kinda upset that I missed this great post. I was in on the last big creationist debate it was really fun adn a bit too consuming lol.
anways to answer the last question about monkeys here ya go
"Neanderthals... hah! If we all came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys around? Where are all of the in betweens?"
the prevailing evidence and such show fossil records that we did not actually evolve from monkeys, monkeys are realted to us in much the same way that cats and dogs are realted they had a common ancestor couple 60 or so million years ago. The fossil record shows lots of various species working up the chain from there that split created what we would know as monkey adn apes, from there if you go up the ape side, you'd come to another split were homonids (upright walkers) and great apes (chimps, gorillas, etc.) split. There were quite a few species of homonids along the way to us, such as austrolopithicines (of whihc there are quite a few variations), Homo habilus, homo erectus, the homo sapiens. Yes there was a homo sapiens before Neanderthal!! there were VARIATIONS in the sapiens line, you had two basic ones archaic homo sapiens and homo sapiens neanderthal (of which there is a great deal of controversy whether it should be homo sapiens N. or just homo neanderthal I'm not quite up to date on my record nor taxonomy so just bear with me.) Now after the end of one of the really big ice ages, about (I think) 50-60k years ago, neanderthal disappeared, there are lots of hypothesis about this, includding interbreeding, disease, warfare etc. I beleive that interbreeding has been genetically disproven, there is no sign of neanderthal genes in us, thats not to say that no interbreeding occured, its just that whatever happened didn't continue to breed again. So now we just have homo sapiens sapiens after another 50-60k years of evolution, and we continually change.For example, look at the recent changing of puberty in young girls, it's much younger now then it was 100 years ago, early THEORIES about this include artificial light messing with biological clocks, better nutrition among many others. Now this would be humans adapting to environment, it'll be interesting to see whether its for the good or bad of the species.
Anyways I hope that this fuels the fire a little bit, and I'd like to add a bit of a disclaimer, my wife is an evolutionary archeologist who is the one who gives me my information that and her books lol, if I get a date or name wrong please don't hold it against me.
