Human Ancestors as Stages of Progress

Metaphor: Popular imagery often depicts human evolution as the famous “march of progress” — a parade of figures, from stooped ape to upright modern human, striding left to right across the page. Each ancestor is cast as a rung on a ladder, a stage on the way to “us.”

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor installs teleology at the heart of evolution: as if all life were destined to culminate in Homo sapiens. It reframes branching, contingent, relational processes as a linear ascent toward superiority. Other hominins are reduced to evolutionary dress rehearsals — failed attempts at becoming us. In doing so, the metaphor erases the diversity of human lineages, ignores overlapping coexistence, and smuggles in cultural narratives of progress, hierarchy, and inevitability.

Relational Ontology Correction: Human evolution is not a march but a meshwork: multiple lineages coexisting, interbreeding, and aligning with diverse ecological contexts. Homo sapiens is not the “goal” but one relational actualisation among many, contingent on shifting constraints. The so-called “stages” were not steps toward us but fully realised beings in their own right, each embodying a relational response to their world.

Parody: If evolution really were a parade, Neanderthals would be sulking at the back with unfinished floats, Denisovans would be off designing costumes in a side tent, and Australopithecines would demand better marching music. The absurdity makes the point: treating evolution as a march of progress mistakes relational diversity for a linear destiny.