<human>:  How did the theory of evolution come about?
<bot>: Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in 1859. He based his theory on the work of other scientists, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently came up with the same idea. Darwin's theory of evolution is the idea that all life on Earth has descended from a common ancestor. This ancestor is called the "common ancestor" because it is the ancestor of all life on Earth.