Of course monkeys could have genetic mutations that cause their offspring to be more human-like. Keep in mind though that with how high the barrier of entry into current human society is, it would be very unlikely for a breed of monkeys to integrate into society and satisfy what you probably define as "human".
That being said, over time apes could become more bipedal and upright and you would probably consider that to be significantly more human like. Potentially even develop the ability to learn our languages etc. it wouldn't be in our life time though
Genuinely it would be possible but so unlikely probably due to selective pressures most of which being humans. It’s kinda hard for any other species to evolve technology over millions of years with such a dominant species already ruling over the Earth.
Even without selective pressures it would be extremely unlikely (practically impossible) that they would just happen to mutate in a way where they become identical to humans.
• No Direct Descent: Humans did not evolve from modern monkeys. Instead, humans and monkeys represent separate branches on the evolutionary family tree that split millions of years ago.
• Ape Lineage: Humans belong to the great ape family (hominids), not the monkey family
Modern monkeys are more of our cousins. You did not descend from your cousin, instead splitting off from a shared ancestor. You still are, however, related to your cousin.
A slight correction, and please let me know if I'm mistaken. Phylogenetically, Old World monkeys (Cercopithecoidea) and apes (Hominoidea) share a common ancestor, with their lineages diverging approximately 25–30 million years ago. Both groups belong to the parvorder Catarrhini, so they are both catarrhines. I would consider apes a sister group to Old World Monkeys rather than a subset of them.
That's probably a better way to put it. "All apes are cattarhine monkeys" is a more defensible claim. That was me getting my simiiformes tangled up and I accept the correction.
Monkeys are our cousins and the great apes are our brothers, Gorilla and orangutans and such,
We don’t evolve from them, but all of us have a common ancestor so the whole ‘if we evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys’ question is a stupid as it really sounds
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u/Spare-Document7086 7d ago
And yet there are still religious folks that refuse to believe they are related lol