Time to Unlearn the Evolutionary March of Human Progress
New discovery adds more evidence
against the human evolution progression
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
One of the most important presentations used to defend the claim that humans evolved from some apelike common ancestor is called ‘The Progression’. Some call it “The March of Progress.” (see Illustration 1). The first ‘Progression’ I am aware of was published in 1965, 60 years ago, in the Time Life book titled Early Man.[1] Since then, it has been reproduced in different forms hundreds of times in both popular and scientific textbooks.
The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and harmful view.
The 1965 illustration editors, in the accompanying description, acknowledged the illustration’s claims were inaccurate. This fact is rarely admitted in most later drawings. Evidently, those who copied the 1965 illustration did not bother to read the fine print. Nonetheless, the Progression has been enormously effective in convincing the public to accept human evolution. As Professor Alexander Werth wrote in 2022, “The idea that evolution is a hierarchy of complexity with humans on top lurks in everything from biology classes to politics. It’s time to unlearn this false and harmful view.”[2]
The linear “Progression” model as shown in Time-Life books popular in the 1960s. From Wikimedia commons. Twelve of the 15 figures in the illustration are shown here.
Some background on “The March of Progress”
The original Time-Life pictures were drawn by natural history artist Rudolph Zallinger to illustrate the last 25 million years of human evolution from ape to modern human. Zallinger could have been inspired by Thomas Henry Huxley’s 1863 illustration in his book Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature which compared the skeletons of apes and humans, speculated Kat Arney for The Genetics Society Podcast in 2020. Huxley’s illustration shows “them walk across the page from left-to-right format [which] led people to believe it represented the evolutionary transformation of monkey into man.”[3]
Arney quips,
Today, the March of Progress is probably one of the most widely recognized scientific images, and it’s an instantly recognizable short-hand for evolutionary progress. And like every other viral phenomenon, it has been widely reinvented and parodied by everyone from surfers to The Simpsons.[4]
The March of Progress shows fifteen of our supposed evolutionary ancestors lined up as if they are marching from left to right across the page, from a knuckle-dragging monkey to upstanding modern man.
Werth, who believes the orthodox view of evolution that “Humans evolved as a result of chance contingencies and random mutations,” complained that the Progression illustration is false, misleading, and even racist. He asked,
Why is our species almost universally seen as the logical endpoint of evolution, with all other species serving as inferior detours or temporary placeholders on an inevitable march toward humanity? This default, hard-to-shake view of evolution has been debunked as definitively as Walker’s ape question. Yet it continues to be echoed in education, policy, business, conservation efforts, and the behaviors of the vast majority of people in Western, industrialized nations… Simplistic, linear views of evolution incorrectly portray humans as more evolved than other species and often reveal racial biases by representing progressively lighter skin tones…. Worse, the progressive complexity view continues to infect anthropology. It’s exemplified by the iconic “March of Progress”—a linear sequence of slumped apes eventually supplanted by upright humans.[5]
New discovery announced in Science doesn’t fit the icon
In the November 2024 issue of Science, Hatala et al. published a finding that undermines the March of Progress. They found the tracks of a modern human together with tracks of a Paranthropus boisei (also called Zinjanthropus boisei in some sources). In the human evolution story, P. boisei was an australopithecine that evolutionists believe lived in the Early Pleistocene in East Africa about 2.5 to 1.15 million years ago.[6] This alleged “prehuman” was believed to have evolved millions of years later into modern humans. Yet this “evolutionary ancestor” was found next to those of a modern human! The summary of the findings reveals this problem.
For much of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, multiple hominin species coexisted in the same regions of eastern and southern Africa. Due to the limitations of the skeletal fossil record, questions regarding their interspecific interactions remain unanswered. We report the discovery of footprints (~1.5 million years old) from Koobi Fora, Kenya, that provide the first evidence of two different patterns of Pleistocene hominin bipedalism appearing on the same footprint surface. New analyses show that this is observed repeatedly across multiple contemporaneous sites in the eastern Turkana Basin. These data indicate a sympatric relationship between Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei, suggesting that lake margin habitats were important to both species and highlighting the possible influence of varying levels of coexistence, competition, and niche partitioning in human evolution.[7]
Nature news added this report to the review published in Science:
Some 1.5 million years ago, two ancient species crossed paths on a lake shore in Kenya. Their footprints in the mud were frozen in time and lay undiscovered until 2021…. analysis of the impressions reveals that they belonged to Homo erectus, a forebear of modern humans, and the more distant relative Paranthropus boisei. The two individuals walked through the lake area within hours or days of each other — leaving the first direct record of different archaic hominin species coexisting in the same place…. The prints preserved details about the individuals, including the height of their foot arches, the shape of their toes and their walking patterns… The path comprises 13 footprints. Hatala and his team estimated that the hominin that created it walked at 1.81 meters per second, similar to a modern human walking briskly.[8]
Conclusions
My prediction is that new fossil finds will further document that most or all of our claimed evolutionary ancestors are not human evolutionary ancestors, but are different kinds of primates that lived contemporaneously. As Sacha Vignieri PhD, editor for Science Magazine, admitted: “It is now well accepted that hominin evolution is a story of many lineages existing contemporaneously. Evidence for this pattern has mostly come from fossils being dated to similar time periods.”[9] The fact is, “Zallinger’s simplistic picture of progress has therefore come in for increasing criticism over the years, as our scientific knowledge about human origins has grown.”[10]
The march of evolutionary progress illustration therefore is, in fact, not evidence of evolution, but rather shows the wide variety of primate life that existed in the past. It also shows that some types of primates, as is true of most other animals, are now extinct. Even though evolutionists acknowledge this lethal problem with human evolution, they still cling to a belief in evolution. It is a worldview accepted in spite of the enormous evidence against it and will probably be accepted even if paleontologists find that all of the supposed links are not missing links but rather extinct animals that lived contemporaneously with humans.
Note the supposed prehumans in the illustration, apparently representing a Homo erectus (a human) and an upright-walking Paranthropus boisei (an ape) who crossed paths according to the study by Hatala et al. As in the March of Progress icon, the one following appears less evolved than the one in front. Also notice the giraffes (which look modern) and the elephant (specifically an extinct Deinotherium). The artist chose two African animals to fit the out-of-Africa, human evolution story. Illustration from Nature News (ref. 8); its caption states, “Archaic human species (artist’s impression) are thought to have coexisted millions of years ago. Credit: Mauricio Anton/Science Photo Library.”
References
[1] Howell, F.C., Early Man, Time-Life Books, New York, NY, pp. 41-45, 1965.
[2] Werth, A., The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress,” https://www.sapiens.org/biology/evolution-march-of-progress/, 2022.
[3] Arney, K., The Mythical March of Progress, The Genetics Society Podcast, https://geneticsunzipped.com/transcripts/2020/1/2/the-mythical-march-of-progress, 2 January 2020.
[4] Arney, 2020.
[5] Werth, 2022.
[6] Leakey, L., A New Fossil from Olduvai, Nature 184:491-494, 1959.
[7] Hatala, K.G., et al., Footprint evidence for locomotor diversity and shared habitats among early Pleistocene hominins, Science 386(6725):1004-1010, 2024.
[8] Naddaf, M., These two ancient human relatives crossed paths 1.5 million years ago, Nature News, 28 November 2024.
[9] Hatala, et al., 2024.
[10] Arney, 2020.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.