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Well I'll Be A Monkey's Uncle
killproc writes "A new report suggests that interbreeding between humans and chimpanzees happened a lot more recently than was previously thought. The report, published in the most recent issue of the journal Nature, estimates that final break between the human and chimpanzee species did not come until 6.3 million years ago at the earliest, and probably less than 5.4 million years ago."
To be honest the creationists' argument always reminded me to Zeno's motion paradox. That's what you get when you try to view a continous process as a number of separate things. Evolution is continous and there is no division/distinction between macro- and microevolution the same way Achilles leaves the turtle behind, contrary to creationist belief.
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Be yourself no matter what they say
We'll, I'm curious, since there appears to be relatively recent common ancestry. Do we know if humans can successfully mate with any other primate?
How about this. Once you've evolved the brains for it (humans are one of the few animals that are big enough to support a brain big enough for high intelligence) advanced communication obviously becomes a really beneficial ability. All social animals (of which we are one) require fairly advanced communication to make their society work. We can also use it to coordinate. Humans are pretty weak and fragile, but put a bunch of us together and we can take down mastadons.
Once you've got a big brain and communication you start to make marks. Various animals, birds in particular, remember visual landmarks. Some smart early human realized he could MAKE visual landmarks for himself and his tribe. Even some other animals do this, scratching trees to mark territory for instance. Now communication and marking combine into what you might call early art. As a bonus it serves as a way of recording knowledge.
When you look at it carefully much of our vaunted uniqueness just looks like things other animals do, taken to the next level.
As for other traits, they've been quite well explained. Chances are if you took another species of great ape, kicked them out of the forest on the savanna and then made them survive through an ice age after a few million years you'd end up with a lot of dead apes and some really smart ones.
Let me share with you all something I've personally witnessed about evolution. I think it dove-tails your thread fairly well.
When I was younger living in Kingwood, TX in 1985 (still considered to be a new development at the time), I remember seeing many dead gray squirrels on the road. It didn't really seem to matter what roads, as the road kill was evenly distributed throughout the city. Over the years, I've seen exactly how they would die. These squirrels would run across the road in front of traffic. But that's not what killed them. What kills them is that they freak out and run back the other way, then back again, and again. Basically, they just run out to the road and can't make up their mind by running back and fourth till...POP...they see the underside of a tire.
Fast forward to today where the population of Kingwood, TX has at least tripled. Though more construction has taken place displacing vast areas of forests, you can still see gray squirrels all over the place. In fact, I can visually see MORE of them today then I did back in 1985. Even more astonishing, I don't see ANY dead squirrels. Maybe I will find a dead cat, or possum in rare instances, but no dead squirrels. How can this be? How can the grey squirrel population increase and yet their dead on the road decrease?!
I found the answer. When those bastards run across the road, they don't freak out anymore. They run in one direction and never look back. They keep going, and fast!
They've gotten smarter, they're adapting, surviving...evolving.
Life is not for the lazy.