Out of Africa?

[Skybird]

Just for the record, the often used phrasing that "man evolves from apes", is wrong. Once there was a pre-ape population in which sub-populations formed up, the one being the earliest "forefathers" of man, the other being the early ancestors of apes. Man and ape are related. Man did not "evolve from ape".

Evolutionary strains of different eras do not always necessarily follow in a linear fashion one after the other, but species from different eras can and do coexist at the same time. Some species have not chnaged since incredibly long times, other have moved back to earlier phases of their evolutionary forming-up.

It is a wild misunderstanding that evolution always works linear. It does not. Also, it is no "driving force" of anythging. It is just an observation of for exmaple a species and its alteration over time. This then is called its evolution, its coming-about. Gravity is an external variable, a force that causally causes the apple I let slip off my hand falling to the ground. The idea of evolution has not this causing, causal quality. Its in principle just an abstract construction used by theoretists. It is no force in itself, like gravity.

Our use of the term makes it easy and more comfortable to talk about the idea behind evolution, but the language we use on it bear the risk to fundamentally misunderstand what really is meant by it.