March of Progress

The entire March of Progress illustration (top) and a compressed version (bottom)

A simplified, silhouette version of Zallinger's March of Progress

The March of Progress, or simply March of Progress, is one of the most famous and recognizable scientific illustrations ever produced. A compressed presentation of 25 million years of human evolution, it depicts 15 human evolutionary forebears lined up as if marching in a parade from left to right. The image has been copied, modified and parodied countless times and has proven controversial in a number of respects.

The March of Progress was originally commissioned by Time-Life Books for the Early Man volume (1965) of its popular Life Nature Library. This book, authored by anthropologist F. Clark Howell (1925–2007) and the Time-Life editors, included a foldout section of text and images (pages 41–45) entitled "The Road to Homo Sapiens", prominently featuring the sequence of figures drawn by noted natural history painter and muralist Rudolph Zallinger (1919–1995). As the popularity of the image grew and achieved iconic status, the name "March of Progress" somehow became attached to it.

Scientists have noted that early human evolution did not progress in any linear, sequential fashion nor did it move along a "road" toward any predetermined "ideal form"; they have faulted the image with being misleading in implying these things. With regard to the picture's notoriety, Howell remarked that "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".^[1]

Original sequence of species

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 of which are 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). This implies that none of the first four primates are to be considered actual human ancestors. Likewise, the seventh figure (Paranthropus) is said to be "an evolutionary dead end".

The 15 primate figures in Zallinger's image are, from left to right, as follows (the dating follows the original graphic):

• Pliopithecus, 22–12 million year old "ancestor of the gibbon line"
• Proconsul, 21–9 million year old primate which may or may not have qualified as an ape
• Dryopithecus, 15–8 million year old fossil ape, the first such found (1856) and probable ancestor of modern apes
• Oreopithecus, 15–8 million years old
• Ramapithecus, 13–8 million year old ape and possible ancestor of modern orangutans (now classified as Sivapithecus)
• Australopithecus, 2–3 million years old; then considered the earliest “certain hominid”
• Paranthropus, 1.8–0.8 million years old
• Advanced Australopithecus, 1.8–0.7 million year old
• Homo erectus, 700,000–400,000 years old, then the earliest known member of the Homo genus
• Early Homo sapiens, 300,000–200,000 years old; from Swanscombe, Steinheim and Montmaurin, then considered probably the earliest H. sapiens
• Solo Man, 100,000–50,000 years old; described as an extinct Asian "race" of H. sapiens (now considered a sub-species of H. erectus)
• Rhodesian Man, 50,000–30,000 years old; described as an extinct African "race" of H. sapiens (now considered either H. rhodesiensis or H. heidelbergensis and dated much earlier)
• Neanderthal Man, 100,000–40,000 years old
• Cro-Magnon Man, 40,000–5,000 years old
• Modern Man, 40,000 years to present

Criticism

The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) condemned the iconology of the image over several pages of his 1989 book Wonderful Life. In a chapter entitled "The Iconography of an Expectation", Gould asserted that

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.^[2]

Parodies and adaptations

• The logo for the Leakey Foundation features a small silhouette of the March of Progress image.^[3]
• The National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi have long utilized a logo based on the Zallinger image.
• The cover of the 1985 Supertramp album Brother Where You Bound resembles the March of Progress.
• On the cover of the soundtrack CD for the 1992 movie Encino Man, an ape evolves into a skateboarder.^[4]
• The 3 March 1994 issue of Time magazine includes a graphic, "Humanity's Long March", referencing Zallinger's image with a more complicated graphic underneath.
• A 1998 issue of Rolling Stone features an image of actor Ben Stiller evolving from a hairy ape into a naked actor.
• Jonathan Wells's 2002 book Icons of Evolution takes its title from the illustration and discusses the image from an intelligent design perspective.
• A graphic in 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.

References

1. ^ Barringer, David (2006) "Raining on Evolution’s Parade"; I.D. Magazine, March/April 2006.
2. ^ Gould, Stephen Jay (1989), Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp 30-36.
3. ^ Barringer (2006), Op. cit.
4. ^ Barringer (2006), Op. cit.