The “Confusion of Tongues,” an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883), was modified by D. Caetano-Anollés to portray the event of diversification that halted the construction of the Tower of Babel. In linguistics, the biblical story inspired tree thinking. We take the metaphor as the fall of the urancestor of cellular life and the replacement of “scala naturae” by branching processes of complexity.
