# Visual graphic/display of evolutionary progress chain...? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 21, 2014, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-graphic-display-of-evolutionary-progress-chain/688925 "2014-05-21T14:35:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-graphic-display-of-evolutionary-progress-chain/688925/1 "2014-05-21T14:35:45Z")
Richard Dawkins once [wrote a passage](http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/dawkins01.htm), quoted below > [@](#): > > Happenings are sometimes organised at which thousands of people hold hands and form a human chain, say from coast to coast of the United States, in aid of some cause or charity. Let us imagine setting one up along the equator, across the width of our home continent of Africa. It is a special kind of chain, involving parents and children, and we will have to play tricks with time in order to imagine it. You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia, facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother’s hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border. > > How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles. We have hardly started to cross the continent; we are still not half way to the Great Rift Valley. The ancestor is standing well to the east of Mount Kenya, and holding in her hand an entire chain of her lineal descendants, culminating in you standing on the Somali beach. > > The daughter that she is holding in her right hand is the one from whom we are descended. Now the arch-ancestress turns eastward to face the coast, and with her left hand grasps her other daughter, the one from whom the chimpanzees are descended (or son, of course, but let’s stick to females for convenience). The two sisters are facing one another, and each holding their mother by the hand. Now the second daughter, the chimpanzee ancestress, holds her daughter’s hand, and a new chain is formed, proceeding back towards the coast. First cousin faces first cousin, second cousin faces second cousin, and so on. By the time the folded-back chain has reached the coast again, it consists of modern chimpanzees. You are face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding hands with daughters. If you walked up the line like an inspecting general -past Homo erectus, Homo habilis, perhaps Australopithecus afarensis -and down again the other side (the intermediates on the chimpanzee side are unnamed because, as it happens, no fossils have been found), you would nowhere find any sharp discontinuity. Daughters would resemble mothers just as much (or as little) as they always do. Mothers would love daughters, and feel affinity with them, just as they always And this hand-in-hand continuum, joining us seamlessly to chimpanzees, is so short that it barely makes it past the hinterland of Africa, the mother continent. Hope that’s not too large a portion to quote. My question is, has anyone ever seen a graphical representation of this chain, mother to daughter, from modern human back to shared ancestor and forward to modern chimpanzee? It seems like the sort of thing that would be well suited to facial manipulation software and touch screen devices that can quickly flick through multiple changing images, so was wondering if something like this currently exists out there? I’ve had no joy searching for it, so thought I’d ask. It would be even more awesome if you could pick the species to ‘roll’ between, but that may be asking a bit much! Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-graphic-display-of-evolutionary-progress-chain/688925/2 "2014-05-21T15:53:35Z")
Isn’t the example mistaken, though? Chimpanzee generations are shorter than human generations, so you’d reach the coast before you got to modern chimps. ---
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-graphic-display-of-evolutionary-progress-chain/688925/3 "2014-05-21T16:10:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Isn’t the example mistaken, though? Chimpanzee generations are shorter than human generations, so you’d reach the coast before you got to modern chimps. Modern chimps have -what, an average generation of 24 years, compared to humans with 29 years presently. If we allow for size differential (less space per chimp-descendant) then it’s near as dammit, really, only a few thousand generations out… close enough for metaphorical work! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-graphic-display-of-evolutionary-progress-chain/688925/4 "2014-05-21T16:14:18Z")
300 miles at 1760 yards/mile, he is saying there’s 528,000 generations between us and “the other sister”. IIRC that’s what, 3 million years ago? (or as it 6 million?) fairly short generations. Keep in mind that a lot of the “ancestors” in the fossil record may not be actual members of the chain but additional branches. their time and place simply help us to determine what the chain members were similar to. half a million faces? 5,000 seconds is close to an hour and a half. So even 100 generations a second would make for an incredibly boring feature-length film. plus, we may have some “spot check” fossil records, but there’s debate as to speed of evolution - punctuated or gradual? Would we see a smooth morph or a series of sudden changes over a few hundred generations, followed by relative stasis for quite a while. As mentioned, too, we know nothing about chimp evolution. We know a lot and we also know nothing. The movie would be more guesswork than anything. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2014, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/visual-graphic-display-of-evolutionary-progress-chain/688925/5 "2014-05-21T16:19:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Isn’t the example mistaken, though? Chimpanzee generations are shorter than human generations, so you’d reach the coast before you got to modern chimps. Pack them in tighter. But then we’d lose the property that cousins n-th removed would face each other. That or make them swim! 🙂 Also, they’d match up rather closely until relatively recently, wouldn’t they?