# Who drew the famous "evolution" chart?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-drew-the-famous-evolution-chart/172495>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 1, 2003, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-drew-the-famous-evolution-chart/172495 "2003-05-01T22:51:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Garnet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de0a6/32.png) [@Garnet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garnet)\
**Post date:** [May 1, 2003, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-drew-the-famous-evolution-chart/172495/1 "2003-05-01T22:51:58Z")

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I was looking for a picture of that famous “evolution of man” diagram that shows a lineup of ancestors of the human species all in a row. It starts with something pretty similar to a monkey and ends with an modern-looking human holding a spear (or something like that). Does anyone know who drew it, or where I could find a picture? (All I could find on Google was the joke version where the sequence continues until the man is hunched over a computer… heh heh)

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-drew-the-famous-evolution-chart/172495/2 "2003-05-02T01:08:34Z")

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The illustration, known as “The March of Progress,” is by Rudy Zallinger and was first published in _Early Man_, a 1970 Time-Life book written by paleoanthropologist F. Clark Howell.

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**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2003, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-drew-the-famous-evolution-chart/172495/3 "2003-05-02T01:25:08Z")

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Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be a copy of the original illustration on the web, though there are many “joke” versions.

Zallinger, by the way, is well known for other illustrations of early life, especially the huge murals of the Mezoic and Tertiary life in Yale’s Peabody Museum.

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**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2003, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-drew-the-famous-evolution-chart/172495/4 "2003-05-02T01:36:40Z")

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The late Stephen Jay Gould used to collect the jokey variants and used them to great effect in his talks.