This is not how evolution works. First off, a species is an absolute definition. A species is two or more organisms that can reproduce. A fish is a fish and a dog is a dog. There can never be a fish-dog missing link because a fish cannot mate with a dog to produce such a hybrid. So an ape-man could never exist, because an ape and a human are two different species and by definition cannot reproduce with each other. So any fossil must either be an ape or a man. Evolution says two species are related because of common descent from an older ancestor, they are not related because some of their species mated with another in the past because species by definition cannot mate with each other. Apes and humans are related because a past primate (primate is an order of common descent, not a species classification) had offspring who evolved two different paths into apes and humans. And when they evolved they lost the ability to reproduce with the common ancestor primate and thus are a completely separate animal with no hybrid stages. So you are either an ape or a human, there's no in between.
You may say that its true that apes evolved off a separate path from our common ancestor, but if we ourselves are related to the ancestral primate, then we should be able to mate with it right? Wrong. By becoming a separate path we have lost the ability to have vital offspring with the ancestral ape because we have changed so mush that we are completely different species. Notice how even even two very close animals like horses and donkeys can only at best produce an mule that is sterile. Since it is sterile it doesn't meet the definition of a species of two or more organisms able to reproduce. Mules don't reproduce so they are not some kind of hybrid species. A mule is not even labeled in binomial nomenclature (those two Latin words like Homo Sapiens used as a species name)
So that gives us an argument for equal rights for all humans: created equal, by the blind forces of natural selection. So a human is a human no matter how unintelligent. You cannot call a stupid person as being biologically closer to a monkey. A lesser human still is a human because it cannot mate with apes, so it must be considered human. My argument if you would like to look it up is based on two concepts, the biological definition of a species and cladistic taxonomy (classification based of common ancestor).
Note: This was originally posted on my Facebook page back in December 2012. It was inspired by a chapter from Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker where he discusses the "one true path" of evolution among other alternative theories.
From Dawkins himself:
Chapter 10 The one true tree of life
"there is one unique system, unique in the sense that words like 'correct' and 'incorrect' can be applied to it with perfect agreement given perfect information. That unique system is the system based on evolutionary relationships. To avoid confusion I shall give this system the name that biologists give to its strictest form: cladistic taxonomy.
"True cladistic taxonomy is strictly hierarchical, an expression which I shall use again to mean that it can be represented as a tree whose branches always diverge and never converge again...A group of organisms that has this property of being descended from a common ancestor, which is not an ancestor of any non-member of the group is called a clade, after the Greek for a tree branch.
"Never, on a single solitary occasion, will the rings that we draw intersect each other.
"In the taxonomy of living creatures these filing problems do not arise. There are no 'miscellaneous' animals. As long as we stay above the level of the species, and as long as we study only modern animals (or animals in any given time slice: see below) there are no awkward intermediates. If an animal appears to be an awkward intermediate, say it seems to be exactly intermediate between a mammal and a bird, an evolutionist can be confident that it must definitely be one or the other.
"The myth that mammals, for instance, form a ladder or 'scale', with 'lower' ones being closer to fish than 'higher' ones, is a piece of snobbery that owes nothing to evolution. It is an ancient, pre-evolutionary notion, sometimes called the 'great chain of being' which should have been destroyed by evolution but which was, mysteriously, absorbed into the way many people thought about evolution."
