monolith-2
Explanation
This comic is a parody of the famous "monolith scene" from Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In the film, a mysterious black monolith appears among prehistoric apes and somehow catalyzes their intellectual evolution, leading them to discover tool use. The scene is one of the most iconic in cinema history.
In this SMBC version, a narrator asks "Evolution, how did humans get so intelligent?" and we see cavemen encountering the monolith just as in the film. But instead of inspiring tool use, the monolith inspires the cavemen to build towers, create religions, wage wars, and engage in bureaucracy -- essentially, the monolith attracted "gammas" (a joking reference to socially awkward, obsessive men in internet slang) who became fixated on organizing and systematizing everything rather than simply using tools.
The joke subverts the grand, awe-inspiring narrative of 2001 by suggesting that human intelligence didn't arise from noble tool use but from the sort of obsessive, nerdy systematizing behavior associated with people who would be drawn to a mysterious geometric object. The final panel has a character saying "Now you need monolith-related permits," highlighting that the ultimate result of human intelligence is bureaucracy -- a darkly comic anticlimax to the grand evolutionary narrative.