Two sharp cartoons on human evolution, one from the viewpoint of gender (by Eduardo Saiz Alonso, apparently from several years ago), one from the viewpoint of climate change (by Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) in yesterday’s Economist):
(#1) Saiz: human evolution as the ascent of (maternal black) women
(#2) Back to the water with KAL
Brachiate no more, but bring the baby. From the Quora site in November 2017, “In the diagram of human evolution (showing the different hominids), why are the depictions always males and is the last one, a tall, upright, light-skinned man, the ultimate in human evolution?”. A number of comments offered counterillustrations, one commenter attributing the image in #1 (identified as an illustration by Eduardo Saiz Alonso) to PaleoAnthropology+ (@Qafzeh) on Twitter on 2/19/16, but I’ve been unable to find the image on that Twitter page (though it would be entirely in tune with Qafzeh’s coverage of biological anthropology). I’ve also been unable to unearth anything substantial about Saiz.
Compare Saiz’s cartoon Ascent with this one by Will McPhail:
(#3) From my 8/25/17 posting “Revisiting 1: Will McPhail”… yet another version of the Ascent of Man cartoon meme (see the Page on evolution postings) — so labeled in McPhail’s drawing. Which, however, plays on the ambiguity of man ‘human being’ (the sense intended in the literature on evolution) vs. man ‘adult human male’ — the sense shown in [this cartoon], where (presumably male) apes are seen evolving into men, while women make all the crucial cultural breakthroughs: tools, fire, the wheel, artistic precursors of writing. A wry viewpoint on the role of gender in the evolution of culture.
The oceans are rising. But we’ve lost our gills! In KAL’s Economist cartoon of 4/20, #2 above.
On KAL, from his website:
Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) is the editorial cartoonist for The Economist magazine of London and The Baltimore Sun.
After graduating from Harvard College with honors in 1977, Kevin embarked on a bicycle tour of the British Isles, where he joined the Brighton Basketball Club as a player and coach. After the club hit financial difficulties, Kevin drew caricatures of tourists in Trafalgar Square and on Brighton Pier. In March 1978, The Economist recruited him to become their first resident cartoonist in their 145 year history.
… Between the Baltimore Sun and The Economist, Kal has published over 8000 cartoons. Kal has also painted more than 140 magazine covers for The Economist and other publications.
(No, I don’t know how he pronounces his family name, but my working hypothesis is /ˈkælǝhǝr/. Ok, might be /ˈkælǝgǝr/.)
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