The March of Progress, [1] [2] [3] originally titled The Road to Homo Sapiens, is an illustration that presents 25 million years of human evolution. It was created for the Early Man volume of the Life Nature Library , published in 1965, and drawn by the artist Rudolph Zallinger. It has been widely parodied and imitated to create images of progress of other kinds.
The illustration is part of a section of text and images commissioned by Time-Life Books for the Early Man volume (1965) of the Life Nature Library , by F. Clark Howell. [4]
The illustration is a foldout entitled "The Road to Homo Sapiens". It shows a sequence of figures, drawn by natural history painter and muralist Rudolph Zallinger (1919–1995). [4] The 15 human evolutionary forebears are lined up as if they were marching in a parade from left to right. The first two sentences of the caption read "What were the stages of man's long march from apelike ancestors to sapiens? Beginning at right and progressing across four more pages are milestones of primate and human evolution as scientists know them today, pieced together from the fragmentary fossil evidence." [4]
The 15 primate figures in Zallinger's image, from left to right, are listed below. The datings follow the original graphic and may no longer reflect current scientific opinion.
Contrary to appearances and some complaints, the original 1965 text of "The Road to Homo Sapiens" reveals an understanding of the fact that a linear presentation of a sequence of primate species, all in the direct line of human ancestors, would not be a correct interpretation. For example, the fourth of Zallinger's figures (Oreopithecus) is said to be "a likely side branch on man's family tree". Only the next figure (Ramapithecus) is described as "now thought by some experts to be the oldest of man's ancestors in a direct line" (something no longer considered likely). That implies that the first four primates are not to be considered actual human ancestors. Likewise, the seventh figure (Paranthropus) is said to be "an evolutionary dead end". [4] In addition, the colored stripes, across the top of the figure, which indicate the age and duration of the various lineages clearly imply that there is no evidence of direct continuity between extinct and extant lineages and also, multiple lineages of the figured hominids occurred contemporaneously at several points in the history of the group.
The image has frequently been copied, modified, and parodied.
It has also been criticized as "unintentionally and wrongly" implying that "evolution is progressive". [5] The image has been described as having a "visual logic" of linear progression. [1] The Lancet called it "proverbial, much quoted or adapted, familiar to multitudes who have never seen its original version or heard of its maker". [2] The image has become better-known than the science behind it. [3]
With regard to the way the illustration has been interpreted, the anthropologist and author of the section, F. Clark Howell, remarked: [6]
The artist didn't intend to reduce the evolution of man to a linear sequence, but it was read that way by viewers. ... The graphic overwhelmed the text. It was so powerful and emotional. [6]
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) condemned the iconology of the image in several pages of his 1989 book, Wonderful Life , reproducing several advertisements and political cartoons that make use of the illustration to make their various points. In a chapter, "The Iconography of an Expectation", he asserted that [7]
The march of progress is the canonical representation of evolution – the one picture immediately grasped and viscerally understood by all. ... The straitjacket of linear advance goes beyond iconography to the definition of evolution: the word itself becomes a synonym for progress. ... [But] life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress. [7]
The intelligent design advocate Jonathan Wells wrote in Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (2002), "Although it is widely used to show that we are just animals, and that our very existence is a mere accident, the ultimate icon goes far beyond the evidence." [8] The book likens a selection of evolution theory textbook topics to the cover illustration thus qualified.
Riley Black, writing for Scientific American , argues that the idea of a "march of progress", as depicted in the 1965 Time-Life illustration, dates back to the medieval great chain of being and the 19th century idea of the "missing link" in the fossil record. In her view, to understand life and evolution, "step one involves casting out types of imagery which constrain rather than enlighten." [9] Writing in Wired , Black added that "There is perhaps no other illustration that is as immediately recognizable as representing evolution, but the tragedy of this is that it conveys a view of life that does not resemble our present understanding of life's history." [10]
The March of Progress has often been imitated, parodied, or adapted for commercial or political purposes. The cover of the 1972 Doors album Full Circle references the March of Progress, as does the 1985 Supertramp album Brother Where You Bound , while the soundtrack CD for the 1992 movie Encino Man shows an ape evolving into a skateboarder. [11] The December 2005 issue of The Economist depicts hominids progressing up a flight of stairs to transform into a woman in a black dress holding a glass of champagne to illustrate "The Story of Man". [12] British rapper, Digga D, adapted a version of the image for the cover of his third mixtape, Noughty by Nature. [13] https://yume.wiki/2kki/Events#March_of_Progress The game Yume 2kki also has an "Event" which takes place in an area called "Chess World," the Event starts off by walking through a corridor similar to another location in the game, after the corridor ends, you are taken to a singular room with a throne, sitting on this throne will then teleport you to the Event.
Thomas Henry Huxley's frontispiece to his 1863 book Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature was intended simply to compare the skeletons of apes and humans, but its unintentional left-to-right progressionist sequence has according to the historian Jennifer Tucker "become an iconic and instantly recognizable visual shorthand for evolution". [5]
An illustration, with the caption "Evolution", showing two sequences of four images, each illustrating a gradual transformation of an animal into a human, appeared in the 1889 edition [14] of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .
Ardipithecus is a genus of an extinct hominine that lived during the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene epochs in the Afar Depression, Ethiopia. Originally described as one of the earliest ancestors of humans after they diverged from the chimpanzees, the relation of this genus to human ancestors and whether it is a hominin is now a matter of debate. Two fossil species are described in the literature: A. ramidus, which lived about 4.4 million years ago during the early Pliocene, and A. kadabba, dated to approximately 5.6 million years ago. Initial behavioral analysis indicated that Ardipithecus could be very similar to chimpanzees, however more recent analysis based on canine size and lack of canine sexual dimorphism indicates that Ardipithecus was characterised by reduced aggression, and that they more closely resemble bonobos.
Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family that includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity, and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. The study of the origins of humans involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics; the field is also known by the terms anthropogeny, anthropogenesis, and anthropogony.
Homininae, is a subfamily of the family Hominidae (hominids). This subfamily includes two tribes, Hominini and Gorillini, both having extant species as well as extinct species.
Orrorin is an extinct genus of primate within Homininae from the Miocene Lukeino Formation and Pliocene Mabaget Formation, both of Kenya.
Australopithecus (, OS-trə-lə-PITH-i-kəs, -loh-; or is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genera Homo, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus evolved from some Australopithecus species. Australopithecus is a member of the subtribe Australopithecina, which sometimes also includes Ardipithecus, though the term "australopithecine" is sometimes used to refer only to members of Australopithecus. Species include A. garhi, A. africanus, A. sediba, A. afarensis, A. anamensis, A. bahrelghazali and A. deyiremeda. Debate exists as to whether some Australopithecus species should be reclassified into new genera, or if Paranthropus and Kenyanthropus are synonymous with Australopithecus, in part because of the taxonomic inconsistency.
Apes are a clade of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, which together with its sister group Cercopithecidae form the catarrhine clade, cladistically making them monkeys. Apes do not have tails due to a mutation of the TBXT gene. In traditional and non-scientific use, the term ape can include tailless primates taxonomically considered Cercopithecidae, and is thus not equivalent to the scientific taxon Hominoidea. There are two extant branches of the superfamily Hominoidea: the gibbons, or lesser apes; and the hominids, or great apes.
Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses only a single extant species, Homo sapiens, along with a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans; these include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan, with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.
The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the evolutionary lineage of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, throughout the history of life, beginning some 4 billion years ago down to recent evolution within H. sapiens during and since the Last Glacial Period.
The Hominini (hominins) form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae (hominines). They comprise two extant genera: Homo (humans) and Pan, but in standard usage exclude the genus Gorilla (gorillas), which is grouped separately within subfamily Homininae.
Human taxonomy is the classification of the human species within zoological taxonomy. The systematic genus, Homo, is designed to include both anatomically modern humans and extinct varieties of archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiated, according to some, from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.
Human evolutionary genetics studies how one human genome differs from another human genome, the evolutionary past that gave rise to the human genome, and its current effects. Differences between genomes have anthropological, medical, historical and forensic implications and applications. Genetic data can provide important insights into human evolution.
Post-canine megadontia is a relative enlargement of the molars and premolars compared to the size of the incisors and canines. This phenomenon is seen in some early hominid ancestors such as Paranthropus aethiopicus.
The Hominidae, whose members are known as the great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo ; Gorilla ; Pan ; and Homo, of which only modern humans remain.
The chimpanzee–human last common ancestor (CHLCA) is the last common ancestor shared by the extant Homo (human) and Pan genera of Hominini. Estimates of the divergence date vary widely from thirteen to five million years ago.
Hominid dispersals in Europe refers to the colonisation of the European continent by various species of hominid, including hominins and archaic and modern humans.
Muscular evolution in humans is an overview of the muscular adaptations made by humans from their early ancestors to the modern man. Humans are believed to be predisposed to develop muscle density as early humans depended on muscle structures to hunt and survive. Modern man's need for muscle is not as dire, but muscle development is still just as rapid if not faster due to new muscle building techniques and knowledge of the human body.
Rangwapithecus is an extinct genus of ape from the Early Miocene of Kenya. Late Miocene phalanges from Hungary have also been assigned to this genus, but were later reclassified as Dryopithecus.
Graecopithecus is an extinct genus of hominid that lived in southeast Europe during the late Miocene around 7.2 million years ago. Originally identified by a single lower jaw bone bearing teeth found in Pyrgos Vasilissis, Athens, Greece, in 1944, other teeth were discovered from Azmaka quarry in Bulgaria in 2012. With only little and badly preserved materials to reveal its nature, it is considered as "the most poorly known European Miocene hominoids." The creature was popularly nicknamed 'El Graeco' by scientists.
The evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back 57-90 million years. One of the oldest known primate-like mammal species, Plesiadapis, came from North America; another, Archicebus, came from China. Other similar basal primates were widespread in Eurasia and Africa during the tropical conditions of the Paleocene and Eocene. Purgatorius is the genus of the four extinct species believed to be the earliest example of a primate or a proto-primate, a primatomorph precursor to the Plesiadapiformes, dating to as old as 66 million years ago.
Media related to March of Progress at Wikimedia Commons
