Definitions of terms required here.
The scientific Family of "great apes" (hominids) first branched off from the Order of monkeys about 15 million years ago.
About 2.5 million years ago the Genus "homo" (pre-humans) split from the other great apes.
The first and only sub-species of fully modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens) branched off somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
Bottom line: humans did branch off from the Genus of pre-humans (homo), the Family of great apes (hominids), and the Order of monkeys (primates), but not from any species alive today.
Bottom line: humans did branch off from the Genus of pre-humans (homo), the Family of great apes (hominids)
Most of the stuff I read defining hominidae put it outside the primate realm of "great apes" although recent DNA evidence is leading to a re-thinking, re-wording and re-defining of all this. So it depends upon who you ask, who you quote. Kind of like Global Warming. (Insert wry grin here.)
All this is an irrelevant. (Insert loud trumpeting sound here.)
The point was we didn't evolve from "apes" (Oooo-hooo, Aaaah-heeeaaaah!) but from what was termed in the past, "a common ancestor", which was the answer the supposed lunkheads the other poster was referring to, and claimed to dupe, should have known. That was my point. Not that any of that matters.
The fact that apes still exist, whether or not homo sapiens evolved from them, has no bearing on the issue at all, any more than the fact that pre-mammalian species like horseshoe crabs, sharks and crocodiles still exist even though other descendents from a common ancestor do as well, namely mammals. They found their niche and other species went on to evolve in theirs, one doesn't necessarily supplant and/or replace the other simply by evolving into a new niche. Which was the erroneous point the poster I was responding to was attempting to make, and failing.
But all this is arbitrary.
I don't reify.
A "species" is a term given by man for a creature (or grouping of creatures) passing through a given stage of evolution. It is not a fixed "thing". There are no "apes" per se (or hominidae for that matter - which is why the definition can change with time, as I noted earlier) other than our conceptual classification as such, so to say we evolved from "apes" is to commit the fallacy of reification, twice over.
Apes exist as a concept; Life IS. (Existence exists.) As I noted here (Freeperland) once, what is already a long time ago, everything is a transitional species. Concepts are for convenience, (in the human sense, the convenience of survival) nothing more. They do not impose reality upon the world, they reflect it.
The map is not the territory.