Iconic Evolution & Evolution’s Icon, Part II

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Iconic Evolution & Evolution’s Icon, Part I explored the origins of this widely used visual summary of human evolution, and how it conveys a false and outdated concept of evolution as linear, progressive, continuous and inevitable.

The original image was a scientific illustration for the Life Nature Library book Early Man (1965).

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Online searches will return hundreds of variants of the image. Most are simplified versions of the book’s large, fold-out illustration.

The image is a visual resource often appropriated and transformed for humor and commentary.

Some appropriations are commutative; that is, the visual scheme of the original image is altered without changing its likely reading as a scientific illustration.

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Other transformations are for rhetorical or humorous effect. In an interesting homology, the iconic sequence is mutated by the same operations through which DNA mutates: insertion, deletion, substitution, & reversal.

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Visual sequence operationsPossible mutations include changes in the syntagmatic

axis (order) or paradigmatic axis (element identity)

Insertion at either end emphasizes sequential order

Insertion in middle connotes disruption of sequence

Deletion is typically a simplifying move rather than a rhetorical or humorous move.

Reversal emphasizes order in an ironic or parodying way.

Combinations of these operations are common.

Substitution is, logically, a combination of deletion and insertion.

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Sequence operations

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1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5Insertion

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 543Substitution

1 2 3 4 1 3 4 5Deletion

5 4 3 2 1Reversal

1 2 3 4 5 3 2 1Multiple

Insertion

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The most common variants extend the sequence with a figure slumped over a keyboard or an obese figure – commenting on our relationships to technology and food.

Insertion

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Initial insertion answers “what came before?” Terminal insertion answers “What comes next?”Medial insertion conveys alteration of the progression. Initial insertion is rare – in this case, the iconic pepper-spraying cop invites the viewer to associate the “unevolved” figure with the abuse of power.

Substitution

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Substitution removes a figure while adding another. This can convey that a figure is equivalent to a primate ancestor, or it can indicate discontinuity. Note a police figure again!

Reversal

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Flipping the direction doesn’t change the meaning if the size and step direction vectors are congruent. When one, but not the other, is reversed we see rhetorical irony.

Reversal

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Reversal equals devolution or reversal of progress. Often it’s anti-technology, anti-war or political. It takes two forms: reversal of the entire sequence or extending the original sequence in reverse progression.

Reversal

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Reversing the progression is often political – but interestingly, usually a liberal perspective. Perhaps conservatives hesitate to exploit evolution as a metaphor.

Other sequence operations

Alignment is the parallel display of multiple sequences for comparison or contrast.

Temporal integration converts the sequence from one in which elements are separated and ordered in time to one in which the elements are co-temporal.

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Sequence alignment

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1 2 3 4 5 6

1 2 3 4 5 6Contrast

1 2 3 4 5 6

1 2 3 4 5 6Projection

Alignment of two sequences suggests relationship –either contrast (emphasizing difference or resemblance between two similar sequences) or projection (implying similarity between dissimilar sequences; a visual metaphor).

Contrast

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Contrast

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Projection

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Advertisements leverage the view of evolution as progressive and inevitable (orthogenesis) to position brands or product types as pinnacles of evolution.

Projection

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Text has a built-in vector; it’s reversed here to contrast evolution’s “progress” (orthogenesis) with Kansas’s regressive legislation about teaching evolution.

Co-temporality

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1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5 6Ordered T1, T2, …T6

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Co-temporal T11 2 3 4 5 6

Our shared knowledge of human evolution means we usually interpret the figures to be (mostly) separated in time and temporally ordered. Interaction among the figures breaks this separation for humor or commentary.

Temporal integration

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The “stop following me” variant is common.

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Temporal integration

Implications

Human evolution’s iconic image is both an icon and a resource for making meaning

It has high memetic potential:

Textbook case of an “iconic image”

Limited visual detail = easily abstracted

Paradigmatic & syntagmatic operations available

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A vast variety of plays on the original illustration is possible, given insertion, deletion, substitution, reversal, projection and contrast. Mutations of order, composition, and alignment are available for making meaning.

Michael E. Holmes, Ph.D.

Presented at VisCom 26, June 2012

Midway, Utah, USA

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