the evolution of guinness

In the marketing world, the makers of Guinness want to tell us that 500 million years isn’t that long to wait for a pint of really good beer with a slick ad that rewinds evolution all the way back to the Devonian even though that was actually between 400 and 360 million years ago. But then again, who’s really counting all those epochs?

I know, I know, it’s one of those dreaded popular depictions of evolution as a directed process leading from a fish to a human rather than a fanning out of species from a host of common ancestors. But let’s keep in mind that we can’t hold ads to the same scientific standard as we would hold popular science articles and shows and anyone who refers to everyday joking portrayals of evolution to ridicule the actual science has pretty much given himself away as lacking the education to seriously debate its objective merits.