Probably the most widely propagated misconception about Darwin is that he said humans evolved from apes.
What Darwin actually wrote was that all life is descended from a common ancestor. This idea makes humans very distant relations to bacterial slime, and closer relations to chimpanzees and gorillas. It means that humans and other primates share a common ancestor and are therefore more closely related to each other than to other groups (like reptiles or fish), not that one group gave rise to the other.
Darwin understood that humans share a common ancestor with apes in the distant geological past, and this conclusion has been verified through modern DNA studies that show chimpanzees to be our closest relations.
Photo credit: www.philadelphia-reflections.com/images/darwin.jpg
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