do you mean just the ability to use abstract reasoning , or the specific type of shared insanity (that is, intelligence) that humans share?


In order to even begin exploring the probability of your idea, it would be necessary to determine to what extent other creatures alive today possess language, intelligence, culture (and perhaps even the ability to use abstract reasoning and play with semantics which forms the backbone of philosophy) . IN some ways, whales brains appear to be more complex than our own with an even larger proportion of cerebral cortex in compared to body size and more primitive sections of the brain. Other apes and dolphins also have complex societies and kinship ties, and basic signs have been taught to chimps . Also, animal minds can do a lot of nifty things that we can't do.

IMHO, the biggest difference between us and other animals is opposable thumbs.

Your responses are expected. No "sophisticated" life before humans seems to be the general idea.

Well then, think about this:

A little more than two thousand years ago the sahara desert was a green landscape with many great rivers flowing through it.

Remains of seaside settlements have been found thousands of meters high, in some mountain.

The scars we have inflicted on our planet in "just a few hundred years" aren't really that great.

And who's to say they died to leave traces. Maybe they left?

One of you raised the point that such a primate that I propose would have to compete with the forefathers of modern man. Why? Chimpanses were not competing with humans, but who's to say they won't evolve given the chance.

I am not saying any of this is fact, merely saying that we cannot assume to know we are the first. There is no proof of it.

You cannot prove a negative. Your logic here is the same as that which affirms the "possibility" of aliens building the pyramids at Giza or the "possibility" each individual is nothing more than a "portion of God's personality," that we're all just figments of God's imagination.

No, we cannot "prove" otherwise. But that doesn't mean we should take the hypotheses seriously. The lack of evidence to suggest something is not the case is not evidence at all.

There is also no indication in the fossil record of any civilization similar to ours existing before us.

When you posed the question, I thought you were asking if technologically advanced primates had ever come before us, and I still don't think so.

But even if you were only suggesting that cave painters came before us, I still wouldn't think so because there is no evidence of that either.

You seem to be saying "we can't know that there wasn't". But by the same token, we can't know there wasn't an extraterrestrial alien culture setting up camp here for 100k years either. But when you have a pretty clear and consistent fossil history showing a slow metamorphisis of life over time, and you haven't a shred of anomalous evidence (like an alien radio embedded in 70 million year old rock) which indicates anything unusual happening, I think it's a pretty big stretch to say another civilization was present, but we haven't seen a single piece of their trash.

I agree with that nietzche and rosborne.

But do we have a fossil record that goes back to the beginning?

Maybe it's easier to put it like this: We were amebas millions of years ago, and we're humans today. But there are amebas today too. Will they be something similar to humans in millions of years given the chance to evolve under similar circumstances?

If humans were the first, the Adam so to speak, then our organism has had the longest time to evolve. If not there may be an organizm that has had longer time to evolve.

Everything that is alive today has had the longest time to evolve. Some things have more genes than we do. Some things change a lot over time, and others barely change at all.

Remember, evolution is about populations, not individuals. If you start today with two twin "brothers" of anything, one of them may generate a line of offspring which changes very little, and the other may happen to produce a line which changes a lot. Eventually, the two descendents may run into each other eons later, and see major differences. Both have had as long to evolve, but for whatever reason, one simply accumulated more change. They may no longer be the same species, but they still have a common ancestor.

There is nothing to stop this process from happening today, with every single living thing on the planet from bacteria to beetles, but there is absolutely no reason to expect that those things are "heading toward" any particular form, human or otherwise. They will change, they will adapt, they will be different, but there is no telling what they will be. And the same was true billions of years ago.

Bear in mind also that conditions on the Earth have changed over the eons. There are a lot more entrenched successful species around, not to mention the differences in the environment, so it's a lot more difficult for the more rudimentary life forms (like bacteria) to evolve into new niches where they won't be out competed, so even though the potential of the evolutionary process is the same today as eons ago, the probability that certain things will occur has changed dramatically.

No, the fossil record only goes back about 600 million years, when creatures like corals, hydras, jellyfish and sea anemones had already evolved. The Burgess Shale fossils date from around 540 million years ago, and scientists think they represent the earliest links to modern animal evolution.



That's tricky. My gut answer is, sure - why not? But it's more complicated than that, and I'm no scientist.



I'm going to be a little blunt with this one, if you don't mind. This is just weird to me. You probably need to do some more research on evolution in general. The quick and easy resource is TalkOrigins.org; but I'd also recommend anything by Stephen J. Gould, E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and those folks. Also, if you have the cash and inclination, the PBS special "Evolution" is available on DVD and VHS, and the Discovery Channel special "Walking With Cavemen" is very good as well.

"The lack of evidence to suggest something is not the case is not evidence at all."

well said Neitzsche

You are right in that my knowledge of these things is limited Nietzche. Thank you for your pointers.