March 23, 2015
MEMES ACTUALLY DO EVOLVE:
Evolution of an icon : "March of Progress", the illustration depicting human evolution, was first published 50 years ago. Richard Conniff and Geoffrey Giller chart the life story of a meme.
It started with an illustration (Rudolph Zallinger, a young Russian-born graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts, ) produced for the 1965 Time-Life book Early Man. In a section headlined "The Road to Homo Sapiens", Zallinger depicted a line of proto-apes, apes, and hominids rising from a crouch to a hunch to the tall, upright stride of modern man. The full fold-out spread showed 15 individuals, starting with Pliopithecus and ending with Homo sapiens. But when folded in, a simplified version appeared, with just six individuals. It became known as "March of Progress", from a line in the text, and went on to become one of the most famous images in the history of scientific illustration.In fact, similar drawings had appeared as far back as T. H. Huxley's 1863 book Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. But after Zallinger it became a meme.
It's entirely fitting that the archetype of Darwinism depends on the notion of "Progress" to the summit of man.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2015 7:25 PM
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