THE ASCENT OF MAN

Kamal Lodaya, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

Robert walked the lean, mean streets of Bollywood carrying a magazine and a furrowed brow, oblivious to the looks of people he almost bumped into. Shafi, the urchin who made his living polishing shoes, {salaamed} him as he went by. Robert absent-mindedly raised his hand in salute and rang the doorbell of a house.

Inside the house, his boss Ajit paused. Ajit struck terror through every frame of Bollywood. His voice was dangerous as a lion's. He was in a bad mood because there had been trouble with the coolies at the wharf.

At that time, Ajit had been negotiating a deal with some people he owed money to. How many places can one person be at the same time, Ajit asked himself angrily. So when he came back to the house and heard the news, he was furious with Prem.
Prem was his man at the wharf. Ajit thought Prem had completely mishandled the matter. Maybe he should have used Robert, he thought. He ruffled his hand through his white hair and wondered whether he was getting old.
Tina opened the door to let Robert in. She was a petite girl with a waif-like look to her. ``The boss is in a huff,' she whispered.
'Ah, Robert!' Ajit greeted him. 'What are you doing with that magazine? You should be carrying a gun,' and he roared with laughter at his own joke. Lily, who stood behind him looking chocolate-box pretty, tittered. Prem's usual suavity was gone. He let out a nervous smile from the chair he was sitting on.
'Boss, this question has been bugging me,' said Robert with a frown. 'Bug? Disconnect the telephone, Prem! Tina, doesn't the exchange operator have a mother?' shouted Ajit, swinging into action.
'No, no,' protested Robert. 'That's not what I meant!' He raised the magazine and showed the picture on the top of the page.
'I asked myself,' he explained, 'if human beings evolved from apes, then why are there apes still living? If we evolved from them they should not be here.' 
There was a silence. Then Ajit burst out laughing, and so did the rest. Ajit laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.
'Apes!' he exclaimed. 'Don't tell me you have fallen into this evolution business! Why are apes here, ha ha ...' and he went into another bout of laughter.
Ajit turned to Robert indulgently. 'Go to your friend Esthappan,' he said, 'that madman will have the answer to lunatic questions like this.' He started to smile broadly. His humour had been restored.
Robert turned for the door, looked at anxiously by Tina.
* * *
Esthappan lived on the beach. His eyes darted from place to place as usual, seeking the remains of {bhelpuris} and other {chaat} thrown by those who had come there to spend an evening. The moment a half-filled paper plate landed on the sand, Esthappan was there to pick it up. If it wasn't him, his monkey Sona would be there, neatly carrying the plate to her master.
'Life has become difficult,' he told Robert, 'all these kids-shids have started competing with me. And they scare away Sona. Even the customers don't like having a monkey running around their legs.' 
He sighed. 'Maybe I should just go back to Kerala ... But what is that paper you have?' 
Robert showed him the magazine and asked his question.
Esthappan said, 'This picture is perhaps the most common mistake made by people. Pictures like this one, showing a `ladder' of `progress,' tend to make you think in this mistaken way.' 
He tapped his hand on the open page. 'Do you hear, Sona? If we evolved from monkeys like you, then why are you still alive?' 
'Since mammals and birds evolved from reptiles, then why are reptiles still living?' 
'Since it was amphibians which evolved from fishes, crawling out from the sea onto the land, why are there fishes still in the sea?' 
'Single-celled animals are the ancestors of many-celled ones. Why do these single-celled animals still live? Why do they give fever-shiver to us and make us miserable?' 
Robert was staggered. 'I see your point, Esthappan,' he said, 'but what is the alternative? What is my mistake?' 
'The mistake you are making, Robert, is that ancestors are not creatures who get bodily transformed, each and every one, into descendants. A species of animals does not change wholesale into one new, more evolved version.' 
* * *
Ajit gave Robert no time to think the next day. He was asking Prem to hand over charge of various things to Robert. Prem, who did not like this at all, was sulking. There wasn't much love lost between him and Robert.
Robert was embarrassed. When they went out, he told Tina he did not like what was happening. Tina shrugged her shoulders.
'Prem did not feel bad when he took over your wharf business,' she pointed out. 'If you are better at running things than him, too bad for him. Anyway, the boss has not yet handed the wharf back to you, has he?'
'But if I make him an enemy, we will both finish each other off after the boss retires.'
'There is no alternative,' said Tina coolly. 'Whoever is the fitter among you will survive to inherit the boss's mantle... But, why are we going to the beach? Don't tell me you want to spend more time with that Esthappan of yours.'
* * *
That is precisely what Robert meant to do. When they reached the beach, they were greeted by the chattering of Sona, the monkey.
'Just a minute,' Tina told Robert. She bought three {pavbhajis} and a plateful of groundnuts. They then walked to where Esthappan was. His eyes lighted up at the sight of the food.
'For us?' he asked.
'Right,' said Tina. She handed the groundnuts to Sona, who let out shrieks of delight. They sat on the rock and ate their food as the evening sky lost its light.
'There would have been competition among the apes,' said Robert suddenly. 'And humans, being fitter, would have survived. So the apes would have died out.' 
'Survival of the fittest?' Esthappan laughed. 'You are making a mistake, Robert,' he said, 'if you think survival of the fittest is all that evolution means. The first part of evolution is {diversity.} It is only if there are many different species in the first place that the fittest among them come out better. If there is only one species existing, then an event which is unsuitable for that species can wipe it out.
'They say that a large meteorite impact in Mexico led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. If reptiles had only evolved into their most advanced form---the dinosaurs---we wouldn't be sitting here talking about them. Reptiles evolved into dinosaurs, into birds, into mammals. The Mexican meteorite drove the dinos-shinos into extinction, but the birds and the mammals survived.' 
'So how does evolution work then?' asked Tina.
'Like a tree,' answered Esthappan. 'All the species living today are the leaves growing at the ends of the tree. As time goes, these ends evolve into different branches. The earlier branches of our tree are no longer living. But they have left behind the lakhs of species that we see today.'
'But humans have evolved from apes, right?' asked Robert, getting back to his old question.
'Wrong!' said Esthappan triumphantly. 'Humans {are} apes. From an original ancestor, apes have evolved in different directions. Gibbons and orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees, and us humans, we are all different variations of apes.'
'And monkeys?' asked Tina, patting Sona, who woke up from a nap with a start.
'Monkeys have evolved, too, into baboons and rhesus monkeys and {langurs}.' Esthappan laughed. 'And into Sona. And we are all here because much, much earlier, our primate ancestors divided into monkeys and apes.' 
'Their evolution stopped,' Robert looked at Sona sympathetically, 'but the apes continued evolving.' 
'No, no,' roared Esthappan angrily. 'Monkeys are not stagnant. They are in fact the greatest success story among primates.' 
'Success?' asked Tina, surprised. 'But there are a lot more people than monkeys, I thought.' 
'There are far more {species} of monkeys than of all apes put together,' answered Esthappan. By the proper criterion of diversity, by the number of leaves they occupy in the tree, monkeys are more successful than apes.' 
'Actually,' Esthappan mused, 'apes have always been losing ground to the monkeys. Soon after the ape-monkey split, something like 2 crore years ago, apes were much more diverse than monkeys. They were much more diverse just in the continent of Africa than the apes are today, all over the world. But by half a crore years ago, monkeys began an acceleration that continues till today.' 
Tina was puzzled. 'But why? We have bigger brains than apes, and apes have bigger brains than monkeys.'
Esthappan laughed. 'Insects have much smaller brains than us, but there are more species of insects than all the rest of the animals and plants put together. We do not know the reasons for success.' 
He looked at the crowds leaving the beach towards their motorcars.
'We do not know why apes declined. Maybe monkeys were more flexible about their diet. A gorilla won't eat anything but fruits-shoots, but Sona here will eat anything you give---even {bhelpuri}. With climate changing, and the populations of trees and fruits unstable, many species of apes died out.'
'But we are here,' said Robert.
'Yes,' nodded Esthappan, 'a few apes adapted to ground living. The chimpanzees and gorillas learnt walking on knuckles. Our ancestors learnt an upright gait. Among the apes, that made these species better suited for survival.'
'But remember, {beta},' Esthappan pointed a finger admonishingly at Robert, 'evolution works in two parts. First there has to be a great flowering. Only later, a pruning. From our perspective, we tend to see the pruning more easily, but the flowering is equally important.' 
Tina looked at her watch and said it was time for them to go. Robert looked at the sea for a while. Tina was looking at him exasperatedly, wondering whether she could ever figure out what was going on in his mind. Suddenly Robert nodded and got up, ready to move.
* * *
'Ladies and gentlemen,' roared Ajit, making everybody turn around to face him. 'I have an important announcement to make.' 
Robert said to Ajit, 'Boss, my guess is you want to settle matters between Prem and me.' 
'Right,' said a smiling Ajit.
'Let me make a suggestion,' continued Robert. Lily drew in her breath. Tina shrank back. Talking back to the boss! The man was mad! But Ajit continued smiling.
'I think,' continued Robert, unaware of the feelings he was causing, 'instead of Prem and I slugging it out so that the fittest survives, we should {diversify.} Prem can run the wharf business. I will handle the investments and creditors. You can sit back and manage the show. Our diversity will bring success to us.'
'{Wah, beta}!' exclaimed Ajit. 'Didn't I tell you,' he turned towards a not-so-happy looking Prem and said, 'that this Robert with his magazines, is going to go far?
He turned triumphantly towards Robert.
'I agree with you, Robert,' he smiled, but then his voice took on that dangerous edge again. 'But you don't go far enough. You look after investment, Prem looks after the wharf. That is not diversity. To diversify, we should do something new. There is such an alternative: we will go into the film business.'
He waited to see the impact of his statement sink in.
'The announcement I wanted to make is that when I went to settle the wharf business, I found my long-lost son. He and his mother were separated from me when he was a baby. This is him: my son Vijay. I am putting Vijay into the film business on my behalf. As for me, I will just retire. The `take it easy' policy.'
Tina found the tall Vijay standing next to her. His dark eyes, deep as the ocean, were looking at her. It looked like Robert was going to have some competition, after all.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My debt to the Indian film industry should be obvious. This story is written in memory of Stephen Jay Gould. The ideas here are taken from {The Decline of Man}, in his book {Eight Little Piggies}.

That picture is probably responsible for more *MISUNDERSTANDING* of evolution than
just about any other image. (I assume you mean the picture of the chimp,
neanderthal, cro magon, and "Modern Man" shown all walking in single file to the
right.)

This is most certainly NOT Darwin's work. In fact it is totally *contrary* to
Darwin's view of evolution.

And I have never seen a version of this image showing various races ... because this
would not only be incredibly inaccurate ... but incredibly *racist* as well. ... But
hey, there are some twisted racist people in the world, and I'm sure anything is
possible.

That image is NOT an accurate portrayal of evolution that *ANY* scientist (including
Darwin) would endorse. Evolution is not a long "chain" or march of species ... one
species somehow morphing into the next species ... each species replacing its
ancestor. Instead evolution (and all of life) is a constant process of *BRANCHING*.