Editor,
It is now the 21st century, which is why I find it amazing to see some of my fellow students at UNM still buying into ideas that were dispelled in the 18th century.
The first scientists to show that creationism was wrong were not biologists, whom most people would think, but geologists.
Early geologists started to discover fossils from past life and noticed that 6,000 years is not nearly enough time to account for the diversity in the fossil record. Those first geologists were able, by using the fossil record, to construct the geological time scale that we still use today. The reason they were able to do this was biostratigraphy. The early geologists noticed that only in certain strata layers one would find certain fossils. In addition, the fossil record shows a gradual buildup of complexity through time.
Furthermore, Charles Darwin's idea was not that we came from monkeys; it was that the diversity of life on Earth is due to descent with modification. Darwin proposed that the mechanism for this modification was natural selection and sexual selection.
If anyone wants to learn more about this idea, I suggest that they take Anthropology 150 and the lab that goes with it. The class counts in the core requirements as a natural science.
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As for the question asked, "Are we monkeys?" No, humans are not, but we are apes. From the cusps of our molars to our tailless bottoms and much in between, the human body screams ape anatomy. To go one step further, we are primates, which include monkeys. We are distantly related to modern monkeys. To everyone dancing around in the monkey masks, I suggest visiting the Maxwell Museum, which is located in the Anthropology Department. The Maxwell Museum is a museum about anthropology. "Ancestors Exhibit" is on permanent display, which has many hominids that came before modern humans. With great resources such as the ones pointed out before and many more in the anthropology, biology and geology department, there should be no excuse to remain ignorant on the origins of humans.
Joshua Vallejos
UNM student
