Can someone explain this theory to me? i may have got the name wrong though coz i have searched for it on google and looked in encyclopedias and dictionaries but nothing. maybe linear theory? the on that is a big lobby against evolution , that every creatures development traveled along a linear course rather than humans from apes, apes from something and way back to a single cell. something along these line

try google search 'anagenesis' and 'evolution'

ah this seems to be what i meant, thanks. Also are there any theories that rival/compete with evolution (can't find any :() and i'm confused about 'anagenesis' and 'Cladogenesis', are these two competing concepts or are they both key parts of evolution?

my understanding is that anagenesis is a populational or species change within a direct lineage over time, whereas cladogenesis is a description of populational and species change by populational divergence and differentiation.

god-of-course,

Do you mean 'Lamarckian'?
as in "Lamarckian Evolution"?

Nono, Lamarckian evolution is not the same as Linear evolution; Lamarck only said that somatic changes were handed down from one generation to the next. That's why people used to cut off the dog's tail in the case of dogs like the Rottweiler - 'cause they believed that if they cut them off for long enough they wouldn't grow them anymore.

Hey I was just saying, he said he didn't know so I suggested something else with a "L".

Sorry.