Life — August 11, 1921 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Back to Methuselah" Illustration This is an illustration by Victor C. Anderson for "Back to Methuselah," a play by George Bernard Shaw. The artwork depicts two nude figures in a garden setting with foliage and a monkey visible in the tree above. The caption reads: "Don't fail to invite the monkeys, Adam. They belong to one of the very first families, you know." The satire references Shaw's play, which explores human evolution and longevity. The joke plays on the biblical Adam and Eve narrative while invoking evolutionary theory—suggesting that monkeys are ancestrally related to humans and thus part of humanity's "family tree." The comment about "very first families" appears to mock social pretension by treating evolutionary ancestry as a matter of aristocratic lineage.