Talk:Human/Archive 24

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What's wrong with "apes"?

What is the problem with describing people as type of ape? TimVickers 04:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• It is because it is a POV statment.--§Sir James Paul<<--wikiholic§ 04:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Since it is verifiable information backed by two references, why do you describe it as POV? Do you think we need better-quality references to support this statement? TimVickers 04:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Added a peer-reviewed reference to replace one of the original webpage references. Hopefully that deals with your concern. TimVickers 05:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Accuracy is not POV. NOT being accurate because of your personal feelings or beliefs is POV. KillerChihuahua^?!? 06:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you saying we should or shouldn't say ape then Killer? As fopr Sir James, what do you say we should say instead? This has been debated to death and I think the consensus last time I checked was to say ape, which is accurate from all the sources I've seen. Ungovernable Force^{Got something to say?} 07:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Primate. Ape is mentioned, and linked, later in the intro. See this for a debate about the intro held in mid 2006. KillerChihuahua^?!? 12:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• We should not put any questionable info in articles. Jedi does not agree, I do not agree, and many others do not agree either. It is not a fact. Maybe you could put in instead that some people think that we come from apes and some think we do not. God bless.--§Sir James Paul<<--wikiholic§ 17:28, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

If you can find a reliable source to support an addition of verifiable information then you are of course free to add to this article. However, personal opinion does not belong in an encyclopaedia, even if several other people share this opinion. If you do not think this information is accurate, guidance is provided on this page Wikipedia:Accuracy dispute. Hope this helps. TimVickers 18:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• All I am saying is that we should say that not all people agree with it and many think it is wrong. There are many creationists you know.--§Sir James Paul<<--wikiholic§ 00:24, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Being a creationist means one believes God created Man. That does not mean Man is not a primate. By that reasoning, calling salt Sodium chloride is a POV. For every statement on WP, there is probably some fringe group or person (sometimes more mainstream, sometimes more fringe) who disagrees. There are flat-earthers and hollow-earthers among us. Undue weight is the section of the NPOV policy that applies here - and this is not even about views, per se, but about terminology. Humans are homo sapiens. I don't know of anyone who disagrees with that or has issue with that. Are you saying you do? And again, humans are animals - we eat, we excrete waste, we have hearts and lungs and reproduce sexually, we have every part and function of animals, and physically we have no part or function which other animals do not have. We may or may not have additional attributes, such as the ability to think in an abstract manner, such as a spirit, and those are matters of varying degrees of opinion and evidence. But it sounds like you are saying humans are not homo sapiens, and they are - just as table salt is sodium chloride - and neither is anything other than a specific scientific name for what is. Salt may or may not be special in a religious way - but it is sodium chloride regardless of what else you may or may not believe about it. Are you saying there is a statistically significant view that people are not homo sapiens? Can you provide a source for that? Not that some vanishingly small minority believes that, but that it is actually believed by any significant group whose expertise is the study of humans? KillerChihuahua^?!? 00:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

This seems like an obvious example of WP:NPOV's undue weight clause- there is nothing wrong with calling humans apes in this context- it is the prevailing viewpoint and is backed up by multiple reliable sources. Heck, even Linaeus classified humans as apes and he was a creationist. JoshuaZ 00:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

What some groups of people happen believe about humans is irrelevant, personal opinions are not encyclopaedic content. The policy of this encyclopaedia is extremely clear, see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Information in articles must be verifiable and backed by reliable sources. The description of human as a type of ape is verifiable as it is supported by multiple, high-quality peer-reviewed sources. Consequently, it is entirely appropriate to add this description to an article on humans. TimVickers 01:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed. We would not be having this dispute if this article was about any other animal. If saying humans are apes is POV, I propose we remove that awful evolutionist nonsense about Terra being 4.5 billion years ago and round, or it being a planet. Lord Patrick 01:59, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Edit summary glitched: Apes is already in the sentence, later. Primates has the last known consensus, and is accurate. Please make your case for the double use of apes and omission of primates, please. Thanks. KillerChihuahua^?!? 03:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I would prefer hominid or hominoid, the scientific term that means the same thing as ape, a superfamily that includes the great apes and gibbons. The word ape is rather imprecise, colloquial term that roughly means the same thing as hominoid, but conjures up the image of non-human apes to lay people. JPotter 03:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• That is a compromise I can live with. --Sir James Paul 20:50, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Just because humans share a common ancestry with apes doesn't make us apes. We might as well call mammals "birds" because both of them evolved from a common ancestor. A misconception is that humans evolved from apes - are genetic differences are too few. Donkeys and horses share nearly exactly the same DNA whilst humans and Bonobo chimps share 98% of the same DNA.

   When I was 9 I read a children's book that said that humans evolved from a missing link not yet discovered. THE REST OF YOU should consult better books on evolution  

A quote from "The General Book of Ignorance" "What did humans evolve from? Not apes. And certainly not monkeys. Homo sapiens sapiens [<---another misconception is that our race is named Homo sapiens]and apes both evolved from a common ancestor, though this elusive chappie has not yet been found. He lived in the Pliocene era, eight to five million years ago. [etc.--->]" Wikisquared 22:04, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

There's no other logical classification for humans than that of an ape. If humans are not apes, then what would they be? Benosaurus 18:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

• "We might as well call mammals "birds" because both of them evolved from a common ancestor." - If the common ancestor of mammals and birds were more recent, then mammals and birds would indeed belong in the same family, for the same reason that humans and other apes belong in the same family. Because mammals and birds diverged a long time ago (around 320 million years ago), they are in the same phylum (chordata), the same subphylum (vertebrata), the same superclass (tetrapoda), and the same series (amniota), but not in the same class (birds are in sauropsida, while mammals are in synapsida).
• On the other hand, because humans and other apes diverged only a few million years ago, they are categorized more closely together under the cladistic system. Thus, humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor 3-5 million years ago, so they are both classified under the tribe Hominini; humans and gorillas have a common ancestor 7-10 million years ago, so they are both classified under the subfamily Homininae; humans and orangutans have a common ancestor 13-14 million years ago, so they are both classified under the family Hominidae (the great apes); humans and gibbons (i.e., the great apes and the lesser apes) have a common ancestor 15-18 million years ago, so they are both classified under the superfamily Hominoidea (the apes). And so on for all the rest of the species in the world: humans and Old World monkeys have a common ancestor 25 million years ago, so they're both classified under the parvorder Catarrhini; humans and New World monkeys have a common ancestor 30 million years ago, so they're both classified under the suborder Haplorrhini; humans and lemurs have a common ancestor 40 million years ago, so they're both classified under the order Primates; humans and mice have a common ancestor 100 million years ago; humans and frogs have a common ancestor 300 million years ago; humans and lampreys have a common ancestor 500 million years ago; humans and sponges have a common ancestor 600 million years ago; humans and algae have a common ancestor 1 billion years ago; humans and all organisms have a common ancestor 3.5 billion years ago; etc. This is the basis of the classification system used for all life. -Silence 18:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

As long as both chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons are called apes, humans fit into the term. Chimps are more closely related to humans than any of the other apes. The only way to take humans out of the apes category is to have apes only refer to 1 of the genuses and none of the others (except in the case of the multiple gibbon genus). So if ape only refers to gibbon, then fine, humans aren't apes. If ape only refers to gorilla, orangutan, OR chimpanzee, then fine humans aren't apes. This is why the putting humans in birds doesn't work. Not because of distance with common ancestor, but because there are no animals in the "bird" classification that have a closer releationship to humans then they do with other animals in the "bird" classification. Martin Feb 28, 2007

To add, some research is showing that perhaps chimps evolved from humans. I am not saying this is fact, I am just stating it is a possibility on human and ape evolution. Would that make people happier than if humans evovled from the same common ancestor they have with chimps? Martin Feb. 28, 2007

Just like an alien

It's not that I disagree with this article reading as if an alien life form wrote it, although it's pretty funny. I find it hard to understand that a human could describe things about themselves as much as any other animal - our lives are stuck in the first person so it's pretty hard to describe ourselves. If this article contained everything humans can do or do compared to other animals it would be unnaturally long (mainly because we're the most irrational things on the planet).82.18.180.58 18:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

That last part about human extinction...I' pretty sure that didn't happen, because then we wouldn't really be here would we...

Vandalism reverted. TimVickers 20:52, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Well I find it easy, even preferable, to describe Humans in the third person. Primarily the reason this article uses such a tone is due to WP:ASR and as some have already pointed out, encyclopedias never use first person. You could even argue it violates NPOV, but I think the previous reasons are enough. Lord Patrick 01:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to sound too negative or whatever, but this article sounds absolutely awful. I don't think it's just that it's odd to hear about humans in the third person (although the first person plural might still be a bit better). If you get a normal encyclopedia and look up human, it doesn't sound anywhere near as goofy. Cereal Box Conspiracy 03:18, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Any suggestions for improvement? TimVickers 03:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Why would first person plural be better? Lord Patrick 22:32, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the thing that makes the article seem "goofy" (and part of the "ape" problem above as well) is that the introduction is trying to hard to show the human as "just" a special animal. while i do think we're just one more form of animals, some higher ape and all, this is just one aspect of humans. one might reconsider starting it off with a less biological, less technical intro. it most likely shouldn't be lofty, but after all, humans create wikipedia. the fact that it is always ourselves we're watching can be recognized. humans (and humans alone) are not only biological beings, but philosophical, artistic...

Well, aside from various other considerations on so called Human uniqueness, there has already been significant discussion of this matter in the past. The fact is, there are so many different spiritual and philosophical definitions of Human's that trying to combine them all into a coverall section would either result in an unencyclopedic, messy linkfest, or violation of one of Wiki's non-negotiable policies. However, as there is a general scientific agreement on what Human's are, that is the primary one highlighted. Also, there is no such thing as a "higher" animal in biology, anything more than there is a "higher" colour in art. Lord Patrick 03:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Here is the Britannica lead to their "Human being" article. Human beings - a culture-bearing primate that is anatomically similar and related to the other great apes but is distinguished by a more highly developed brain and a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning. In addition, human beings display a marked erectness of body carriage that frees the hands for use as manipulative members. Exactly the same style as ours. TimVickers 16:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)