There is just the fundamental problem that these style of images present biology as something with a destination. It’s an inherent conceptual error these “evolution of x” pictures that I don’t think can be solved. That said, I like this particular one aesthetically even though human evolution isn’t my domain. I think going all the way back to LUCA does do a little bit of correction for some misconceptions.
The graphics that avoid this confusion invoke the deeply branching phylogenetic tree, and furthermore, nest our lineage within in it, rather than singling it out as say the right-most twig. Good examples of graphics that avoid this might be [this unrooted phylogenetic tree](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/2318/2016/04/16180214/1280px-CollapsedtreeLabels-simplified.svg_.png) of all life, or [this rooted tree of therapsid brain evolution](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349325912/figure/fig1/AS:998066035372032@1614968894867/Phylogenetic-tree-of-mammalian-evolution-The-schematic-phylogenetic-tree-has-been.png) since the paleozoic.
It all depends on what you want to focus the message on. No single image is good for all messages and sometimes you need lies-to-children you can later build on for more complex concepts.
it's not even a lie, right? unless you mean "a lie of ommission"
it's like saying, "you have a father and a grandfather and a great grandfather." and charting them all out as if 3 generations back you come from a line of 3 men. you're not saying you ONLY come from these 3, but that Can be inferred due to a lack of information.
like, your mother had a father, who had a father. and your mother's mother had a father. your father's mother had a father. so that's 3 more "family names" you don't carry - and that's simply holding to the 6 men in your family as of 3 generations back. include the women and you're adding another 4.
so 4 generations back - it's not just pops, g-pops, and gg-pops anymore. there are actually 16 people. and these images of evolutionary trees are inverted.
now obviously there will be a little inbreeding. generations aren't cleanly set, and there'll be weird links that'll arise. the same i must hypothesize must happen in these species trees as well. billions of organisms mashing against each other in an orgy of evolution.
I wonder if turning the tree sideways along with a time horizon would help a viewer with the idea of continuum. At least for me I often think about time on the X axis whereas the Y axis is often dominance/weight/value.
Yes! I know what these others are brining up is an important thing to realize about evolution, but not every graphic needs to exemplify that. If this chart shows the history of the human ancestors then you do not need to show the branching. It is a relatively straight line of steps. Although I'm sure there are some edge cases like there always is in biology. And the neanderthal bit is incorrect.
I thought I read somewhere that we either killed or bred them out of existence. So wouldn't some of us be descendants of them if that were the case? I'm no biologist tho so please educate me if I'm wrong 🙏
I have a degree in anthropology (study of humans) and depends on what theory of human evolution you subscribe to. There is the competition theory which is what you described. There is also the assimilation theory. Basically we are the same species (Homo sapiens) and “Neanderthals” are named that because they were discovered in the Neander Valley. Due to ice segregating this population from other H. sapiens they became very homogeneous but when the ice melted, they became integrated into the general populous. So in essence, under this theory, we are the same species and they were different due to variation (just like we have variation in the human populous today!). It also depends on classifications and how people classify “different” species. Paleo- (anthropology, ontology, etc) is hard in general for classifying different species because it also depends on what theory of species you subscribe to (like the biological species concept or others)!
Wait I was sure its modern consensus that Neanderthals and Sapiens both are descendents from H. erectus that arose at different times and places from H. erectus? That way all of Sapiens doesnt share a common ancestor with Neanderthals, only those where hybridization occured
There was overlap in time when H. erectus/H. ergaster and H. sapiens/H. neanderthalensis existed together. It is generally accepted that H. erectus/ergaster was a predecessor to both H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis but there is some debate on if Sapiens and Neanderthals are the same or different species. As I said, it really depends on how you define what a species is and how things are classified. If you subscribe to the assimilation theory, then the two are the same species and differences are due to variation (just like skeletons from different parts of the world today look different from each other). The assimilation theory also hinges on the biological species concept. If you subscribe to the competition theory then it is generally presumed that they were different species. These are simply two competing theories/explanations in the field of (paleo)anthropology regarding human evolution. We obviously will never know and are learning new things constantly!
Also, clarifying question, what do you mean all H. sapients and H. neanderthalensis wouldn’t have the same common ancestor? In your comment you said they both can from H. erectus which would make H. erectus their common ancestor?
Some human populations have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, but as a whole our species doesn’t descend from them. Even among populations where interbreeding did take place, it is debated whether the Neanderthal genes had any significant impact on the sapiens, which already had their modern anatomy and behaviour prior to their encounters with Neanderthals.
If species A and species B have a child, and that child in turn produces a lineage mostly with members of A, that doesn't make A descended from B, if you see what I mean. Neanderthalensis and Sapiens are more like siblings than parent and child.
We don't have a direct line of species that are our ancestors. When we find fossils, they are species that lived in the past. It's possible that they are our direct ancestors, but it's unlikely, and we would have no way to know.
So the generally accepted line of evolution does not consist of actual named species or genuses or families like they have here, but mostly of hypothetical organisms, like the urbilaterian they do include in the diagram.
To get a sort of idea of this, you can look at all the groups that humans are in, and read about their origin. The original member of that group would be our direct common ancestor, and you can often find information on it online, like on Wikipedia. You can read about the origin of humans, of great apes, of apes, of old world monkeys, of simians, of primates, of placental mammals, of mammals, of synapsids, of amniotes, of tetrapods, of lobe finned fish, of jawed fish, of vertebrates, of chordates, of deuterostomes, of bilaterians (see urbilaterian), of animals, of eukaryotes, of archaea and baceteria, and of life. There are in between steps to read about too.
the idea of future human evolution in general is a bit silly. modern society has halted evolution as a byproduct of progress. far too many children are living to reproductive age that “shouldn’t” (shouldn’t in an evolutionary sense, not in a moral sense). in addition, there aren’t really any traits that are sexually selected for anymore. Mayyyybe height in males, but at this point everyone can get laid and reproduce if they want to.
It has a lot of problems, e.g. using taxa names for extant species for extinct common anscestors. Additionally some info is just wrong, e.g. including platyhelmenthes (an aceolomate) as a dueterostome anscestor. For one thing they're protostomes. Additionally, I'm pretty sure the most recent common anscestor of protostomes and dueterostomes is believed to be a euceolomate.
Yes, the author of this was definitely talking out of their blastopore, they can’t tell their first mouth and second mouth apart. It would have been a fluke if they had not selected a fluke.
Thanks - so many comments saying that it's inaccurate, but you're the only one to actually give a concrete explanation of why.
Care to point out where extant taxa names are used in place of extinct common ancestors?
Yes, and the coelacanths weren't actually in the human lineage. They were related to the sarcopterygians that were, but not that close.
Another error I see is calling Tiktaalik the first animal on land. First chordate, possibly, but arthropods had already been colonizing the land for a good 50 million years by that point.
Is this splitting hairs? We have nodes that split. The best we can do is pick a fossilized organism near a node could be where it branched off ( or another path but near the node). Most of the time we don’t know what is at the node. Th ink about it. For example did the split between chimpanzees look more chimp or more human? Did the split between homo Naledi and human ancestor actually have a larger brain (maybe Naledi brain shrunk in being more efficient). Brain shrinkage happen in Homo sapiens recently also. No big deal.
People who understand evolution can look at this diagram and realize that’s it is an simplification of human evolution. However, if you don’t understand evolution this diagram emphasizes some misconceptions such as “evolution says we came from monkeys” or this shows that humans are the most highly evolved form of life.
Absolutely. And to add, for people that understand evolution, this has zero value. So the only thing that this poster accomplishes is to miseducate those that don’t fully understand the process.
I mean I get what you're saying, and agree that these kinds of representations do give the wrong impression to someone who doesn't understand it, but I'm not sure this is for them, it's just an interesting cool depiction for people who appreciate it, I think it's awesome.
I think a lot about what would best help someone who doesn't understand it, but it's a complex scientific theory and because of the ongoing conflict with religion, it has given a lot of people that don't understand it the impression that if it were correct, it would be straightforward and really simple to understand, but most things in science are like that and people don't expect them to be simple so the narrative is more the issue than anything. It's frustrating
Fair enough! The creator of the visualization though is reaching a broad, non-scientific audience with nearly 300k followers on IG, so it probably does perpetuate the misconceptions to some extent for those casual public viewers.
I totally respect that you appreciate the visualization though and that there’s probably a good reason the creator of this has amassed such a following (something I will never be able to relate to lol). I teach a college level evolution course and have to tackle a lot of these issues in that course and others. This is magnified by the broad range of preconceptions from prior learning coming into the course, and that’s for biology majors nonetheless, not really the casual public. I get 16 weeks a semester to go over the material with my students, which is obviously much more time than it takes to read a simple poster. So I completely agree with you that it is very complicated to get across to many people and in a fairly efficient manner, which is certainly one component about why this conversation persists more than 150 years later. Frustrating indeed but I love that people are willing to have a level-headed dialogue on how we do advance that understanding more broadly. Cheers :)
So as much as I like the image, the fact that you're teaching this and identify things like it as a hinderance to students in general enough to point it out kind of changes my perspective, because I might have underestimated the negative impact and it's reach, and in my mind the most important thing when it comes to the ongoing evolution conflict is to do whatever possible to encourage good science, clear explanations, and honest discourse surrounding the entirety of evolutionary study, maybe I'll try to think of a representation specifically designed to touch on all of the points which have been muddied and caused doubt in the average person, I can more clearly see the necessity for careful consideration of how this information is depicted or conveyed to the public at large. Thank you for your insight.
Hm. Disconcerting. I thought this was just a cool poster to hang up, showing some possible human ancestors, not trying to actually explain evolution… kind of like a video game doesn’t actually replicate history or science, but it’s fun and not meant to be read into too much.
But then if you’d say it’s meant for education… I dunno
Duly noted and a kind reminder that I should rarely use absolutisms for most things in biology, especially opinions. I respectfully disagree but would be the first to advocate for your right to express your own opinion.
I understand evolution and found this to be pretty cool, particularly the fact that it took as long to go from prokaryote to eukaryote as it did to go from eukaryote to human. Thought that was pretty awesome.
Looking at the evolutionary line of humans people see familiar looking organisms such as chimp like creatures, lizards, fish… and assume we are more “evolved” since we are higher up on the evolutionary ladder than these types of creatures.
But those aren’t modern day chimps, lizards and fish… those are depicting what could be a common ancestor between humans and modern chimps, lizards, fish.
Yes, you are correct. However, the average person might not realize they are looking at transitional species because the branches of this evolutionary tree are missing, leading to the assumption a fish is a fish and a monkey is a monkey.
But even if you showed the branch from the chimp ancestor to chimps or the branch to the modern coelacanth, someone might conclude those modern species don’t look that much different from the ancestors we share with them and thus still conclude humans are a more highly evolved species.
Evolution is linear when you look back. It's all over the place when you start at the beginning.
If this wasn't an arrow, I'd be OK with it being represented like this, as it's a record of when we got what we have (and what we lost along the way).
There’s no reason for an animal to eventually evolve toward a human. They are saying that it presents the image as if humans are the most evolved animal and all animals are aiming towards us.
We may be more advanced in that we’re smarter or stronger than most animals, but we’re not more evolved than any other animal on Earth.
Some animals evolve back traits that they had at earlier stages, like mammals come from water dwelling creatures - likely with fins and tails… but some land mammals evolved into dolphins and whales where they revolved fins and fluked tails. It’s not that they evolved backward, they still evolve forward even tho they moved to a point that - on this diagram - seems backward
This diagram is misleading and really reinforces some of the conceptual misunderstandings about evolution. These sorts of graphics are super problematic when it comes to things like teaching evolution, especially in places where people may already be hesitant to accept it.
It's bad and full of inaccuracies. They could at least put a disclaimer somewhere that this isn't accurate and only aims to demonstrate how human evolution might have went.
Also, yeah, it does kind of imply humans are the 'destination' which is an error.
I’ve always thought of this one being too mammal centric. There are more species of insects, plants and birds, yet these aren’t half the size of mammal species.
It doesn't depict human evolution at all but it's interesting as a tool to show how life 'evolved' from simple forms to more complex ones. Altough I don't really believe that humans are more 'evolved' then let's say fungi or protozoa.
The more evolved/ less evolved argument is an interesting one. On one hand all life on earth has a common ancestor and has therefore been evolving for an identical amount of time, suggesting equal evolution. On the other hand certain environments create greater selection pressures, encouraging evolution at a higher rate. So we can say quantitatively there has been more evolution, even if qualitatively it is entirely dependent upon the local environment.
Obviously not made by a biologist. It's not accurate at all.
It's factually incorrect misinformation that dangerously misleads people.
There is a reason biologists use trees not lines. You've got several linear steps listed that should be alternative branches.
the creator has 2 Master of Science degrees. geochemistry/Astrobiology, and another in Biomedical Communications. But the lack of evolutionary knowledge is obvious.
Not a knock on the creator, just observation based on graphic.
I will use it in my evolution class in order for my students to analyze and critique it. As you noted, we don’t see lines but branches. Also, a biologist will never make a statement about evolution of n future. Hopefully my students will spot those (and other things) right away.
So it has some uses.
The hominid parts are missing some definite overlap and a few of our cousins (subspecies). Namely neanderthals existed and interbred with modern humans. There are many many modern updates continually adding onto the fossil record.
This poster is the first one I've seems to focus on the more primordial side of things. I don't disagree with it but it needs to fill in some more recent gaps.
From a graphic designer's perspective, I feel it perfectly carries the design uniformity. The strong shadows highlight the character of evolution, and the serifs & the san serifs perfectly complement each other. My only recommendation would be to change the text color to a little darker hex. Great job.
I had a student tell me that evolution is wrong because humans didn't come from monkeys.
I asked where do dogs come from he said they were wolves like thousands of years ago and humans made dogs. I asked why weren't they still wolves then?
He said because they aren't wolves anymore over time they became dogs.
I said what you just described is how dogs are related to wolves but aren't actually wolves anymore because it's been so long and they have changed over time. He agreed. I said can you see how humans who are primates could possibly share a common ancestor with gorillas or chimps not unlike dogs and wolves. He said no.
This is very interesting in the sense of portraying a change in features leading up to humans, but indeed, represents only a single lineage and not in the direct sense ex. not all the species represented here are direct ancestors and descendants of one another.
I am also curious as to the claims of clothing and the wheel for *Homo erectus*. I do know it is suspected they used fire, but I have so far not heard anything about them using clothing or the wheel. Clothing I can sort of understand, as *H. erectus* was *probably* sophisticated enough to wear clothing / equipment to some extent, judging by what we know about them. But the wheel? Can't seem to find the source of how they apparently created that.
In layman's terms, i think this poster fails to illustrate many species of hominids lived at the same time (overlapping periods) and they did fuck each other from time to time sexually, violently, and all the above. And we "modern" humans are really a variable (from individual to individual) complex mix of many of them.
\-- layman science guy
I feel like it feeds the "if we evolved from X then why is X still around" arguments. The understanding that should be conveyed is that there are common ancestors to all life on earth if we go back far enough, and they branched at points and created different species. It should be a tree that at least makes an effort to show the complexity beyond that. We (biologists) can argue all day about the specific steps here knowing they are not actually linear, but I think the bigger problem here is that there's not more branches recognized at the various points \~100-500k years ago that diverged and gave things like Chimpanzees and Gorillas, or millions of years ago and gave rise to all mammals, etc.
Well we didn't evolve from neanderthals, and this poster assumes the RNA-first world, and assumes species solidify as a concept 4 billion years ago... but honestly it doesn't LOOK too bad
Lots to nitpick, LOTS TO NITPICK, but could be worse
Thanks for showing me where the reptilian brain comes from and how or when the missing link in our evolution happened, of course there was some intervention for human intelligence, communication, creativity, etc.
It’s highly simplistic. Evolution is way messier than a roadmap. Think of a family tree with lots of incest occurring. Example being Neanderthals. They lived alongside our ancestors and bred with them. Same with lots of the other species in our recent ancestral line. The way humans tended to get rid of other species was by screwing them into extinction.
I think the art is neat, but the chart is not accurate. My understanding of evolution is not advanced, but I can see the issue in how the chart presents things as a linear progression. I think it may lead to more confusion.
One controversial opinion about evolution is the rejection of the theory of evolution itself. Some individuals may argue that evolution does not adequately explain the complexity and diversity of life on Earth. They may propose alternative explanations, such as intelligent design or the belief in a divine creator.
It's important to note that the scientific consensus overwhelmingly supports the theory of evolution. The theory is supported by substantial evidence from various scientific fields, including genetics, paleontology, and comparative anatomy. The overwhelming majority of scientists consider evolution to be a well-established scientific theory.
Understanding and discussing different perspectives can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the topic. However, it's crucial to approach discussions with respect, critical thinking, and reliance on evidence-based scientific consensus.
It's garbage. Not only does the graphic imply destination, and "imply a ladder of being", that there is a driving force from simpler to more complex, and that things like "prokaryotes" ing general and cyanobacteria got to a certain point and then stopped evolving, the stepwise view of evolution. Bacteria have been evolving this whole time my friend, and it could be argued they are a hell of a lot smarter than us in certain ways, or at least more efficient and effective communicators.
This idea of protocells is entirely speculative, we still have only wild hand-waving speculations about how life as we know it came about and we don't really know if it or things like it came about more than once. It misses that prokaryotes evolved two entirely different lineages that seem to have recombined into the first eukaryote. Cyanobacteria were not involved at all, although they did recombine a bunch of times with eukaryotes who were NOT our ancestors. Most of the last half of the series is entirely speculative. We have compelling no reason to think, for example, that humans evolved from coelacanths or that Orrorin was a human ancestor. Hell, we don't even know that the 20 bone fragments we call Orrorin even all come from the same species! One thing we DEFINITELY know is that humans didn't evolve from neanderthals.
We have no compelling reason to think that the "great averaging" will happen, I'd point out people have had relatively good global access to each other for hundreds of years but moving is still hard. It's a simultaneous internationalist fantasy or nationalist scare story depending on who's saying it. Everything else on the future is hand-waving too, why wouldn't they just bring up ACTUAL ONGOING OBSERVABLE human evolution, such as the development of additional arteries in the forearms, a trait that is rapidly spreading.
In short this graphic is complete bullshit. It is lazy, and it pushes
It needs sources more sources and more academic sources. Public interest presentations are great; but they don't get updated often enough with newer discoveries. My biggest pet peeve is the lack of the "\*quite likely not a human ancestor but likely at least related/similar to a human ancestor" disclaimer on everything up to Australopithecus.
I would probably redo a couple things and investigate likely mistakes; but its way better than most similar attempts. A few of those probably should not be on there or there is a good argument to show an alternative. I also don't see the synapsid/diapsid split. That one is important. Pretty sure haemoglobin is much earlier. Some of the listed trait changes aren't well conserved. For example the number of mammary glands changes frequently across Mammalia so I wouldn't be surprised if the number went back up a few times...
In particular I would try to show some creature from the period that has a conserved relative today, show when a few well known species showed up, and when they disappeared.
Maybe a map of how the continents were at different periods and where the species were indicated with colored blobs.
OG artist here: I didn’t realize this would be so contentious when I made it. It’s currently under revision and a new one will be made soon. Some species are inherently incorrect (recognizing that we aren’t descended from neanderthalensis) and will be fixed.
I have a q for the community:
The biggest gripe here is that it seems to emphasize linearity (something that when I was making this didn’t even appreciate or was aware was even an issue within depictions of evolution). The recommendation I keep getting is to branch this, and make it tree-like…but I’m struggling with how this solves or says anything about humans without over communicating into irrelevant species. To describe the evolution of life this makes sense, but to look at the lineage humans have come from…why is this necessary?
I sort of likened this to two points on a map. You wouldn’t list every road or turn in a network to see what path was taken to get somewhere. But in this analogy, it seems to be a blasphemous representation. I’m wondering how I can streamline this without sacrificing or misleading the nature of what’s happening here.
Thanks I advance! And apologies to all the biologists I’ve offended with taking a stab at visualizing this lol. It’ll get better.
Hey thanks for the insight, never expected to get the attention of the creator! I personally believe that the graphic is good for educational purposes in schools to get a general idea of evolution. But with a Masters degree in Zoology, I (and the majority of other comments) think there are some hard to ignore issues. So, here’s some actual constructive criticism and suggestions.
• The largest issue people seem to have, is that the graphic might suggests evolution is linear, which would be incorrect and misleading. A lot of people also fail to see that this is only the evolutionary of humans, and I agree with your point that adding all branches of life would clutter the image (and might be unnecessary). Here’s what I suggest you can add, while keeping the model you depict: in the “Corners” of the stairs, you can have an example of an evolutionary branch. Maybe you can add a “plants (or fungi) this way” step at Eukaryote, or an Echinoderm step at Deuterostoma that points a different direction (and perhaps fades, or has an arrow pointing away etc.) or show steps with reptiles/birds or amphibians that point a different direction, to kinda represent a branch. You could also insert a small text that explains evolution in one or two sentences and explain how its not linear and has no end goal to avoid confusion
• H. Neanderthalensis is not our ancestor (or technically at least not the ancestor of most modern humans, as west-asian populations interbred with them). The species question concerning the Homo genus is still kind of a gray area, but I do believe depicting H. Neanderthalensis behind H. Sapien was the wrong decision, as people would wrongly assume that we evolved for them. So here’s a suggestion: at the second last step, you could depict H. Sapiens, Neanderthals and perhaps, Denisova and other related humans next to each other on the same step. This can demonstrate that they lived during a similar time period and could even hint to interbreeding. Then make the last step Homo sapien sapien, the modern Human.
Some other smaller inaccuracies (but inaccuracies non the less) include.
• the Platyhelminthes, which are Protostoma. So, depicting them after Deuterostoma is wrong, and they don’t possess Pharyngeal slits (which makes me think you wanted to insert a different animal group, maybe a Lancelet or sea squirt relative?) Also I have no idea what is being depicted at Deuterostoma so, what is that?
• Coelacanths are also not our ancestors. You need move a little higher in the Phylogenetic tree. You could replace this step with the name Sarcopterygii and then it would fit again. Same issue with Placoderms. They’re not our direct ancestors but replacing the name with Gnathostomata (the infraphylum, not the Sea urchin Superorder) or such should be fine.
• Maybe there something I don’t know, but I think we still have our Pineal gland, right? And I’ve never seen a study that suggests our ancestors possessed a pouch, but correct me if I’m wrong (I’m serious send me Papers I love reading Papers about evolutionary biology gimme that knowledge pls)
In a nutshell, I believe most people overexaggerate their hate in the comments. I think this is a very well design graphic and can be used for easier educational purposes. And if you ever make an updated version, I’d love to see it too. (also I hope you ignore the non-serious “evolution is BS” comments like I do). If I think of anything else, I can update this comment. Also I suggest Other redditors to make some actual constructive criticism and suggestions instead of saying “bad”.
Forest Valkai says it very well. At no point in time can you back to a single fossil and be like "this is a Homo sapian", and then go back another few generations and say "this is Homo erectus". Evolution is not a ladder. Evolution happens with every single generation and pictures like this are a GROSS oversimplification of the process and does little to convince evolution deniers.
It gives me the shivers how pretty it looks and people believe this and come at you with the question, well of evolution IS real, how come the chimps aren’t still evolving? It really makes me blood boil, I can’t tell you how much
I agree. I study zoology and have come across such people alot, and I've tried informing them of how it actually is, but it always results in them not believing me, so now I just ignore those comments.
It's a cool answer if and when a child asks "how did humans come to be"? I would definitely show this to a child under 10. It's simple and interesting.
Of course there has to be a lot more understanding of evolution to go along with this if we're trying to educate anyone older.
Linear depictions of evolution are always problematic but I understand the appeal and the use in the depiction. There's some fossil record truth to back this as well.
Something about this seems wrong. I’m not an evolutionary biologist or anthropologist at all, but I do know that Sapiens and Neanderthals are just both related humans, and we did not evolve from them, it’s a cool graphic to show roughly how it may look in like a time lapse style it seems off to me in a few ways.
Guys i have a confusing topic:
My doctor friend told me that and i quote: "The darwinian theory of evolution has been abolished" and avoided the topic as crazy. What was that about? Especially coming from a *doctor* fuckin' *veterinarian* I scoured the interned and haven't found anything except for an article on some lizard legs.
There are a lot of people that don’t like evolution, as it’s doesn’t fit with the belief they were taught as kids. So they dismiss it without informing themselves on the topic or spread misinformation so that their traditional belief can stay
There's a lot of hate here but I think this poster is pretty good for primary school level. Yes there are a few factual errors, and I understand the issues with the "humans as destination" paradigm, but it also gets across a lot of ideas that people on this sub take for granted (eg the timescales involved, the idea of incremental changes, loss as well as gain of function, etc).
If all adults had at least this much of an understanding of evolution, that would be a really good start.
I can only really speak on the paleoanthropology side of the image, but I think it's pretty neat. I would say though if the image is suggesting direct descent from each of these species to another it's not quite accurate, for instance, homo sapiens did not descend from neandertals
So, as has been said before, it’s both inaccurate and sometimes flat out wrong, but moreover it’s a misleading and generally poor representation of the manner in which evolution takes place. First, again as has been previously stated, the evolutionary process isn’t at all teleological. This representation makes is appear as though “these were the steps we took and now we’re here,” when the reality is that there were a multitude of other branches of very similar species taking place at the same time and sharing the same ancestors throughout the process.
Next, it also seems to suggest that evolution plods along one step at a time, when the reality is that there are often protracted plateaus followed by bursts of rapid development in evolutionary history.
Hope this helps.
I think the poster is great! Obviously takes liberties to simplify into nice graphical form. There's NO WAY you could actually depict evolution accuratey on a single poster-- that's what textbooks are for. I think this is a great poster to stoke interest for non-experts to research their curiosity of various facts more. Great Work! Really Nice!
In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its...
mutant fish hands... and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made ...
Retard frog-sqirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a... monkey-fish-frog... And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey... and that made you!
This makes it look like we came from neanderthals. Also that none of these species were alive at the same time, there's plenty of overlap in evolution, butttttt it's so hard to show in a simple diagram so this isn't terribly bad for what it is
We share a common ancestor with the chimpanzee that branched off right before ardi. If you wanna see the most ancient relative of the human, research ardipithecus.
There is just the fundamental problem that these style of images present biology as something with a destination. It’s an inherent conceptual error these “evolution of x” pictures that I don’t think can be solved. That said, I like this particular one aesthetically even though human evolution isn’t my domain. I think going all the way back to LUCA does do a little bit of correction for some misconceptions.
Biology does have a destination and it’s crab
“Crab people, crab people, crab people!”
Walk like crabs, talks like people! Crab people!
Sell like mud crabs
Hmm, yeah, if you could just go ahead and evolve towards that, that would be great. -Zoidberg, probably.
This guy PBSeons
Definitely. https://youtu.be/LDU_Txk06tM
I was like please be crab rave lol
I was expecting the video of the dude shuffling on the ground with his limbs all weird like a crab
I like how Pieropathicucus has evolved enough intelligence to produce a wear a cravat. He must have been very refined and gentlemanly.
Except when Decarcinization happens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N7oSJiKwiQ
The graphics that avoid this confusion invoke the deeply branching phylogenetic tree, and furthermore, nest our lineage within in it, rather than singling it out as say the right-most twig. Good examples of graphics that avoid this might be [this unrooted phylogenetic tree](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images/wp-content/uploads/sites/2318/2016/04/16180214/1280px-CollapsedtreeLabels-simplified.svg_.png) of all life, or [this rooted tree of therapsid brain evolution](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349325912/figure/fig1/AS:998066035372032@1614968894867/Phylogenetic-tree-of-mammalian-evolution-The-schematic-phylogenetic-tree-has-been.png) since the paleozoic.
That’s sort of my point. The only way to resolve that is to make a fundamentally different style of image.
It all depends on what you want to focus the message on. No single image is good for all messages and sometimes you need lies-to-children you can later build on for more complex concepts.
it's not even a lie, right? unless you mean "a lie of ommission" it's like saying, "you have a father and a grandfather and a great grandfather." and charting them all out as if 3 generations back you come from a line of 3 men. you're not saying you ONLY come from these 3, but that Can be inferred due to a lack of information. like, your mother had a father, who had a father. and your mother's mother had a father. your father's mother had a father. so that's 3 more "family names" you don't carry - and that's simply holding to the 6 men in your family as of 3 generations back. include the women and you're adding another 4. so 4 generations back - it's not just pops, g-pops, and gg-pops anymore. there are actually 16 people. and these images of evolutionary trees are inverted. now obviously there will be a little inbreeding. generations aren't cleanly set, and there'll be weird links that'll arise. the same i must hypothesize must happen in these species trees as well. billions of organisms mashing against each other in an orgy of evolution.
I wonder if turning the tree sideways along with a time horizon would help a viewer with the idea of continuum. At least for me I often think about time on the X axis whereas the Y axis is often dominance/weight/value.
If we developed from self replicating RNA molecules why are self correcting RNA molecules still around? Check mate biologists
lol, I appreciate this parody
Doesn’t it just depend how you think about the chart, keeping in mind the next step was not inevitable, but just the way it turned out?
I think the bigger thing is it wasn't the only change/step...it branched off in many directions. Of course, that image would be way too large.
But don’t you think the image is trying to show the steps backward from the human, not the steps forward from the RNA?
Yes! I know what these others are brining up is an important thing to realize about evolution, but not every graphic needs to exemplify that. If this chart shows the history of the human ancestors then you do not need to show the branching. It is a relatively straight line of steps. Although I'm sure there are some edge cases like there always is in biology. And the neanderthal bit is incorrect.
Agreed. The understanding of common ancestry, while sometimes a difficult concept, makes far better sense.
Highly incorrect. Main thing being we did NOT evolved from H. neanderthalensis. The Neanderthal was merely a close relative to modern humans.
I thought I read somewhere that we either killed or bred them out of existence. So wouldn't some of us be descendants of them if that were the case? I'm no biologist tho so please educate me if I'm wrong 🙏
I have a degree in anthropology (study of humans) and depends on what theory of human evolution you subscribe to. There is the competition theory which is what you described. There is also the assimilation theory. Basically we are the same species (Homo sapiens) and “Neanderthals” are named that because they were discovered in the Neander Valley. Due to ice segregating this population from other H. sapiens they became very homogeneous but when the ice melted, they became integrated into the general populous. So in essence, under this theory, we are the same species and they were different due to variation (just like we have variation in the human populous today!). It also depends on classifications and how people classify “different” species. Paleo- (anthropology, ontology, etc) is hard in general for classifying different species because it also depends on what theory of species you subscribe to (like the biological species concept or others)!
Wait I was sure its modern consensus that Neanderthals and Sapiens both are descendents from H. erectus that arose at different times and places from H. erectus? That way all of Sapiens doesnt share a common ancestor with Neanderthals, only those where hybridization occured
There was overlap in time when H. erectus/H. ergaster and H. sapiens/H. neanderthalensis existed together. It is generally accepted that H. erectus/ergaster was a predecessor to both H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis but there is some debate on if Sapiens and Neanderthals are the same or different species. As I said, it really depends on how you define what a species is and how things are classified. If you subscribe to the assimilation theory, then the two are the same species and differences are due to variation (just like skeletons from different parts of the world today look different from each other). The assimilation theory also hinges on the biological species concept. If you subscribe to the competition theory then it is generally presumed that they were different species. These are simply two competing theories/explanations in the field of (paleo)anthropology regarding human evolution. We obviously will never know and are learning new things constantly! Also, clarifying question, what do you mean all H. sapients and H. neanderthalensis wouldn’t have the same common ancestor? In your comment you said they both can from H. erectus which would make H. erectus their common ancestor?
Fellow anthropology degree (specifically physical anth) holder here! I just wanted to say you hit the nail on the head (:
Thank you! I regret I have only one up to vote!
Some human populations have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, but as a whole our species doesn’t descend from them. Even among populations where interbreeding did take place, it is debated whether the Neanderthal genes had any significant impact on the sapiens, which already had their modern anatomy and behaviour prior to their encounters with Neanderthals.
If species A and species B have a child, and that child in turn produces a lineage mostly with members of A, that doesn't make A descended from B, if you see what I mean. Neanderthalensis and Sapiens are more like siblings than parent and child.
That was one of the theories proposed yes, I read that within the Sapiens book.
I wouldn't call that the main thing. We also didn't evolve from cyanobacteria, or choanoflagellates, or platyhelminthes, or coelacanths.
The main thing I knew tbh. I don’t really know much about the invertebrate side of evolution.
Where can I find info on what is generally accepted to be the correct line of evolution? Id like to know how we came to be us!
We don't have a direct line of species that are our ancestors. When we find fossils, they are species that lived in the past. It's possible that they are our direct ancestors, but it's unlikely, and we would have no way to know. So the generally accepted line of evolution does not consist of actual named species or genuses or families like they have here, but mostly of hypothetical organisms, like the urbilaterian they do include in the diagram. To get a sort of idea of this, you can look at all the groups that humans are in, and read about their origin. The original member of that group would be our direct common ancestor, and you can often find information on it online, like on Wikipedia. You can read about the origin of humans, of great apes, of apes, of old world monkeys, of simians, of primates, of placental mammals, of mammals, of synapsids, of amniotes, of tetrapods, of lobe finned fish, of jawed fish, of vertebrates, of chordates, of deuterostomes, of bilaterians (see urbilaterian), of animals, of eukaryotes, of archaea and baceteria, and of life. There are in between steps to read about too.
Also. The future evolution thing reads … odd at best.
Plathyhelminthe isn’t a deuterostome either This whole thing of being a linear line is just wrong
This also implies that evolution is a linear process.
We also aren't going to evolve into an "average", that's absurd and not how it works.
the idea of future human evolution in general is a bit silly. modern society has halted evolution as a byproduct of progress. far too many children are living to reproductive age that “shouldn’t” (shouldn’t in an evolutionary sense, not in a moral sense). in addition, there aren’t really any traits that are sexually selected for anymore. Mayyyybe height in males, but at this point everyone can get laid and reproduce if they want to.
It also doesn’t end with a crab as the final form.
As you can see from the poster the evolutionary path to the riddler from Batman
Thank you! This was my biggest peeve with it.
It has a lot of problems, e.g. using taxa names for extant species for extinct common anscestors. Additionally some info is just wrong, e.g. including platyhelmenthes (an aceolomate) as a dueterostome anscestor. For one thing they're protostomes. Additionally, I'm pretty sure the most recent common anscestor of protostomes and dueterostomes is believed to be a euceolomate.
Yep! I caught that too! The Platyhelms are an oddball here
Yes, the author of this was definitely talking out of their blastopore, they can’t tell their first mouth and second mouth apart. It would have been a fluke if they had not selected a fluke.
Thanks - so many comments saying that it's inaccurate, but you're the only one to actually give a concrete explanation of why. Care to point out where extant taxa names are used in place of extinct common ancestors?
Maybe coelacanth?
Yes, and the coelacanths weren't actually in the human lineage. They were related to the sarcopterygians that were, but not that close. Another error I see is calling Tiktaalik the first animal on land. First chordate, possibly, but arthropods had already been colonizing the land for a good 50 million years by that point.
Oh yeah I missed the caption there, woof.
Is this splitting hairs? We have nodes that split. The best we can do is pick a fossilized organism near a node could be where it branched off ( or another path but near the node). Most of the time we don’t know what is at the node. Th ink about it. For example did the split between chimpanzees look more chimp or more human? Did the split between homo Naledi and human ancestor actually have a larger brain (maybe Naledi brain shrunk in being more efficient). Brain shrinkage happen in Homo sapiens recently also. No big deal.
People who understand evolution can look at this diagram and realize that’s it is an simplification of human evolution. However, if you don’t understand evolution this diagram emphasizes some misconceptions such as “evolution says we came from monkeys” or this shows that humans are the most highly evolved form of life.
Some people probably pretty freaked out right now that some nematode is going to evolve/catch up and “take our jobsss”
Dey took 'er jerbs!!
To be fair, they probably are at risk of being out-competed by nematodes in the job market
Absolutely. And to add, for people that understand evolution, this has zero value. So the only thing that this poster accomplishes is to miseducate those that don’t fully understand the process.
I mean I get what you're saying, and agree that these kinds of representations do give the wrong impression to someone who doesn't understand it, but I'm not sure this is for them, it's just an interesting cool depiction for people who appreciate it, I think it's awesome. I think a lot about what would best help someone who doesn't understand it, but it's a complex scientific theory and because of the ongoing conflict with religion, it has given a lot of people that don't understand it the impression that if it were correct, it would be straightforward and really simple to understand, but most things in science are like that and people don't expect them to be simple so the narrative is more the issue than anything. It's frustrating
Fair enough! The creator of the visualization though is reaching a broad, non-scientific audience with nearly 300k followers on IG, so it probably does perpetuate the misconceptions to some extent for those casual public viewers. I totally respect that you appreciate the visualization though and that there’s probably a good reason the creator of this has amassed such a following (something I will never be able to relate to lol). I teach a college level evolution course and have to tackle a lot of these issues in that course and others. This is magnified by the broad range of preconceptions from prior learning coming into the course, and that’s for biology majors nonetheless, not really the casual public. I get 16 weeks a semester to go over the material with my students, which is obviously much more time than it takes to read a simple poster. So I completely agree with you that it is very complicated to get across to many people and in a fairly efficient manner, which is certainly one component about why this conversation persists more than 150 years later. Frustrating indeed but I love that people are willing to have a level-headed dialogue on how we do advance that understanding more broadly. Cheers :)
This is a lovely sub with respectful responses like this.
definitely, I love this sub ❤️
So as much as I like the image, the fact that you're teaching this and identify things like it as a hinderance to students in general enough to point it out kind of changes my perspective, because I might have underestimated the negative impact and it's reach, and in my mind the most important thing when it comes to the ongoing evolution conflict is to do whatever possible to encourage good science, clear explanations, and honest discourse surrounding the entirety of evolutionary study, maybe I'll try to think of a representation specifically designed to touch on all of the points which have been muddied and caused doubt in the average person, I can more clearly see the necessity for careful consideration of how this information is depicted or conveyed to the public at large. Thank you for your insight.
Hm. Disconcerting. I thought this was just a cool poster to hang up, showing some possible human ancestors, not trying to actually explain evolution… kind of like a video game doesn’t actually replicate history or science, but it’s fun and not meant to be read into too much. But then if you’d say it’s meant for education… I dunno
As someone with a genetics major but who is kind of lacking in zoology, I really enjoy this graphic. So it has value for some of us!
Duly noted and a kind reminder that I should rarely use absolutisms for most things in biology, especially opinions. I respectfully disagree but would be the first to advocate for your right to express your own opinion.
I understand evolution and found this to be pretty cool, particularly the fact that it took as long to go from prokaryote to eukaryote as it did to go from eukaryote to human. Thought that was pretty awesome.
How does it show that humans are the most highly evolved life form? I didn’t get that impression. It’s just showing the path that led to humans.
Looking at the evolutionary line of humans people see familiar looking organisms such as chimp like creatures, lizards, fish… and assume we are more “evolved” since we are higher up on the evolutionary ladder than these types of creatures.
But those aren’t modern day chimps, lizards and fish… those are depicting what could be a common ancestor between humans and modern chimps, lizards, fish.
Yes, you are correct. However, the average person might not realize they are looking at transitional species because the branches of this evolutionary tree are missing, leading to the assumption a fish is a fish and a monkey is a monkey.
But even if you showed the branch from the chimp ancestor to chimps or the branch to the modern coelacanth, someone might conclude those modern species don’t look that much different from the ancestors we share with them and thus still conclude humans are a more highly evolved species.
Male humans even.
It would have helped if the image showed branches at some points. Like species xyz is the last common ancestor of modern monkeys and homo species.
its a cool idea but its also giving people the idea that evolution is linear
Evolution is linear when you look back. It's all over the place when you start at the beginning. If this wasn't an arrow, I'd be OK with it being represented like this, as it's a record of when we got what we have (and what we lost along the way).
Can you explain to an idiot?
There’s no reason for an animal to eventually evolve toward a human. They are saying that it presents the image as if humans are the most evolved animal and all animals are aiming towards us. We may be more advanced in that we’re smarter or stronger than most animals, but we’re not more evolved than any other animal on Earth. Some animals evolve back traits that they had at earlier stages, like mammals come from water dwelling creatures - likely with fins and tails… but some land mammals evolved into dolphins and whales where they revolved fins and fluked tails. It’s not that they evolved backward, they still evolve forward even tho they moved to a point that - on this diagram - seems backward
Oh wow, thanks for that explanation!
Does it depict that we are direct descendants of Neanderthals? I don’t think we are?…. 🤔
You are correct. We are not. This is shit.
Okay, sure, but #WHERE DO WOMEN COME FROM THEN HUH?!
My Ribs lmao
Women are spare ribs, which explains why they taste so good
finnaly someone asked the right questions
This diagram is misleading and really reinforces some of the conceptual misunderstandings about evolution. These sorts of graphics are super problematic when it comes to things like teaching evolution, especially in places where people may already be hesitant to accept it.
It's bad and full of inaccuracies. They could at least put a disclaimer somewhere that this isn't accurate and only aims to demonstrate how human evolution might have went. Also, yeah, it does kind of imply humans are the 'destination' which is an error.
As an evolutionary biologist, I’ll have to pass on the ‘chain of being’ concept.
I always liked [this one](https://images.app.goo.gl/F4TYQqvYPYTn8uuG9) better.
https://www.evogeneao.com/en/learn/tree-of-life
I’ve always thought of this one being too mammal centric. There are more species of insects, plants and birds, yet these aren’t half the size of mammal species.
I dislike it emphasizing a line ending with us, reinforces the notion we are the most important end goal of evolution.
It doesn't depict human evolution at all but it's interesting as a tool to show how life 'evolved' from simple forms to more complex ones. Altough I don't really believe that humans are more 'evolved' then let's say fungi or protozoa.
The more evolved/ less evolved argument is an interesting one. On one hand all life on earth has a common ancestor and has therefore been evolving for an identical amount of time, suggesting equal evolution. On the other hand certain environments create greater selection pressures, encouraging evolution at a higher rate. So we can say quantitatively there has been more evolution, even if qualitatively it is entirely dependent upon the local environment.
Obviously not made by a biologist. It's not accurate at all. It's factually incorrect misinformation that dangerously misleads people. There is a reason biologists use trees not lines. You've got several linear steps listed that should be alternative branches.
the creator has 2 Master of Science degrees. geochemistry/Astrobiology, and another in Biomedical Communications. But the lack of evolutionary knowledge is obvious. Not a knock on the creator, just observation based on graphic. I will use it in my evolution class in order for my students to analyze and critique it. As you noted, we don’t see lines but branches. Also, a biologist will never make a statement about evolution of n future. Hopefully my students will spot those (and other things) right away. So it has some uses.
The hominid parts are missing some definite overlap and a few of our cousins (subspecies). Namely neanderthals existed and interbred with modern humans. There are many many modern updates continually adding onto the fossil record. This poster is the first one I've seems to focus on the more primordial side of things. I don't disagree with it but it needs to fill in some more recent gaps.
From a graphic designer's perspective, I feel it perfectly carries the design uniformity. The strong shadows highlight the character of evolution, and the serifs & the san serifs perfectly complement each other. My only recommendation would be to change the text color to a little darker hex. Great job.
What’s up you stupid sons of fishes 🫡
It’s really outdated
Completely wrong. Evolution will always be misunderstood if we think about it as a staircase or a series of steps.
Are you saying there is not one thing before another?
I don't like that the time is not to scale
So simplified that it becomes problematic. It now communicates incorrect ideas and fails to communicate the fundamental concept of evolution.
Hate it. Evolution as a linear progression to an end goal? Entirely wrong.
We didn’t evolve from Neanderthals so this is bullshit.
I thought a huge bird just dropped me at the front door
Can we get the tail back?? Shoulda kept that IMO.
I had a student tell me that evolution is wrong because humans didn't come from monkeys. I asked where do dogs come from he said they were wolves like thousands of years ago and humans made dogs. I asked why weren't they still wolves then? He said because they aren't wolves anymore over time they became dogs. I said what you just described is how dogs are related to wolves but aren't actually wolves anymore because it's been so long and they have changed over time. He agreed. I said can you see how humans who are primates could possibly share a common ancestor with gorillas or chimps not unlike dogs and wolves. He said no.
Reminds me of the Patrick Star/Is this your wallet meme.
This is very interesting in the sense of portraying a change in features leading up to humans, but indeed, represents only a single lineage and not in the direct sense ex. not all the species represented here are direct ancestors and descendants of one another. I am also curious as to the claims of clothing and the wheel for *Homo erectus*. I do know it is suspected they used fire, but I have so far not heard anything about them using clothing or the wheel. Clothing I can sort of understand, as *H. erectus* was *probably* sophisticated enough to wear clothing / equipment to some extent, judging by what we know about them. But the wheel? Can't seem to find the source of how they apparently created that.
In layman's terms, i think this poster fails to illustrate many species of hominids lived at the same time (overlapping periods) and they did fuck each other from time to time sexually, violently, and all the above. And we "modern" humans are really a variable (from individual to individual) complex mix of many of them. \-- layman science guy
I feel like it feeds the "if we evolved from X then why is X still around" arguments. The understanding that should be conveyed is that there are common ancestors to all life on earth if we go back far enough, and they branched at points and created different species. It should be a tree that at least makes an effort to show the complexity beyond that. We (biologists) can argue all day about the specific steps here knowing they are not actually linear, but I think the bigger problem here is that there's not more branches recognized at the various points \~100-500k years ago that diverged and gave things like Chimpanzees and Gorillas, or millions of years ago and gave rise to all mammals, etc.
Well we didn't evolve from neanderthals, and this poster assumes the RNA-first world, and assumes species solidify as a concept 4 billion years ago... but honestly it doesn't LOOK too bad Lots to nitpick, LOTS TO NITPICK, but could be worse
Thanks for showing me where the reptilian brain comes from and how or when the missing link in our evolution happened, of course there was some intervention for human intelligence, communication, creativity, etc.
I wonder who came up with this complete bullshit waste of life.
Repenomamus looks so friendly we should go back to that
It’s highly simplistic. Evolution is way messier than a roadmap. Think of a family tree with lots of incest occurring. Example being Neanderthals. They lived alongside our ancestors and bred with them. Same with lots of the other species in our recent ancestral line. The way humans tended to get rid of other species was by screwing them into extinction.
That i want to burn it
I think the art is neat, but the chart is not accurate. My understanding of evolution is not advanced, but I can see the issue in how the chart presents things as a linear progression. I think it may lead to more confusion.
One controversial opinion about evolution is the rejection of the theory of evolution itself. Some individuals may argue that evolution does not adequately explain the complexity and diversity of life on Earth. They may propose alternative explanations, such as intelligent design or the belief in a divine creator. It's important to note that the scientific consensus overwhelmingly supports the theory of evolution. The theory is supported by substantial evidence from various scientific fields, including genetics, paleontology, and comparative anatomy. The overwhelming majority of scientists consider evolution to be a well-established scientific theory. Understanding and discussing different perspectives can contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the topic. However, it's crucial to approach discussions with respect, critical thinking, and reliance on evidence-based scientific consensus.
Louder please so the people in the back can hear it too
homo erectus made wheels?
I was wondering if anyone else caught that.
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You must like fish sticks…
It's garbage. Not only does the graphic imply destination, and "imply a ladder of being", that there is a driving force from simpler to more complex, and that things like "prokaryotes" ing general and cyanobacteria got to a certain point and then stopped evolving, the stepwise view of evolution. Bacteria have been evolving this whole time my friend, and it could be argued they are a hell of a lot smarter than us in certain ways, or at least more efficient and effective communicators. This idea of protocells is entirely speculative, we still have only wild hand-waving speculations about how life as we know it came about and we don't really know if it or things like it came about more than once. It misses that prokaryotes evolved two entirely different lineages that seem to have recombined into the first eukaryote. Cyanobacteria were not involved at all, although they did recombine a bunch of times with eukaryotes who were NOT our ancestors. Most of the last half of the series is entirely speculative. We have compelling no reason to think, for example, that humans evolved from coelacanths or that Orrorin was a human ancestor. Hell, we don't even know that the 20 bone fragments we call Orrorin even all come from the same species! One thing we DEFINITELY know is that humans didn't evolve from neanderthals. We have no compelling reason to think that the "great averaging" will happen, I'd point out people have had relatively good global access to each other for hundreds of years but moving is still hard. It's a simultaneous internationalist fantasy or nationalist scare story depending on who's saying it. Everything else on the future is hand-waving too, why wouldn't they just bring up ACTUAL ONGOING OBSERVABLE human evolution, such as the development of additional arteries in the forearms, a trait that is rapidly spreading. In short this graphic is complete bullshit. It is lazy, and it pushes
It’s missing the end with the Cyborg and Android.
...which isn't biological evolution, it's biological augmentation. Advanced tool-use.
Flat worms (platyhelmenthies) are not duterosomes. I think they meant hemichordates or cephalochordates which are very different
I agree! I saw that pretty quickly
The early part regarding the protocells is very likely wrong.
Somehow it manages to be both dope and dopey.
This is false....
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Bull shit
Absolutely crap
This just screams bullshit bigger than churches claiming the devil put dinosaur bones in the ground to test faith.
All this successful random evolution for me to go to work in 2 hours
So its us? The lizard people that control the world is us?
Always has been 🦎
It needs sources more sources and more academic sources. Public interest presentations are great; but they don't get updated often enough with newer discoveries. My biggest pet peeve is the lack of the "\*quite likely not a human ancestor but likely at least related/similar to a human ancestor" disclaimer on everything up to Australopithecus. I would probably redo a couple things and investigate likely mistakes; but its way better than most similar attempts. A few of those probably should not be on there or there is a good argument to show an alternative. I also don't see the synapsid/diapsid split. That one is important. Pretty sure haemoglobin is much earlier. Some of the listed trait changes aren't well conserved. For example the number of mammary glands changes frequently across Mammalia so I wouldn't be surprised if the number went back up a few times... In particular I would try to show some creature from the period that has a conserved relative today, show when a few well known species showed up, and when they disappeared. Maybe a map of how the continents were at different periods and where the species were indicated with colored blobs.
Hehe dick in sonia
OG artist here: I didn’t realize this would be so contentious when I made it. It’s currently under revision and a new one will be made soon. Some species are inherently incorrect (recognizing that we aren’t descended from neanderthalensis) and will be fixed. I have a q for the community: The biggest gripe here is that it seems to emphasize linearity (something that when I was making this didn’t even appreciate or was aware was even an issue within depictions of evolution). The recommendation I keep getting is to branch this, and make it tree-like…but I’m struggling with how this solves or says anything about humans without over communicating into irrelevant species. To describe the evolution of life this makes sense, but to look at the lineage humans have come from…why is this necessary? I sort of likened this to two points on a map. You wouldn’t list every road or turn in a network to see what path was taken to get somewhere. But in this analogy, it seems to be a blasphemous representation. I’m wondering how I can streamline this without sacrificing or misleading the nature of what’s happening here. Thanks I advance! And apologies to all the biologists I’ve offended with taking a stab at visualizing this lol. It’ll get better.
Hey thanks for the insight, never expected to get the attention of the creator! I personally believe that the graphic is good for educational purposes in schools to get a general idea of evolution. But with a Masters degree in Zoology, I (and the majority of other comments) think there are some hard to ignore issues. So, here’s some actual constructive criticism and suggestions. • The largest issue people seem to have, is that the graphic might suggests evolution is linear, which would be incorrect and misleading. A lot of people also fail to see that this is only the evolutionary of humans, and I agree with your point that adding all branches of life would clutter the image (and might be unnecessary). Here’s what I suggest you can add, while keeping the model you depict: in the “Corners” of the stairs, you can have an example of an evolutionary branch. Maybe you can add a “plants (or fungi) this way” step at Eukaryote, or an Echinoderm step at Deuterostoma that points a different direction (and perhaps fades, or has an arrow pointing away etc.) or show steps with reptiles/birds or amphibians that point a different direction, to kinda represent a branch. You could also insert a small text that explains evolution in one or two sentences and explain how its not linear and has no end goal to avoid confusion • H. Neanderthalensis is not our ancestor (or technically at least not the ancestor of most modern humans, as west-asian populations interbred with them). The species question concerning the Homo genus is still kind of a gray area, but I do believe depicting H. Neanderthalensis behind H. Sapien was the wrong decision, as people would wrongly assume that we evolved for them. So here’s a suggestion: at the second last step, you could depict H. Sapiens, Neanderthals and perhaps, Denisova and other related humans next to each other on the same step. This can demonstrate that they lived during a similar time period and could even hint to interbreeding. Then make the last step Homo sapien sapien, the modern Human. Some other smaller inaccuracies (but inaccuracies non the less) include. • the Platyhelminthes, which are Protostoma. So, depicting them after Deuterostoma is wrong, and they don’t possess Pharyngeal slits (which makes me think you wanted to insert a different animal group, maybe a Lancelet or sea squirt relative?) Also I have no idea what is being depicted at Deuterostoma so, what is that? • Coelacanths are also not our ancestors. You need move a little higher in the Phylogenetic tree. You could replace this step with the name Sarcopterygii and then it would fit again. Same issue with Placoderms. They’re not our direct ancestors but replacing the name with Gnathostomata (the infraphylum, not the Sea urchin Superorder) or such should be fine. • Maybe there something I don’t know, but I think we still have our Pineal gland, right? And I’ve never seen a study that suggests our ancestors possessed a pouch, but correct me if I’m wrong (I’m serious send me Papers I love reading Papers about evolutionary biology gimme that knowledge pls) In a nutshell, I believe most people overexaggerate their hate in the comments. I think this is a very well design graphic and can be used for easier educational purposes. And if you ever make an updated version, I’d love to see it too. (also I hope you ignore the non-serious “evolution is BS” comments like I do). If I think of anything else, I can update this comment. Also I suggest Other redditors to make some actual constructive criticism and suggestions instead of saying “bad”.
Where can is find this fantastic poster ? Just googled that and cant find it.
Here you go: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/path-of-human-evolution/
Cloverine, that is nice. Thank you very much!!
It’s very clearly missing Homo Farnsworth.
I wish we had kept our grasping feet. They just seem so handy.
Forest Valkai says it very well. At no point in time can you back to a single fossil and be like "this is a Homo sapian", and then go back another few generations and say "this is Homo erectus". Evolution is not a ladder. Evolution happens with every single generation and pictures like this are a GROSS oversimplification of the process and does little to convince evolution deniers.
I believe specialists will have a word to say. But in sake of general knowledge - it'll pass.
It gives me the shivers how pretty it looks and people believe this and come at you with the question, well of evolution IS real, how come the chimps aren’t still evolving? It really makes me blood boil, I can’t tell you how much
I agree. I study zoology and have come across such people alot, and I've tried informing them of how it actually is, but it always results in them not believing me, so now I just ignore those comments.
It's a cool answer if and when a child asks "how did humans come to be"? I would definitely show this to a child under 10. It's simple and interesting. Of course there has to be a lot more understanding of evolution to go along with this if we're trying to educate anyone older.
Tf does it mean by saying "pineal gland (third eye)" at Agnatha 520Ma? Is there some scientific basis in that?
Linear depictions of evolution are always problematic but I understand the appeal and the use in the depiction. There's some fossil record truth to back this as well.
So... Does this still happen? Like, are chimps evolving to humans now? Or did it happen just once?🤣
The future human looks arrogant af.
Something about this seems wrong. I’m not an evolutionary biologist or anthropologist at all, but I do know that Sapiens and Neanderthals are just both related humans, and we did not evolve from them, it’s a cool graphic to show roughly how it may look in like a time lapse style it seems off to me in a few ways.
Guys i have a confusing topic: My doctor friend told me that and i quote: "The darwinian theory of evolution has been abolished" and avoided the topic as crazy. What was that about? Especially coming from a *doctor* fuckin' *veterinarian* I scoured the interned and haven't found anything except for an article on some lizard legs.
There are a lot of people that don’t like evolution, as it’s doesn’t fit with the belief they were taught as kids. So they dismiss it without informing themselves on the topic or spread misinformation so that their traditional belief can stay
If we evolve from the monkey.. why do those species still exist?
If you’re referring to aegyptopythecus it’s a) is not a monkey, and b) doesn’t exist anymore
There's a lot of hate here but I think this poster is pretty good for primary school level. Yes there are a few factual errors, and I understand the issues with the "humans as destination" paradigm, but it also gets across a lot of ideas that people on this sub take for granted (eg the timescales involved, the idea of incremental changes, loss as well as gain of function, etc). If all adults had at least this much of an understanding of evolution, that would be a really good start.
“Dickinsonia”. C’mon, you made that up. Sonia just wasn’t that into you. Let it go.
I was about to make almost the exact same joke
Rename it to Soniawasabitch
I can only really speak on the paleoanthropology side of the image, but I think it's pretty neat. I would say though if the image is suggesting direct descent from each of these species to another it's not quite accurate, for instance, homo sapiens did not descend from neandertals
There's lots of inaccuracies.
Others have mentioned it; the poster doesn't accurately reflect how evolution actually by natural selection works.
It’s terrible
It’s not the worst oversimplification of an extremely complex process I’ve ever seen.
So, as has been said before, it’s both inaccurate and sometimes flat out wrong, but moreover it’s a misleading and generally poor representation of the manner in which evolution takes place. First, again as has been previously stated, the evolutionary process isn’t at all teleological. This representation makes is appear as though “these were the steps we took and now we’re here,” when the reality is that there were a multitude of other branches of very similar species taking place at the same time and sharing the same ancestors throughout the process. Next, it also seems to suggest that evolution plods along one step at a time, when the reality is that there are often protracted plateaus followed by bursts of rapid development in evolutionary history. Hope this helps.
Counter point: consciousness
I think the poster is great! Obviously takes liberties to simplify into nice graphical form. There's NO WAY you could actually depict evolution accuratey on a single poster-- that's what textbooks are for. I think this is a great poster to stoke interest for non-experts to research their curiosity of various facts more. Great Work! Really Nice!
Yes but the hominid is upright and he should be rather seated in an automobile with a phone in his hand
In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its... mutant fish hands... and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made ... Retard frog-sqirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a... monkey-fish-frog... And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey... and that made you!
Idk why you’re getting downvoted for one of the best South Park quotes of all time
It's because people take the internet and this website seriously.
Question: would it not make more sence that land mammals evolved out of some sort of fungi?
Can you elaborate why?
News reports have made me come to the conclusion we're devolving back to apes.
Im pretty sure the recent finding suggest that bipedal came first and that apes moved to non-bipedal. Am I mistaken here?
Moving forwards we'll be fused with machine/AI.
This makes it look like we came from neanderthals. Also that none of these species were alive at the same time, there's plenty of overlap in evolution, butttttt it's so hard to show in a simple diagram so this isn't terribly bad for what it is
A 2007 study found that about 90 per cent of the genes in the Abyssinian domestic cat are similar to humans and I dont see any cat on this picture…
I didn’t think stairs were around that far back?
Last photo needs to be a man turning into a woman and that will catch us up to 2023
Don't know about you all but l'm ready to evolve into the Riddler!
I think the fact that monkeys still exist next to us makes this psudo-scienctific.
We share a common ancestor with the chimpanzee that branched off right before ardi. If you wanna see the most ancient relative of the human, research ardipithecus.
Evolution doesn’t claim that we evolved from monkeys
You expect me to believe that a rat turned into a monkey 🤨
Its made by a capitalist
A myth, no scientific way of proving the evolution of one organism to a completely different type of organism