First of, I’d just like to say that to evolutionary biologists there is no difference between the two. Evolution is evolution, the amount of it is irrelevant, it’s the fact of it that counts.

Secondly, I’m not about to come up with some magical evolutionary trick that shows that micro changes will lead to macro changes in an animal. I’m not a biologist, I wouldn’t really know where to begin. But what I can do is show how many small changes can easily make a big difference, even though each change is almost irrelevant.

Imagine you’re utterly destitute, you have not a penny to your name. You are without doubt poor. Now, one day along comes a stranger and gives you a dollar. Now, by any western standards, you’re still undoubtedly poor. Next day, the stranger comes by again, and gives you another dollar. You now have $2, you’re definitely better off than you were two days ago, but poor is still what you are. This stranger keeps coming by, day after day, dollar after dollar. After nearly 3 years, he’s given you around $1000! If we stretch this out a bit, and ignore normal human life-spans after nearly 2800 years you have $1,000,000! By most peoples standards you could be considered a rich man. But when did that happen exactly? If you’re rich at $1,000,000, aren’t you to all intents and purposes rich at $999,999?

The point I’m trying to get across is that each change made little difference to your wealth. Each day you weren’t really any better off than you were the day before. It’s only in the context of thousands of years that you could considered to have become wealthy.