I’m Number One, so Why Try Harder?

Abstract

For its apparent clarity and simplicity, the image known as the "march of progress" has been one of the most common and popular ways to represent the evolution of humanity.

Also the way our evolutionary process has served as a graphical summary of the biological evolution of species; even it has been used as a form of irony about the evolutionary success of our specie. In all these cases, the idea of the "march" is based on a condition: the evolution is understood as a synonym of inevitable progress or it has a clear and definite direction. So, this image-concept talks more about how we see ourselves and the place we assign ourselves in the living beings, instead of the way in which actually occurs the process of evolution of the species.