People had some peculiar ideas in 1932. Try reading this wonderfully detailed diagram of evolution (if you’ve got the bandwidth, download the 3212×8748 pixel version).
The vertical axis makes sense: it’s a logarithmic scale of geologic time. It’s not quite right, since it has life arising about 1.6 billion years ago, when we now have good evidence that that occurred more than twice that long ago. I’m not going to complain about that — science does march onwards, and it probably represents the best estimates of that time.
The horizontal scale is a real problem, and is revealing something about early attitudes towards evolution. It’s completely unlabeled and poorly explained. Each of the bands of color is, apparently, a lineage; in the excerpt from the beginning of the histomap below, the light green are the bacteria, the dark green are the chlorophyllic plants, the yellow are the porifera, etc.
The extent of each lineage along the horizontal axis is drawn with some care, but it’s meaningless. The legend says, “The horizontal width of any strip at any time suggests in a general way the relative dominance of that type of life at that time.” It’s got the Porifera as the bulk of chart 900 million years ago, for example, with plants and bacteria as a narrow strip, tiny in proportion. It doesn’t even make sense to talk about “dominance” in these terms, and obviously there is no way to measure this.
Another problem with this particular rendering of evolutionary history is that almost every band arises independently from a spot on the left border. Read it literally, and this is a chart of sequential creation, with no detectable relationship between most lineages.
The absurdity grows increasingly apparent as we read down the chart. Here’s the bottom of the histomap; the modern era is completely dominated by the bloated bands of humans to a ridiculous degree.
The yellow (of course!) bands on the left are the Chinese and Japanese — the map is broken down by human races and nationalities by this point — the orange are the Russians, and that broad pink grouping near the middle are the Americans on the left, the English on the right, and a narrower lighter pink swath separating them representing Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans. Then the Germans in blue, the Latins in light green, etc. If you look way, way over on the right, you’ll find those unimportant bacteria, plants, insects, and mammals as teeny-tiny little ribbons which together compose about as much relative importance as the Greeks and Italians.
The focus of the entire chart is on two trivial and poorly defined entities: human “races” and “dominance”, with evolution as only a badly represented premise. All that impressed me is how badly it is done.
The creator, John B. Sparks, seems to have done a lot of this kind of visualization work. He also did histomaps of world history, religion, and who knows what else. The world history map seems to be uncritically praised, but what little I’ve seen of it looks like more of the same — charts with the author’s subjective impressions of importance illustrated over time. I don’t get it. They look utterly useless to me, except as pointless accumulations of words and a false representation of a few events in time. Oh, and as a historical curiosity. I hope no one is trying to learn history or science from these things.
Pterosaurs as “non-flying” reptiles?
Tsk tsk tsk…
Also notice the racist remarks at the end, about immigration.
I guess the whole world was fascist to the max before WWII.
sadly enough, from the amazon reviews:
Interesting to see Piltdown man there. We only ever see it mentioned as an old fake these days, or as Jonathan Wells (an old fake if there ever was one) puts it, ‘an icon of evolution’
It really is fascinating.
The British get a big band to themselves- ‘negroids’ get a tiny sliver next to equally small slivers containing all mammals and insects.
The Irish are labeled as mediterraneans.
Who knew?
About 30000-40000 years ago: “The Negroids were driven out of Europe by the Brown Race and the Caspians, but Negroid traits are still discernible in the peoples of many parts of Europe. Driven to tropical countries, the Negroids lost most incentives to progress and evolution ceased almost entierly.” Quite racist.
A lot of funny quotes from there.
Not to get into the general strangeness of the piece itself, I just want to note that when you pull back and it all becomes abstract shapes, it’s really quite pretty. If this were done simply in paints, it wouldn’t be out of place in most galleries.
By what possible criteria could anyone ever have considered “Americans” as a race?
It is a useful compendium of conventional prejudices and misconceptions of its time and place, but that’s about it. It’s one of those things that is very interesting in concept, but like practically everything else, depends on the execution. Sparks is no Minard.
The thing that struck me was the use of “Hamites.”
That and how we don’t have to worry about bacteria, look at how small their influence is!
So the Chinese and the Japanese are the most developed forms of life. Even Communist Russia is ahead of the Americans. And the British are closer to the cephalopods. It’s all clear now:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/18/engraved-victorian-t.html
So the Chinese and the Japanese are the most developed forms of life. Even Communist Russia is ahead of the Americans. And the British are closer to the cephalopods. It’s all clear now:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/18/engraved-victorian-t.html
The Irish are labeled as mediterraneans. Who knew?
It’s a simple syllogism:
All Mediterraneans are Catholic.
The Irish are Catholic.
Therefore, all Irish are Mediterraneans.
The same logic works today, as you can read in any newspaper:
All Arabs are Muslims.
Iranians are Muslims.
Therefore, all Iranians are Arabs.
Remember, if she weighs more than a duck, she’s a witch! Burn her!
Paging Mr. Tufte, Mr. Edward Tufte.
“Another problem with this particular rendering of evolutionary history is that almost every band arises independently from a spot on the left border.”
PZ, obviously this diagram is absurd, but out of curiosity, how would you depict the origins of the three domains on a geologic time scale? How about the bacteria emerging as a solid line from a giant question mark before ~3.5Ga, and a dotted line for the euks turning into a solid line in the Proterozoic. I’m not sure what the archaeal line should look like. The dotted line would indicate that they were likely present, but that we have no evidence or equivocal evidence.
Ah, I saw posters like that in high school.
For me, a striking part was the bit about 1940-1960 in the bottom left titled “The Future” which says “For the next several thousand years it is improbable that there will be any extensive glaciation or any other drastic change in physical conditions which will precipitate a “life crisis” of such severity as to inaugurate further evolution in the anatomical structure of Man.”
I’m not sure what to make of that. Although I’m sure they mean “human” by “Man,” given the era.
The power and the glory of science is that it renews itself daily, replacing old data with new observations, and worn-out reasoning with updated arguments.
Religion, by comparison, is a needle stuck in a 5000-year old groove, stuck with all the rubbish written into the Bible, like early Seinfeld episodes that use cell phones the size of shoeboxes.
From the poster:
“Practically all these negroid aboriginals are now under either British or French control. Matabeles. Mashonas. Swazis-Negrillos…”
Cambrian coprolite on a stick! Now we know where James Watson got his information on the evolution of Homo sapiens.
The Irish are labeled as mediterraneans.
Who knew?
We’re the Ten Lost Tribes. Well-known fact.
But .. but … this is, like, science! I suppose you all think that the Bible is literal truth! I find PZ’s posting a depressing example of today’s hostility to science and reason.
(Remember, today’s views of evolution will likely look as inadequate in 50 to 100 years as this one does. And no, everyone wasn’t racist in the 30s. Not even all scientists. But the “no true Scotsman” tactic is popular and easy, among the scientistic as among the religious.)
The racism in the map is very interesting. On the one hand there are clear and very fine degrees of value judgments, with the hair-splitting of ever more and more races as was usual at the time, so that a “race” ended up being what is today, in population genetics, called a “deme”; as was pretty common, East Asians are ranked above, not below, Europeans (but having the Chinese at the top and the Japanese second is new to me). On the other hand, the top right corner states that no pure races have existed since the last glacial maximum, and all of the modern races are identified as mixtures (with absurdly precise lists of ingredients).
The most funny detail I’ve found so far is how “U. S. S. R.” is explained as “Union of Socialist Soviet Russia”. ROTFL!!!
And the Slavs all the way to Switzerland… :-S
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Oh, that’s called a romerogram: a phylogenetic tree where each branch is as thick at any given time as its subjective importance. Usually this is disguised as “diversity”, but almost never did anyone really count species or anything else — as you can see by the mammal bubble being broader than the bird bubble and the bird bubble being broader than the ray-finned fish bubble. You can find romerograms all the way to the third edition of Benton’s book Vertebrate Palaeontology, which was published in 2004.
———-
As a tree. How else?
(With eukaryotes and archaeans as sister-groups.)
———–
It’s the entirely modern understanding that evolution isn’t some metaphysical force of change — that there’s only mutation and selection, and that a stable environment causes stabilizing rather than directive selection.
Of course, the author has to ruin it two sentences later: “But economic competition is undoubtedly bringing about evolution in mental powers, and further evolution in spiritual perception will certainly result from the accompanying social activity and emotional stress.” This is an argument from ignorance. While very popular at that time, it was a logical fallacy even then.
The racism in the map is very interesting. On the one hand there are clear and very fine degrees of value judgments, with the hair-splitting of ever more and more races as was usual at the time, so that a “race” ended up being what is today, in population genetics, called a “deme”; as was pretty common, East Asians are ranked above, not below, Europeans (but having the Chinese at the top and the Japanese second is new to me). On the other hand, the top right corner states that no pure races have existed since the last glacial maximum, and all of the modern races are identified as mixtures (with absurdly precise lists of ingredients).
The most funny detail I’ve found so far is how “U. S. S. R.” is explained as “Union of Socialist Soviet Russia”. ROTFL!!!
And the Slavs all the way to Switzerland… :-S
———-
Oh, that’s called a romerogram: a phylogenetic tree where each branch is as thick at any given time as its subjective importance. Usually this is disguised as “diversity”, but almost never did anyone really count species or anything else — as you can see by the mammal bubble being broader than the bird bubble and the bird bubble being broader than the ray-finned fish bubble. You can find romerograms all the way to the third edition of Benton’s book Vertebrate Palaeontology, which was published in 2004.
———-
As a tree. How else?
(With eukaryotes and archaeans as sister-groups.)
———–
It’s the entirely modern understanding that evolution isn’t some metaphysical force of change — that there’s only mutation and selection, and that a stable environment causes stabilizing rather than directive selection.
Of course, the author has to ruin it two sentences later: “But economic competition is undoubtedly bringing about evolution in mental powers, and further evolution in spiritual perception will certainly result from the accompanying social activity and emotional stress.” This is an argument from ignorance. While very popular at that time, it was a logical fallacy even then.
This tells us more about the person and culture that created that map than about the natural world. Very interesting.
From the map:
“Dutch Boers (Nordic) politically dominant in South Africa where numerous native negroid tribes become a serious social problem”
The out and out casual racism in this statement is staggering isn’t it?
“By what possible criteria could anyone ever have considered “Americans” as a race?”
By the fact that God blesses every white person born in between the 49th parallel and the Rio Grande.
As a tree. How else?
(With eukaryotes and archaeans as sister-groups.)
Ok, that phylogeny is fine, but the branch lengths on a phylogenetic tree often indicate the degree of difference, not necessarily time – in other words, a tree is not a timeline. Where do you draw the branch points? How do you depict the last common ancestor? Perhaps a cladogram showing the phylogeny you described should be put in a separate box with an arrow indicating that it occurred somewhere in the Hadean?
And today’s “scientific” biology texts will look similarly embarrassing in 50 years time.
So don’t keep pushing them as factual. Books showing common descent belong in classes on religion.
I noticed that they combined birds and insects towards the end into a single group: insects. I glanced through the description of insects and I see things like “menace to man” and “destruction of crops”. Looking further up, I found that they had also combined reptiles and birds, as well as insects and protozoa. So apparently reptiles and protozoa are in the same group. Who knew?
Also, if you look at the bulge on the lower right, you’ll find it represents the black plague, which apparently signifies a increased dominance of bacteria and fungi.
You know, when PZ posted this I was thinking about posting a snarky comment about how this was going to become the new Haeckel’s embryos for evolution, complete with creationist-sounding platitudes and derisive scorn and conspiracy theories about fraud and so on. As always, the internet proves that creationists can deliver on even the most far-fetched predictions of obtuse stupidity.
…when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together. -Asimov
Let me put it another way. Saying that modern evolution, with all of its foundations in genetics and molecular biology, is as likely to be overturned to the same degree that the piss-poor graph above was overturned is pretty much the same thing as saying that modern chemistry, with all of its foundations in rigorous experiments and quantum mechanics, is as likely to be overturned to the same degree as alchemy and the phlogiston theory of combustion were.
But, Ross and Duncan, by no means should you let facts undermine your postmodernist view of science as a consensus-based cultural narrative. Facts just aren’t fun!
I can’t seem to find any Indians on the map. I didn’t realise that the second most populous country in the world (most populous if you include all of what was then British India) was uninhabited in the 1930s.
Then adjust the branch lengths accordingly. This way.
Of course, this doesn’t work for your example, because the fossil record of bacteria and early eukaryotes is poor and that of archaea AFAIK nonexistent…
Then adjust the branch lengths accordingly. This way.
Of course, this doesn’t work for your example, because the fossil record of bacteria and early eukaryotes is poor and that of archaea AFAIK nonexistent…
The Indians are there, the dark blue strip that comes from the Proto-Nordics and is directly inferior to the Greeks.
The Indians are there, the dark blue strip that comes from the Proto-Nordics and is directly inferior to the Greeks.
It’s important to keep in mind that “scientific” and “true” are not synonyms. Statements can be scientific without being true. They can also be true without being scientific — for example, it is true that mint icecream with chocolate chips is better than chocolate icecream, but this is not scientific.
Then why do we bother doing science at all?
Because if something is both scientific and wrong, we can find that out.
It’s important to keep in mind that “scientific” and “true” are not synonyms. Statements can be scientific without being true. They can also be true without being scientific — for example, it is true that mint icecream with chocolate chips is better than chocolate icecream, but this is not scientific.
Then why do we bother doing science at all?
Because if something is both scientific and wrong, we can find that out.
Never knew the “Ugrians” were so dominant around 1000. About as great as the Mongols or Nordics. But then they disappear completely around 1900! Nooo!! (Only the Hungarians survive, by somehow teleporting over to the blue Nordic strip. Cheaters!)
to be fair there is a certain amount of evidence for one wave of prehistory Irish (the milesians)coming from what is now spain but then again the history of all the British Isles is similarly confused.
Well, the maps were made in 1932, so the causal racism isn’t exactly unexpected. The other big problem is how, especially in the natural history portions seems to throw around a lot of words without actual establishing what they mean or how they relate to each other. As for “dominance”, Gould pointed it been the Age of Bacteria from the beginning to the end (in all odds).
But the idea in general is sound. It would interesting to see modern versions of the map (and the world history map), striped of it
Cool! I have a copy of that “map” framed and tucked away in a dark corner of my lab. I found it stashed back in a closet along with other leavings of a different time when I moved into my office years ago. Occasionally, when a student notices it and remarks at its interesting and quaint oldness, I take the opportunity to challenge him or her to inspect it closely and tell me what they think. It’s led to some interesting “teachable moments” about critical thinking, and often the student picks up on various of the issues noted, so maybe it’s not totally useless as an educational device!
Stupid, but pretty.
From now on I shall drink ouzo with my Irish Stew.
Seriously though that map must have taken AGES to put together back in its day. Its obviously relatively useless now but is still “quaint” in its historical aspect of how things were perceived back in those days. It leaves you with that squirmishly racist feeling but put in context probably wasn’t meant at all back at that time. Kind of like the old Anthropological Games that used to be held concurrently with the Olympic Games, for people of the “lesser” nations to compete in all sorts of bizzare sports that no doubt provided endless amusement for the rich white folk watching. I think its current value remains only as a demonstration tool as Don Culberson points out.
It’s a very fine demonstration of “the closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets”.
Or maybe not. The misspelled Eryops was a “tadpole-like amphibian”? Diplocaulus “eel-like”? WTF?
Nah, the human part is still worse. Races starting to differentiate 600,000 years ago… Eoanthropus (Piltdown Man) continuing all the way to 30,000 years ago… Neandertaler evolving from Heidelberg Man 500,000 years ago, Heidelberg Man becoming extinct 160,000 years ago… 180,000 years ago differentiation of the “Caucasian ‘Brown Race’, ancestral to the Caspian and Mediterranean Races”, which had “Faculty of speech fully developed, but small vocabulary”. Someone had way too much imagination.
It’s a very fine demonstration of “the closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets”.
Or maybe not. The misspelled Eryops was a “tadpole-like amphibian”? Diplocaulus “eel-like”? WTF?
Nah, the human part is still worse. Races starting to differentiate 600,000 years ago… Eoanthropus (Piltdown Man) continuing all the way to 30,000 years ago… Neandertaler evolving from Heidelberg Man 500,000 years ago, Heidelberg Man becoming extinct 160,000 years ago… 180,000 years ago differentiation of the “Caucasian ‘Brown Race’, ancestral to the Caspian and Mediterranean Races”, which had “Faculty of speech fully developed, but small vocabulary”. Someone had way too much imagination.
Anyone knows a really good diagram that’s freely downloadable?
I suppose it’s not too bad up to 9 million years ago. The horizontal axis seems to work out more to “as much space as the author wanted for notes” than “relative importance or diversity”, and there’s a lot of parts that are simply a mess – the Arthropods branch, for instance,in its later stages jumps repeatedly between Crustacea and Arachnids. Not to mention the way it makes it look like some branches go extinct that decidedly did not – Echinoderms taper to a point, for instance.
There’s some good ideas there, but the execution is just sloppy, and everything after 9 million years ago is simply inexcusable.
In fact, looking at it, it’s worse than I even thought. Arthropods splits, then Insects turns back into Arthropods, while Crustacea turns into Arachnida. What the fuck?
It appears to me that the left column (from which all the things on the chart appear to be spontaneously forming) is meant to be tracing a single line of human descent. That is, it’s supposed to be following a line from the “root” of the tree all the way to the tip of one branch, with all the various related forms and species sprouting off along the way.
More detailed and diverse than I would have expected from 1932, but overall I think it is still more informative of the artist than of evolution…
The “relative importance” stuff is actually mentioned on the map, though I’m too lazy to check if that’s the exact wording.
Yes. That’s what it says above the left column: “Evolution from ‘AMOEBA TO MAN'”. It’s a tree, with us (that is, the Chinese) as the “stem” and everything else as “side branches”.
The “relative importance” stuff is actually mentioned on the map, though I’m too lazy to check if that’s the exact wording.
Yes. That’s what it says above the left column: “Evolution from ‘AMOEBA TO MAN'”. It’s a tree, with us (that is, the Chinese) as the “stem” and everything else as “side branches”.
Of course I could have checked out the post instead of bragging about not checking out the map itself.
Time to go to bed.
Of course I could have checked out the post instead of bragging about not checking out the map itself.
Time to go to bed.
All this snide Monday morning quarterbacking says more about the groaners than about the images or the people who made them.
Shouldn’t the trusted gatekeepers of science and history knowledge — academies (NAS), foundations (Nobel), etc. — be making jaw-droppingly good posters of this sort, updating them every few years as knowledge becomes refined, and getting them not just onto the walls of every highschool and college in, um, the world, but further, onto murals in public spaces?
I know gazing at pictures of this sort is a far cry from actually studying science and history, but doesn’t anyone see the glory in public displays of the depth and breadth of accumulated understanding?
I posted this histomap on my website hoping people would see it in its historical context. I am delighted that most of the readers here did. Some did not. Thank you all for your insightful discussion regarding this.