March of Progress Parodies

Submission 12,030

About

March of Progress Parodies are a series of spoof charts based on the famous scientific illustration of the same name depicting 15 stages of human evolution in a linear sequence, which was originally featured in the Early Man volume of the natural history book series Life Nature Library commissioned by Time-Life Books in 1965.

Origin

The original illustration, which shows the figures of 15 different antecedents in the gradual process of human evolution over the course of 25 million years, was illustrated by American-based Austrian-Russian artist Rudolph F. Zallinger and featured as a foldout section titled "The Road to Homo Sapiens" in the Early Man volume of Time-LIfe Books' natural history book series Life Nature Library published in 1965.

Upon its print publication, the chart soon gained an iconic status as one of the most comprehensive visual representations of human evolution, though it has been often misinterpreted as a chronological sequence of human development due to its linear arrangement.

Spread

Pre-Internet

It didn't take long for the chart to become a popular subject of parodies and spoofs, with the earliest known instance found in a 1966 advertisement for Greg Noll Surfboards' "Da Cat" product which illustrates the evolution of "surfing personas." In 1968, Leakey Foundation, an American non-profit scientific organization focused on funding of human-origins research, adopted the silhouette of the March of Progress illustration as its official logo. In 1972, the image served as an inspiration for Joe Garnett's cover art of Doors' eighth studio album Full Circle. In 1985, a colored silhouette of the original chart was featured as the cover art of Supertramp's eighth studio album Brother Where You Bound. In 1992, a parody illustration depicting the evolution of a skateboarder was featured as the cover art of the soundtrack album for the American comedy film Encino Man. During the 1990s, the visual format of March of Progress was used as cover illustrations for special issues of news magazines, including TIME, Rolling Stone and The Economist, among many others.

Online Parodies

In April 2005, Explosm ran a Cyanide and Happiness webcomic strip parodying the original chart. In June 2005, Patrick Boivin posted a cynical modern adaptation of March of Progress in which the Homo Sapiens devolves into a pig to the CGSociety discussion forum. In November 2009, MyConfinedSpace user Tiki God submitted a nuclear apocalypse-themed parody of the original illustration. In September 2012, Bianael Maentis launched an art project titled 99 Steps of Progress, a series of March of Progress parody illustrations released on a daily basis over the course of 99 days. In 2013, Mike Jacobsen created a video game-themed parody of March of Progress in his illustration titled "Evolution of Gamers." In the 2015 video game Splatoon, one of the Sunken Scrolls shows the evolution of the Inklings in the style of the March of Progress.