Stephanie;

My quick and short answer is... No.

You make a really good point Arramon,

But it's not living in the plains that gave us our way of life right now, and sure the apes on the forest could be the ones talking trough computers, but I say it was some great coincidence that we came to be this way. Look at the apes in the forest. They're sheltered, and they make they're own beds out of leaves. And one more thing. THe fact that our ancestors had hair during the ice age and having a bad posture is right, but why do the ape in forests don't walk on two feet, how come they have hair all over their bodies when it doesn't even get cold? Living in a cave doesn't necessarily mean you get hunched over. There are small caves and large caves, you have to go out to hunt.. And also, eventually a new type of organization developed for the apes that evolved on the plains. Instead of being a hunter-gather group where each man provides for himself (like making spear tips, and sharing food), people started to specialize (like one person cooked, and another make spear tips). That way, each individual was able to learn more about their skill, which in turn let OUR ancestors advance into more advanced people.

Even now, a group of apes in some forest in Africa could be organizing into the society I just talked about. Think about it. The invention of the CD could have come ten thousand years later, or maybe 100 years earlier. Same with us and the apes in forests. The apes in the forest could be organizing in revolutionary ways that could make their species more powerful than ours in.. say.. one thousand years.
You present a really good argument, Arramon, but until I see some pure proof that your statement is true, then and only then will I believe you. And I'm guessing the same goes for you too.
ttyl!

- YMP

Yes. They must be. But I don't buy into the conspiracies. We may have been visited a few times, but I think the government is entirely too incompetent to keep such a secret for so long. More likely, they simply haven;t found us and we haven;t found them. Imagine a forest of billions of trees. There are a hundred or so people in this forest spread out randomly. There may be a few close enough together to communicate. The rest would have no clue where others were, or even if any others existed. We may simply be in a bad spot.

Stephanie, we are most likely the most intelligent lifeforms in the universe. I would believe some microscopic life-forms on Mars, but don't look forward to any Star Wars-type things.

Locke

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"...and remember, the enemy gate is down."

Sometimes I look around and see the state of affairs we humans have caused, and wonder if we are even the most intellgent beings on Earth, let alone the universe. <_<

If I were an alien, and saw humanity as it is, I couldn't warp out of this solar system fast enough.

I agree, Planetwatcher.

Maybe, as civilisations become advanced, they begin to consider themselves 'The greatest' and become ambitious. Thus they strart wars, and eventually blow themselves up.Thats why we do not see any intelligent civilisations in space.When the get civilised enough to invent nuclear energy, they make a wrong use of it and blow themselves up!

And I don't beleive We are aleins. We evolved out of Apes, and only a time machine can change that! ( I, for one ,hope it won't)

Sincerely,
Rahuldandekar.

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Limericks, written by me: http://limericker.blogspot.com

. .. ...survival instinct. That's always been common throughout our Time here on Earth. Our recorded time at least, and the other pieces we have filed away. If... if primates can evolve into a functioning humaniod form, even within their own simpler means (no cds, no dvds, no freaggin $10 movie box office bomb flick...), then this would take some time beyond millenia... Even the Era of the Egyptians and the Great Pyramids had primates around. Thousands of years later.. same ol' friendly monkeys. :unsure: "monkey, w-what are you doing?"

Would it take human interference in order for this intuitive step to occur? Maybe, or if an entity decides to play with genetic splicing. For all we know, humans may be descendants of creatures that were a step up from apes... maybe like: monkeys, apes, humans.. and the apes need to gain something in order for them to take that evolutionary :blink: "...i think, therefor i am."

..oh the monkeys, the monkeys. We can't even say for sure or not if we were 'sprinkled' here by some fairy creatures flittering through space with their magical star dust. Or dropped off by the local stork-comet. :unsure: momma?

Our species is so adaptable, its scary... cuz we almost DID blow ourselves up.. the Cold War was no enjoyable thing... Nations flexing their muscles. But, before that lovely contraption known as the bomb, we developed along with our lands; overcoming geographical obstacles. Be it from caves or plains or mountains or forests, and anywhere else anyone wants to throw in... we became more attuned to the collective form of progression, evolving within seperate cultural levels.

...also.. we cover ourselves with clothing... primates don't... they have hair for that. Our bodies conditioned themselves to the way we moved across the lands from when the continents were all together (and even native tribes of forested or plainal regions that don't where clothes ). Along the way, we changed into the seperate groups that populate the world... we diversified =)

humans have been changing and manipulating for so long now, say within the last 10 thousand years, and animals are still animals. No evolutionary leaps... well.. maybe the little guys (hi tadpoles! ) or whatever other smaller species you wanna count...

we're far off from the gecco lizard evolving into godzilla and destroying everyone...

Even being humans, though, we still are cautious about unknown frontiers... deaths occuring make us question whether we should try or even care.
...we may always care, but stop questioning why... or just the opposite. And if both occur, then our species stagnates, and another cetches up and one day may overtake us. Or if you wanna calculate a NEO into the picture, it may not matter if/when we become obsolete. Fate will have decided.

um.. 2028... around christmas time... (from some prophet guy.. Miguel whoever)

ok i'm done =)

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If apes are constantly evolving like you suggest, then where are all the species' in the "in between" stages (i.e. between apes and humans)? Where are the fossils of these "in between" stages? You can't tell me an ape just gave birth to a human one day...but neither can anyone present evidence of all the millions of steps that must have needed to occur in this evolution (the number of steps would be huge considering that human DNA has been changing/evolving by one bit of information per 100 years or something along those lines). I believe that evolution can, is and does occur, but that humans evolved from apes cannot be conclusively proven. There are too many mysteries unanswered! I think that our species originating from somewhere else is a more likely scenario, but then I really don't know what I'm talking about! :P Perhaps George W. Bush is one of the "in between" stages I spoke of!

Kashi

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Climate Change Australia

the monkeys the monkeys...

our genetic codings must go back a looooong way... we haven't changed much in the last 50000 years or so......... and there 'isn't' any in bewteen proof linking humans with ancient primates..... just similarities....

i'm glad, for one... i like being human

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..although my appetites can be pretty ferocious...

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Kashi,

Maybe we are the in between stages! Maybe the future will show that we too, in all our arrogant glory, are not completly cooked yet.

Maybe just maybe, all you who think that they "have the answers" actually dont have the answers at all, but in all the arrogance cant see that.

Ya know, our ancestors didnt have all the answers even though they thought they did, and WE DONT EITHER! Back in the 60's, we thought there was nothing more to learn about our universe. Here in the year 2003, we are still amazed and surprised almost daily by the new things we learn.

You ask where the "PROOF" is of a human "in between stage", I say that if evolution is your belief, then maybe the proof is not in the fossils, but in the mirror!

And as far as our president goes, if he is the "in between stage", then that would make you no different from him!!!

And what in the world, does monekys have to do with space & the universe
anyway? Much less the evolution of a human being?

Science is not the "answer all" for everything. The problem is, that scientists for the most part teach only what they learn from another human being. Sure they say its the "proof" and that they can scientifically say with 100% accuracy that what they teach is "the way it is", but even science has been proven wrong, and no matter the school, no matter the teacher, you DONT learn just "proof", but you learn "opinions" of others, who arrogantly say its "the only right answer"!

You cant paint a window black and expect to see the sun, and just as you say that people cant prove that we came from apes conclusively, which scientists have said we evolved from apes for years, that proves even more that NO ONE can conclusively prove one way or another. It proves that once again, its all about belief. Can you prove CONCLUSIVELY that we evolved? Or is that just your opinion based on what you have learned from someone also sharing their "opinion"

We know that a red crayon mixed with a blue one, will make the color purple. Can you in all your "knowledge" using all the scientifically proven evidence out there, conclusively tell us what color hue of purple will be produced each time? I mean common, its "proven" those two colors make purple, you can actually hold the crayons in your hands and do the test yourself, but can you conclusively prove actually anything? No you cant. Even the simplist of scientific challenges cant be "conclusively proven" and I will tell ya something else. DNA testing, will, in the future, be conclusively proven to not be perfect. Someone will come along, with more education, better instruments, and change the way we rely on DNA testing. Why is that? Because we humans are as dumb as sticks in the scheme of things, and in our lifetime we will NEVER EVER know the conclusive answers so lets quit pretending we do!

Stephanie I don't disagree with anything you just said. Of course we are still cooking (although natural selection doesn't play as big a part in our day to day lives as it did 50000 years ago), and of course we will eventually become in between stages (in between what and what I'm not sure). All I am saying is that from ape to us, there has to be lots of tiny changes, not one big leap forwards in evolution (i.e. a chimpanzee can't give birth to a human). We have no evidence of those tiny changes, and hence that we evoled from primates is doubtful in my mind. I'm not claiming that I have the answers, I'm merely presenting my point of view on this issue, which is entirely relevant to the topic of alien life!

Kashi

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Climate Change Australia

We question why the apes are still there and the in-between stages aren't.
Humans have evolved from a specail ape that left the prime adobe of the monkeys and came to live on the plains.There, it had to adopt stategies like standing on two legs for survival (on the plains there was more to be gained by adopting this strategy rather than sniffing a patch of grass, because the monkeys' sense of smell was already bad).Those who were good at this, survived, while the others simply died.In this way evolution made us good at standing upright, hunting(as there was little vegetarian food available), for which we had to become good at creating tools.Many different subspecies of this kind of ape developed.This was about one to two million years ago.
Many of these subspecies died out, because they weren't good at hunting, or lacking in different aspects required for survival. Also,the brain almost doubled in size(as those who were intelligent could survive better).'Man' became almost advanced.Primitive 'man' migrated to different parts of the globe from Africa, in which they had evolved.The other sub-species died out as they were overtaken by the more advanced ones in the race for survival.
There is ,phisically,no major difference between a cave man drawing paintings in caves 35,000 years ago, and a 'mordern' man playing dvd's on this pentium 4's dvd player.The difference is due to a completely new evolutionary factor, the curiosity of man for science and his appeal for arts. As these two things have developed with time,man has made new scientific and philosophical discoveries and become civilised and mordern.
You may ask where the appeal for arts came from.Man painted pictures of animals, Gods,and sung rhythmic songs on festivals.this may have been the start of our interest in arts.

It is rather unnecessary to say that I have an intrest in evolutionary biology.

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Limericks, written by me: http://limericker.blogspot.com

we're not talking from as long back as 65 million years... so the lines of 'evolution' must have some sort of paths that they had followed so close to our time..... the farther back we go, the more hazier it becomes...
the brain of a human was always the correct size, normal size.. unless you were born with a defect of some kind... the brain just developed more tissue to protect from the lack of bone structure of the head when craniums gently realigned to an upright posture..
i think man must have been really bored in those days... maybe just fiddling around with the bugs crawlin around, poking them, squishing 'em... eating 'em..
until we got it into our heads to go check outside... '..what's that sound..' but may have been like... "..ah!.."
primitive in thought.... but not in the species that we were...
Our motor capabilities were becoming multi functional... but slowly...
did we have little ape fellas sitting next to us, having the same 'oo-ah!' discussions? who knows?..... would we have been ABLE to live next a 'visibly' different species? or would we have had neighbor disputes?....
The primates kept to themselves... the humans kept to themselves...
If we had been a further extension of the primate, couldn't we have become some sort of ruling force over the primates? like Tarzan in his jungle, we show power over the animals because we've learned how to kill with knives and cunning.... and in being to close and around these animals, might we of tried to pass these traits on, to help teach the others?
i think a whole slew of what-ifs could go on there...
But, its just not like that... wild life is seperate, humans are 'supposedly' civilized... and humans taking the forefront happened.... while the extinction process still happens.... If we were so 'close' to another species, we may be more attuned to their needs.... or is it that our nations became lax, and allowed brutality to just take shape and run rampid....

zoos....... who wants to go to a zoo? is that being attuned?
seeing the animals there are great... until you really 'see' the animals there.
then you wonder, where are we at in life? and why are we here? How can certain things be alright, while we protest the most mundane of things that are from our own creations anywayz...

maybe we should all go live in a forest for a year or two, no resources but what we find, and see how we come out, how we fare against the real world.... gain some insght into the world.... usually only people trained in this can survive, but there are those who can find an inner knowledge enough to survive...

hmm.... that would be a nice test... to place a human and an ape in similar uncontrolled environments and let them try to survive on their own... would they become food for others, make weapons (of course the human...), try to find shelter (both more than likely), trap and kill to eat... find a way out (maybe both... maybe just the human)... one may call that place a home is survival is consistent enough, the other may want to try and find its original home... or both doing either?

anywayz....

this topic was about aliens.... but, i guess there are more aliens on this planet than we realize...


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oi! thinking to early....

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Yes . ..-={A}=-...

Who would have thought that a question I posed about your beliefs about aliens would turn into a sparing match for a few to prove who is right or wrong about a topic (evolution) which DOES NOT have any relevance to aliens whatsoever.

Kashi,
I respect your point of view. Thats what makes our world go around. My point is there is no "proof" in points of view.

Here is my point of view: Evolution of apes, has NO PLACE in the study of our universe. That is ridiculous to claim it does!

We have no idea at all, the process of evolution<cough> on our planet, much less in a universe we know nothing about, so how can we accurately teach or prove evolution on planets we cant even identify, much less teach it as fact. Shoot, scientists teach as fact that there was proof of water on mars because of nothing more then pictures, and now they are backtracking and saying oh darn, maybe there isnt.

Evolution seems to have "gone into remission" the past 50,000 years. Why would something that has supposedly been the staple of our world & apparently our universe, decided that for the time being, has done enough. Maybe its a scientific conspiricy between the evolved apeliens & the bacteriaoids. Maybe the apeliens and the bacteriaoids are in a cave in pakastan, killing off all the in between species they have evolved from, then under the cover of darkness, rocketing themselves and the remains, to another planet in an evolutionary, futuristic car-ket, therefore stealing any and all proof of the "in between life" that science teaches us had to of been the only truth of our beginning. Then these evolved apelioids send back their most intelligent to learn about a planet they evolved from, making crop circles so as to confuse us while they abduct us humans so they can use our bodies to further evolve.

This forum has only been around for a little over a month. I was so excited to have a place to hopefully learn facts, in reality what I got was "educated people", posting hundreds of times in a little over maybe 30 days, their opinions about topics that have nothing whatsoever to do with our universe. It has become a chore to keep interest up about what I want to learn about when it is only idiotic posts about evolution. Look, I dont believe in evolution at all. I had no idea that subscribing to this forum to learn about space & planets would result in reading over and over again about apes and evolution. A question posed on this forum about planets, the answers involve evolution, questions about aliens produce answers based on evolution, i ask about the universe, the answers are about evolution, and these same people post over and over and over again.

It is very hard to "believe" in the validity of posts on this forum when the majority of "answers" come from the few who have over a hundred posts on this forum. It reminds me of the person who talks to himself just because they enjoy the sound of their voice! Besides that, where in the world, does a comment about our president being an half evolved ape/human, belong in a forum about the universe? :angry:

Stephanie, this is a science-oriented website. I'm a science-oriented webmaster and a huge supporter of the theory of evolution and the whole process of science in general. Although you're entitled to your beliefs about evolution, a conversation about aliens is going to go hand-in-hand with a conversation with evolution. Especially on my website.

I'm biased. Sorry.

You started the thread, so I can see how you feel a certain degree of ownership in the direction you want it to take.

If you like, I can lock it up at this point, but I feel that would do the whole conversation a diservice - there have been many interesting concepts discussed about the potential of alien life, and it would be a shame to shut this down.

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

Considering the size of universe(and we don't even know yet how big it is)
my answer must be yes to life...intelligent ? my answer is yes to that too.

Just think about it...all this space...yes its arrogant to believe we are only intelligent lifeform in universe.

P.S.
How intelligent are we? building just more weapons and arguing about this and that
instead of exploring space??

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Mikael Kandell

We need "first foundation" now...join me:)

Evolution is such a hot topic, when discussing the possibility of the existance of ETs, because they, too, would have had to had some kind of natural selection process. Evolution is still happening all the time. Several million years ago, where I live was covered by a shallow sea. As the waters receded, the plants and animals that could adapt, lived, and those that couldn't died. In the South Texas heat, only the hardiest plants and animals can make it without irrigation. We humans are not one of those animals!

As man continues to destroy and take over the places once inhabited by native animals, those animals are adapting to city life. Opossums, squirrels, raccoons, deer, etc. are all animals that are surviving urban life here in the US. These animals are slowly changing (evolving) in new environments. The fossil history of Earth shows us the amazing ability life has to change and adapt or evolve.

Perhaps we humans have slowed our own evolution because we don't have to be strong to survive anymore. We don't have to adapt. We change our envirnoment to suit us. The weak and sick are able to survive and have offspring. For example, at one time it was extremely rare to have a female with, not a carrier of, hemophilia, because males usually died before they could produce offspring. Now, female hemophiliacs are becoming fairly common because these people are able to live longer healthier lives due to modern medicine.

Perhaps, as we make our journey to the stars, we will have to adapt to things like weightlessness and radiation and become stronger, evolve. Who knows? Sounds like an exciting future to me!

Before anyone jumps on me for being cold or inhumane about the sick or weak, remember that I work with the the mentally retarded and multipli-handicapped and volunteer my spare time to make their lives better. They deserve help, love and life as anyone else.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

as with all meaningful conversations, a long, heart felt, and honest one is the best.... =)

Here's a thought about the aliens.... other world species if you would...

It may be that in order for them to traverse the universe, if they have that ability as of yet, their own species must undergo a transformation or evolving of some kind... Would they be born with the ability to travel space from the outset? That would be intense! But, maybe not likely, just by the fact of how slow or universe really is..... if the species has been around for awhile, it may evolve differently depending on the situations of its world or local region..... are other species around? If so, are they hostile to them, making the said species have to 'adapt' in order to survive? or is the species left alone to evolve in much simpler, less provoking ways? Would their evolution be different because of lack of outside influence? And depending on the actual shape/form/mass/matter of the species, would space travel be possible for them in an environment that allowed for the age old atrophy... if the species wasn't pushed to adapt.

We seem to only be in space because it was once a race for it.... now that we've been there for almost half a century, we're still only just swingin around our own planet... not even to the moon a second time...

If one country gets there before the other, then the latter will feel that it needs to catch up, and so will try to advance its technology to do so... leading to more accidents/setbacks? or more advancements/accomplishments?....

There's no other world species to prod us on, so we have to prod ourselves, i guess... Maybe aliens don't come around cause we ARE the crazies of the neighborhood, and if we finally get that new car, we'll be mashin it around and tearing up other peoples lawns! =P

oh wait... sorry =) flashback...

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Fraser,

Indeed i did start the thread. This is your site as you have made quite clear and I am just a visitor. You may do with this thread, what you want.

I appreciate that you THINK that evolution has a huge roll in our universe and in your forum, but fraser, did you create this forum for you or for everyone? Do you think its fair that because your biased, that means that those of us who actually came to learn facts, are going to be punished by listening to ape arguments over and over again?

I am guessing that when you go to a bank and ask about a loan, you appreciate that they dont talk money or loans, but their opinion about skin care? I am guessing that when you go to the doctor and ask about skin care, that you appreciate his only opinion/answer about tune-ups? And how when you ask him what lotion to use as sun protection, he answers you AGAIN about his opinion about tune-ups? Do you appreciate that when you go to the vet with a question about your dog, you get an opinion about grocery shopping? Do you appreciate that when you call a radio station and ask for a song to be played, they decide that there song is better and they play it over and over again? I mean, its THEIR radio station, isnt it?

I now understand that if I ask a question about mars, the answer will be about evolution. When I ask for a simple yes or no answer about aliens, as a fun, get to know ya kinda question, that the topic will be bombarded with evolution and apes.

Im glad that my simple yes or no question about aliens became a podium about apes and evolution. Im glad to see the answers are keeping with the questions.