A favourite argument of the more, er, enthusiastic creationists is that if humans are supposed to have evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Checkmate, atheists. However, the idea that we evolved from apes is not quite right. Humans and apes actually share a common primate ancestor that is neither, but branched off to evolve into both. The chimpanzeehuman last common ancestor, or CHLCA, is, as you might be able to deduce, the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimps. It was after this ancestor that the evolutionary path diverge and formed the Homo genus (that's us) and the Pan genus (that's the chimps). We're a little fuzzy on dates, but it's thought that the evolutionary divergence occurred up to 13 million years ago during the late Miocene or early Pliocene. Aside from any of this, if humans had evolved from monkeys, there's no reason why there wouldn't still be monkeys. When an evolutionary path diverges, there's nothing to stop the "original" species carrying on. You could ask, if our paths split at the same time, why all apes haven't evolved into humans yet. Surely, given the same amount of time, we would have reached similar "levels" of evolution. This comes from a couple of misconceptions, the first being that humans are somehow "more evolved" than apes, which is not really true, they're just as evolved, but have different adaptations to suit their needs (you try surviving, naked in the deepest jungle and see how much your superior evolution helps you there). Secondly, there is a misconception that evolution is a linear process that goes from worse to better. Sadly, it's not as organised as that. Genetic mutations occur all the time, but only a precious few make a change both drastic and beneficial enough to become an evolutionary trait. It's less of a design process and more like slinging mud at a wall and seeing what sticks.
