[VadeRetro]

We didn't evolve "from" apes. According to evolution theory, we share common ancestors with apes. Apes are as highly evolved for their environments as we are.

That's a bit of a cop-out. True, we didn't evolve directly from any of the modern ape species. However, we're most closely related to the chimpanzees, with whom we share a fairly recent common ancestor. The evidence suggests that that last common ancestor probably looked a lot more like a chimp than it did like us.

"A" in the upper left above is a modern chimp skull. "B" next to it is an Australopithecus africanus from 2.6 million years ago. In fact, "B" up to "N" (a modern human) are fossil hominids of decreasing age. But "A," the chimp, which is as modern as "N," the human, seems to fit in well right at the beginning of the sequence. Again, that last common ancestor looked a lot like a chimp.

What about the grosser mischaracterization that "We came from monkeys?" An ape is not a monkey, but apes arose from monkeys maybe 30 million years ago. If you could take a time-machine voyage to 35 million years ago, the most human-looking species you could find would be some sort of monkey.

In fact, go back far enough, and the "most advanced vertebrate" is some kind of fish. Farther back, and there are no true vertebrates, only chordates. And so forth.

[Sam Cree]

What are those L and M things?

[Sam Cree]

btw, now that you posted the picture, I see what they meant, talking about "long" faces on that other thread, and the relative shortness of ours.

[Ahban]

It is up to me to do the disclaimer on Mr. Retro's post #95.

M and N in that set are humans. L, K, and J are Neandertals which DNA tests have shown are not the ancestors of modern humans. That takes us back to I, Homo Egaster, which went extinct long before M and N ever show up in the fossil record (about 40 something thousand years ago). Those dots do not connect.

A-I homininds look as much like the great ape they just discovered in the Congo as they do a human. It does not follow that N and M descended from them.

[Little Ray]

I stand corrected; however my point was that we did not evolve from modern apes. Some people think we evolved from chimps and gorillas and this obviously not the case. We share a distant common ancestor and from that point our species have diverged.
To go with your skulls, it is interesting to note that an infant chimp looks much more human than an adult chimp.