MENU

1_PREAMBLE
2_WHAT IS LIFE ANYWAY?
3_HOW DID LIFE EMERGE?
4_WHEN DID LIFE START?
5_MULTI-CELLULAR LIFE
6_DNA
7_LIFE SPAN
8_TELOMERE
9_PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES
10_SIGHT
11_EVOLUTION OF EYES
12_HEARING
13_SMELL
14_ELECTRORECEPTION
15_MAGNETOCEPTION
16_TASTE
17_OTHER
18_TOUCH
19_THE BRAIN
20_BRAIN SIZE
21_BRAIN NEURONS
22_BRAIN THOUGHT
23_TRANSFORMATION
24_BIOLOGY
25_LAW OF HORIZONTAL
26_LAYERS OF SUPERPOSITION
27_TIMELINE
28_DETAILED TIMELINE

1_PREAMBLE

Thank you for your continued participation. It is not easy to present a point of view and have it mean anything, unless it is supported by credible evidence and may be of interest.

I want to present what I have found out in a way that can be understood and perhaps reasoned with. Since what I report here is mostly what I have read, seen and studied, some information may be biased in translations, or the colour of words. However, at all times the theme of my musing is consistent with finding answers to my questions. Science itself is an ever evolving process. We learn new things and develop new methods of learning new things and sometimes we are wrong. It is always a consistent endeavor of mine to find evident truths even if some statements I may make are not supported by strong evidence, and may even show contradictory evidence. Both have the potential to be right.

For example Newton’s laws of gravity were not changed by Einstein theory of gravity as reported by some. They were tested and enhanced by Einstein. Newton’s laws are intact. The ancients, until only recently considered alchemy a science. Then it was discarded as a science feeling elements were not transmutable. Now we know that elements are transmuted through nuclear fusion in the heart of a star and nuclear fission. As it turns out, alchemists were right after all, but not at that time in the realm of human endeavor.

In the previous Chronology, Time tick tock

We looked at the concept of time, and how it relates to the Universe and how we relate to time. I presented an overview of numerous time dating methods used by scientists to produce evidence of age. Using overlapping and repetitive experimentation procedures by scores of scientists they found the Earth’s age to be 4,567 billion years. We saw how the exact speed of light, and time measurements give the Universe an age of 13,798 billion years.

I love life. How about you? Life can be beyond awesome and we all must wonder, What, is life? How, did life form? Where, did life start? When, did life start? And, Why is there any life at all?

2_WHAT IS LIFE ANYWAY?

It is a challenge for scientists and philosophers to define life in unequivocal terms because life is a process, not a pure substance. Any definition must be sufficiently broad to encompass all life with which we are familiar, and must be sufficiently general to include life that may be fundamentally different from life as we know it. The current understanding of life is descriptive and includes all or most of the following physiological traits:

Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells – the basic units of life.

Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components.

Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to environment.

Response: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multi-cellular organisms.

Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms. (Self-sustaining processes).

All known life forms share fundamental molecular mechanisms, reflecting their common descent. There is no standard model on the origin of life. A different biochemistry may require a different environment to exist in. Is there a single biochemistry underlying any form of life anywhere, or are there alternatives?

3_HOW DID LIFE EMERGE?

There are many who claim life was created by supernatural forces under whose generosity we exist. This I agree with. The forces that rule the Universe are awesome. Had they not existed we would not be here. We are the material outcome of these forces. We exist due to these super natural forces, which emerged the so called ‘constants’, which makes the rules for our existence.

The four basic forces that control all matter are; Gravity, Electro-magnetism, Nuclear-fusion (like a star making elements), and nuclear fission (like a very big bomb ripping things apart). I like to call these four forces the ‘Quadrinity’, if you will.

Abiogenesis is defined as the natural process by which life arose from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds. There are theories that life arose many times in the early Earth’s chemically active environment. We are sure it did once. We are all here.

NASA defines life as a self-sustaining chemical system capable of ‘Darwinian Evolution’.

The arrival of life took a long time indeed. Remember the rock. There needed to be the right combination of conditions for amino acids to form proteins. Yes, a long time and Physics has decoded life’s construction, but not a beginning first life. You came this far, keep going.

The first stage for the development of life to appear would be for a certain group of molecules including carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen to form a binding relationship in the form of an amino acid (organic compound). Life requires a number of these amino acids to assemble under certain natural conditions on Earth or elsewhere. Amino acids have existed on Earth for at least three billion years and have even been found in hydro-thermal vents and meteorites.

Energy from electrical activity, such as (lightening) or geothermal processes, impact shocks or even sunlight catalyzed the creation of amino acids from the Earth’s early atmosphere of methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, phosphates, molecular oxygen and ozone. It was further shown that sulfides of iron come with their own built in source of energy.

This is called chemical evolution and the first organic molecules appeared through this process much like the first atom of hydrogen did in the evolution of matter.

Carbon conversion from its inorganic form to an organic one (carbon fixation) occurs in neutral PH with temperatures as high as 100 degrees centigrade on iron rich surfaces which are abundant near oceanic hydrothermal vents.

The Miller-Urey experiment and similar experiments demonstrated that most amino acids, often called ‘the building blocks of life’ can be synthesized in manufactured conditions designed to be similar to those of the early earth, not today’s earth. Their research notes the formation of seven different types of amino acids and 11 types of nucleo bases. These conditions are essential to the formation of organic molecules, which most certainly arose first in the earth’s primordial oceans.

The second stage is for these organic molecules to develop features of self-organization and self-replication which are considered the hallmarks of living systems. There are many instances of abiotic molecules exhibiting such characteristics under proper conditions. Self-assembly of RNA (Ribo-Nucleo-Acid) molecules, can occur spontaneously due to physical factors in hydrothermal vents. Research has shown that this can also happen under a variety of other conditions. Early cell membranes could have formed spontaneously from proteinoids, which are protein like molecules produced when amino acid solutions are heated while in the correct concentration in aqueous solution. They behave similar to membrane enclosed compartments. Relatively short RNA molecules which are capable of replication have already been artificially produced in labs. Will AI be able to replicate life? As a result of these new discoveries it may not be long before the first man made life appears. Holy Moly. Will we or AI become God? Life can be considered to have emerged when RNA chains began to express the basic conditions necessary for natural selection to operate as conceived by Darwin: heritability, variation of type, and competition for limited resources. Although these chains have random sequences, the possibility that one sequence began to increase its frequency by increased speed of its catalyst would kick start bio-chemical evolution. Competitive success among different replicators would have depended on the relative values of their adaptive capacities.

4_WHEN DID LIFE START?

Geological evidence confirms the origins of life on earth to be many eons ago. Scientists call this time period the ‘Eoachean Era’. The evidence suggests that the earth was a very different place than it is today, and that life would have had very different temperatures, atmospheric contents, and other conditions to form under. This era is where geological records of biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion year old Western Greenland shale rocks show the earliest specific evidence for life on earth. This was followed by the microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion year old Australian sandstone.

I’ll be hog-tied. Once a living cell developed, (remember the hydrogen atom), you could compare the emergence of life to the evolution of all matter where advancing conditions sparked the emergence of new formats for life, as it did for all the elements and constructs of the Universe. What an incredible rhythm of stages based on the same principles. Cells are the fundamental building blocks of all life on earth. Cells developed the ability under the right conditions to split or reproduce copying all the original material of the cell into two new cells. This was facilitated through the developing genetic structure. When cells could split or reproduce the race was on. Emergence of highly complex systems by chance is not just possible but inevitable given time. It is why we are not and don’t all look the same.

5_MULTI-CELLULAR LIFE

Ponder this one in the bath. Chances are you may have scrubbed your back with a choice example of one of evolution’s greatest emergent creations. Or at least, a good plastic copy.

Sponges are a key example of multi-cellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies. It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, plants, fungi and algae all joined in. This is called convergent evolution where different species evolve similar adaptations to deal with similar problems.

Cells have been joining forces for billions of years. Even bacteria do it, forming complex colonies with a three-dimensional structure and some division of labour. But hundreds of millions of years ago, eukaryotes, which are more complex cells that package up their DNA in a nucleus, took things to a new level. They formed permanent colonies in which certain cells dedicated themselves to different tasks, such as nutrition or excretion, and whose behavior was well coordinated.

Eukaryot es could make this leap because they had already evolved many of the necessary attributes for other purposes. Many single-celled eukaryotes can specialise or differentiate into cell types, dedicated to specific tasks, such as mating with another cell. They sense their environment with chemical signaling systems, some of which are similar to those multi-cellular organisms use to coordinate their cell’s behavior. And they may detect and capture their prey with the same kind of sticky surface molecules that hold cells together in animals and other multi-cellular organisms. Here they are.

So what started it all? One idea is that clumping together helped cells avoid being eaten by making them too much of a mouthful for single celled predators. Another is that single cells are often constrained in what they can do. For example, most cannot grow flagella to move, and also divide at the same time. But a colony can both move and contain dividing cells.

Molecular biologists are studying single-celled protozoans to understand how animals came to evolve from them some 600 million years ago. Sponges are one of the few surviving witnesses to this step. Choanoflagellates and sponges share a common ancestor and have a surprising number of equivalents to the signaling and cell-division molecules unique to animals. Yet, unicellular life still vastly outnumbers multi-cellular life in terms of both biomass and species numbers. So you could say uni-cellular life is the most successful, but that multi-cellular life is the most beautiful and dramatic. Oh my goodness.

6_DNA

Nuclear D.N.A. is the language of life. Think of it like a bar code. The long twisted double helix rungs spell out the instructions to become dog, ant, bear, hawk, you, me, and every living thing. This language is exactly copied to every cell in the organism by its RNA. (like, an instruction manual)

DNA combines in reproduction to form a very similar but different individual. A new individual will have a combination of the dominant traits of the parents. Now, when we add this to the mutation of our body cells on a daily basis, through absorption of energetic particles and other chemical interactions, we get different traits in our individual DNA, that may or may not be of benefit to us, but definitely different. These changes in DNA for the most part are harmless or benign, but some are beneficial.

For example: Before the industrial revolution in England, white peppered moths were everywhere, camouflaged from predators by being the same colour as the white birch trees. White. 50 years later when industrial pollutants covered the countryside and the birch trees with soot, white moths were decimated by bird predators and a darker variety emerged that was able to elude predators by the dark camouflage they had evolved. In this case the evolution from white to dark was a great benefit to the moth’s survival.

Brown Grizzly bears evolved to be white Polar bears because white bears were more successful in their white icy environment in catching their prey. This was a great benefit to the Polar bear’s survival. This is actual evolution in less than a human lifespan, right before our eyes. How many dogs, horses, plants and other organisms have we purposefully evolved?

Just think, every single breed of dog today was sculpted by human hands. Your pooch, your neighbor’s pooch, your pooch’s pooch, all had their beginnings as wolves. Those wolves that were compatible with humans, and served human needs, were kept. The rest weren’t. They were then bred into the myriad of breeds we have today, and this is still going on. “You ain’t nothin but a hound dog, barkin all the time” Elvis.

7_LIFE SPAN

The human life span is set near 110 years. This is supported by the fact that all living creatures born, eventually die and records can be kept. A fruit fly may live for only a few weeks and a tree (California redwoods) can live over 2,000 years. Maybe they have a different reality of time.

It was written by ancients that 120 years was a maximum life span for humans. This would have been supported by the evidence. However the evidence was not that good. Very few people could have verified their age. They could follow and count (those who could count) the summers they had experienced in life but most people did not live beyond what we now call youth. Evidence shows that infant mortality rates were incredibly high. Records of birth and death just simply did not exist in most cases and a great deal of guessing would have been prevalent.

I cannot even verify my father’s birth-date or age. He was born on a farm in rural Saskatchewan and registering his birth took several years before my grandparents ventured to town to do so, from memory. Their calendar was the weather, not dates. There are discrepancies as to his actual birth-date.

it sort of goes this way. A human body contains many trillions of cells, but started off as a single cell (a fertilized egg cell). This cell then divided and divided to make more cells through a process called mitosis. In mitosis a parent cell divides to form two identical daughter cells, like copy and paste. Human body cells have different rates at which they divide. Some cells such as liver may divide approximately every few years. Skin cells may divide every few months. Others such as muscle divide maybe every fifteen years. This is called the cell cycle. Each cell has a connector called a telomere that holds the cell together.

8_TELOMERE

When the cell of a living organism such as skin or heart or muscle divides, its connecting telomere also divides, half going to each of the new cells. This reduces the length of the telomere somewhat after each divide. This process continues each time the cells split reducing the telomere’s length each time until it can no longer split into two parts. This process called ‘replicative senescence’ has been calculated to be about 55 times before there is no telomere left to split. The average splitting of all your body cells averages about every two years. So, let’s see. This means 55 divides, times 2 years average time, equals a life span of 110 years. Oh my goodness. I still have hope.

What attributes do we possess that allows us to live and survive and prosper through this (potential) 110 year amazing journey?

9_PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES

I think you will agree, as a living being we have developed an amazing array of physical abilities. Yet as amazing as our abilities are, they individually pale in comparison to the animal kingdom around us. A limited set of comparisons include:

10_SIGHT

Let us see. We have sight, which in no way comes close to the visual acuity of an eagle whose vision is 8 times sharper than ours. The Mantis shrimp perceive 11-12 primary colours putting our three to shame, plus they see in ultraviolet and infrared. They also have the ability to perceive both linear and circular polarisation of light. Many animals like the tarsier and lion, have night vision superior to night goggles. Chameleon eyes can move independent of each other giving them a field of view far wider than ours and they can see ultraviolet light. Dragonflies have a 360 degree field of view and can detect movement we would not notice. Cats and sharks can see 6 to 10 times better than humans and can see colours at night. The colossal squid has a built in headlight (photophore) in each eye which produces enough light to see its prey 2,000 feet down.

A strange four eyed fish can look above the water surface and at the same time below it. Owls can see up to 100 times better than a human at night. Trilobites kept both near and far objects in focus at the same time. Jumping spiders also see in ultraviolet, called tetra chromatic vision, it is how a hawk can spot a vole by following its ultraviolet urine trail and then find the unsuspecting ultraviolet emitting prey, which then falls victim to its own biology. You pee, you lose.

Can you imagine a Pink Floyd laser light show with an added primary colour? Compared to these and other animals our eyesight is pretty feeble, even somewhat primitive. Do you know anyone who needs to wear glasses?

11_EVOLUTION OF EYES

Eyes appeared in an evolutionary blink (pun) and changed the rules of life forever. Before eyes, life was gentler, and tamer, and slower, dominated by sluggish, soft-bodied worms lolling around in the sea. The evolution of the eye ushered in a more brutal and competitive world. Vision made it possible for animals to become active hunters, and sparked an evolutionary arms race that transformed the planet.

There is evidence that some early bacteria had a protein molecule that absorbed light. This would allow them to determine motion of a possible predator or prey. In an eat-or-be-eaten world this provided a great advantage. This light detection was amplified when the protein molecule became imbedded into a skin socket and therefore restricted the size of the receiving aperture. The transparent gel covering the socket formed a lens that allowed fish to detect motion under water in spite of water distortion. Put a straw in a glass of water and look at it, you will see what I mean.

The first eyes appeared about 543 million years ago at the beginning of the Cambrian period, in a group of Trilobites called the Redlichia. Their eyes were compound, similar to those of modern insects, and probably evolved from light-sensitive pits imbedded in their surface areas. And their appearance in the fossil record is strikingly sudden. Trilobite ancestors from 544 million years ago did not have eyes.

So what happened in that magic million years? Lund University in Sweden has calculated that it could take less than ½ million years for a patch of light sensitive cells to evolve into a compound eye. Patches of photosensitive cells were probably common long before the Cambrian, allowing animals to detect light and sense what direction it was coming from. Such rudimentary sense organs are still used by jellyfish, flatworms and other primitive groups and are clearly better than nothing. But they are not eyes. A true eye needs something extra, a lens that can focus light to form an image. If you suddenly obtain a lens, the effectiveness goes from about 1% to 100%.

Trilobites weren’t the only animals to stumble across this emergent property. Biologists believe that eyes could have evolved independently on many occasions, though genetic evidence suggests one ancestor for all eyes. Either way Trilobites were the first. Having sight in the sightless world of the early Cambrian was tantamount of a super-power. Trilobite’s eyes allowed them to become the first active predators, able to seek out and chase down food like no animal before them. And, unsurprisingly, their prey counter evolved. Just a few million years later, eyes were commonplace and animals were much more active, bristling with defensive armour. This burst of evolutionary innovation is what we now know as the Cambrian explosion.

Out of 37 phyla of multi-cellular animals, only six have evolved eyesight. The six phyla that have vision including our own, are the most abundant, widespread and successful animals on the planet. Oh my goodness

12_HEARING

Hearing is all about vibration. Humans have modest auditory abilities. The bat (like dolphins) is the king of extreme hearing in mammals. It uses echolocation, emitting ultrasonic sounds and measuring the length of time before the sounds echo back in order to locate prey in total darkness. A tiger moth emits as many as 45 clicks in 1/10th of a second effectively jamming a predatory bats sonar and confuses them allowing the moth to fly another day. How many clicks can you do in 1/10th second?

The greater wax moth has the most extreme hearing of any known animal hearing sound frequencies up to 300 kHz. At best humans can only hear up to about 20 kHz. Dolphins receive sounds through their jaws, which are then transported to their inner ears. They can hear high frequency sounds no other animal on earth can hear and at the same time determine location, size, direction and even the physical nature of an object.

Elephants hear at frequencies 20 times lower than us. Their trunk and feet are packed with special receptors to pick up low frequency vibrations. Lions can independently rotate each of their ears 180 degrees. Pigeons hear sounds at extremely low frequencies for hundreds of miles allowing them to build an acoustic landscape. How is your hearing? It is all about vibration. Happily, science made hearing aids for those of us that are not that well-endowed with acute hearing.

13_SMELL

A polar bear can smell a seal under 3 feet of snow over a kilometer away. A bloodhound has a sense of smell 300 times better than that of a human, even detecting certain types of cancer. The bloodhound knows who walked down the street last night at 11PM, what the soles of their shoes were made of and what type of cigarette they were smoking. However, a grizzly bear even out smells the bloodhound up to seven times by using thousands of small receptors packed within folds of their nostrils. They can smell you, and your fear, from away. A shark can detect the tiniest drop of blood from more than a mile away. Rats can smell in stereo with each nostril working independently of the other. The male Indian Luna moth can detect a single molecule of sex pheromone from 11 kilometers away.

In comparison the ability of humans to smell is quite dismal. Are you able to smell that apple pie down the street being freshly baked in your neighbour’s oven? Your dog can.

14_ELECTRORECEPTION

All living organisms emit electrical fields, including us. Several species of fish, sharks and rays have the capacity to sense changes in biological electric fields that detect where their prey is hiding. The platypus has the most acute sense of electroreception. You can run but you can’t hide.

15_MAGNETOCEPTION

This is the ability to detect direction based on the earth’s magnetic field and is most commonly observed in birds and bees. Pigeons possess the equivalent of a built-in compass which allows them to navigate using the earth’s magnetic field and the position of the sun. I have a man-made compass in my car. It is nice to know where you are heading.

16_TASTE

Flies and butterflies have taste organs on their feet, allowing them to taste anything they land on. Catfish have taste organs across their entire bodies, and can taste anything they touch including chemicals in the water. Boy, that chocolate cake, if I could just touch it.

17_OTHER

Octopus, cuttlefish and some starfish have colour changing cells to blend in with their environment. This is controlled by the amount of light passing into calcite crystals imbedded in their skin and are formed into lenses which detect light. The whole array of lenses acts like an interferometer, like the facets of a compound eye. They combine to form a single clear picture. In a sense this makes the creature one big eye with which it may choose to adapt for camouflage, mating, or aggressive behavior.

In august monarch butterflies fly south and things get spooky. First, all hundred million of them fly directly to the same patch of trees in Mexico smaller than Manhattan’s central park. The amazing part is they only live for a few months, meaning their migration spans generations. Every august, millions of new butterflies wake up from caterpillardom and know how to find the exact patch of trees that their great grandfathers left months earlier and their offspring will know where to fly back to without having ever done so. Go figure. A high school student wrote an essay on this showing conclusively how there is a genetic memory built into their DNA.

18_TOUCH

There is something special about touch. It is the truth teller that proves the other senses. You see a wet paint sign on something and instinctively, don’t you just want to touch it to believe it. An air of unreality hangs over anything we cannot touch. As a scientist studying the geology of distant planets and long-ago times meteorologist Carl Agee is described as a man who touches the untouchable.

Agee daily recreates conditions deep inside Earth, explores geologic events from billions of years ago and probes the chemical secrets of other planets. He actually gets to handle meteorites and pieces of other planets. How cool is that?

The true feel in science is when it works and works. Whatever you learn by reading, seeing, smelling, or listening can be verified if you can touch and feel it. When you have a feeling in your mind that you have touched it, it becomes all too real.

Well, sure looks like we were left out when it came to our allotment of superior senses. If the above makes you feel inferior in any way, it should. We simply cannot compete with the animal world when it comes to physical abilities. So what makes us so different?

19_THE BRAIN

The human brain is a 3 pound mass of jelly-like fats and tissues-Yet it is the most complex of all living structures. Up to 86 billion nerve cells work together to coordinate the physical actions and mental processes that set humans apart from other species.

Brains are often seen as a crowning achievement of evolution bestowing the ultimate human traits such as language, intelligence and consciousness. But before all that, the evolution of brains did something just as striking. It lifted life beyond vegetation. Brains provided, for the first time, a way for organisms to deal with environmental change on a timescale shorter than generations.

A nervous system allows two extremely useful things to happen, movement and memory. If you are a plant and your food source disappears, that’s just too bad. But if you have a nervous system that can control muscles, then you can actually move around and seek out food, sex and shelter.

The simplest nervous systems are just ring like circuits in jellyfish, urchins and anemones. They can find things they need and interact with the world in a far more sophisticated way than plants manage.

The next evolutionary step, happened in flatworms in the Cambrian, was to add a control system to give the movements more purpose. Simply put, extra wiring.

Organisms need to sort out nutrition from toxic food and a brain helps them do that. Look at any animal and you will find the brain is always near the mouth.

With senses become brains, to detect whether the world’s events are beneficial and to contain a memory of events. This in turn allows a simple system of prediction and reward.

The more complex functions of the human brain, social interaction, decision making, and empathy, for example, seem to have evolved from these basic systems controlling food intake. The sensations that control what we decide to eat became the crux of our intuitive decisions. The most highly developed parts of the human frontal cortex that deal with decisions and social interactions are right next to the parts that control taste and smell and movements of the mouth, tongue and gut.

20_BRAIN SIZE

The orca brain is far larger than the human brain. So if you went by size alone you would have to conclude that the orca is extremely intelligent. Orca whales have the fourth largest brain of all, while humans come in at 23rd. However, in the ratio of brain size to overall body size, humans come out on top. The human brain is more than six times what you would expect for an animal our size. If you watched the sci.fi comedy movie ‘hitchhikers guide to the universe’ then the story is that Dolphins with about the same brain size as humans, were the most intelligent beings on earth and they saved the humans from impending disaster. Wonder what a dolphin buddy would be like?

It is fascinating to compare the dolphin and the human brain. They are both big and complicated, but they work quite differently. Surface area is critical, and in any brain the more folds there are the more surface area there is. The thickness of the surface area is also critical. For the past 50 million years or so, dolphins and whales have been evolving in water so their brain expansion along with their body forms has taken a different trajectory. They are capable of very complex intelligence. Studies have shown they have all kinds of complex structures to do with memory, emotions, social information and other kinds of behaviors. Professor Lou Herman has shown that dolphins can understand a symbolic, human-based language, where the words are either whistles or hand gestures. The dolphins could easily understand that we use different word orders to mean different things. So they understand syntax.

Certain animals, such as dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants and parrots show capabilities thought uniquely human, including language-like communication, complex problem solving and seeming self-awareness.

Brain size is very different for different animals and even within species. Human brains represent 2-3% of our body mass. Some of the tiniest ant brains measured represents 15% of their biomass. Sperm whale brains weigh in at 17 pounds, almost 5.5 times ours. If we went by the size of the brain alone, why is it that sperm whales are not our cognitive superiors? The size of brain does not necessarily indicate superior mental capabilities. One important ratio is that of brain weight to body weight. Therefore, when comparing humans to other animals of equal size, humans have the highest ratio of brain to body mass. Somehow that feels better.

21_BRAIN NEURONS

A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information in the brain through electrical and chemical signals. Neurons are very diverse and the more you have the better. Cognition is really about neuron to neuron connectivity. It was first believed that the density of neurons was consistent throughout all mammal species. Neuron density has been measured for humans and for numerous other species. Human neural density far surpasses any of them. For example a macaque monkey brain has 6.37 billion neurons whereas a human brain has 86 billion. This is a very big difference. This collection of neurons is the center of our Universe. It is where everything happens, our thoughts, our memories, our emotions, our points of view. All ideas possible and impossible are generated here.

22_BRAIN THOUGHT

These neuron connections produce our patterns of thought. Meditation practitioners often describe thought patterns as like a lake bottom, where small bubbles of gases continuously emerge from the mud and silt on the bottom of the lake. As these small bubbles rise toward the surface, they increase in size (due to less water pressure) and sometimes merge and then burst on the surface as a much larger bubble. There is a continual flow of thoughts that arise from our sub consciousness eager to get our attention. You can feel this just as you are reading right now. There are numerous background thoughts you are experiencing. Many of those thoughts will never surface in your consciousness, some will. Our brains receive a continual flow of information from all sources. This information coalesces into thought. The more information we receive, the more thought is generated. How that thought is interpreted is an important clue as to our individual points of view. If you were Ooga, your thoughts would center around your life experiences, which in Ooga’s case were mostly the same and repetitive and therefore reinforced mostly on a daily or hourly basis.

23_TRANSFORMATION

Human beings have a combination of physical abilities that can transform the computational power of the brain into creative physical movement. This is evidenced by our upright posture and our flexible hands and opposable thumbs, without which we would not be able to act out our creative thoughts. These physical attributes create a mechanism for thought to be acted out. This would be necessary to make a fire, or a tool, or a weapon. Think of the first tool like the first atom of hydrogen and its progression, or the first living cell and its progression. Once a tool was conceived and made, momentum continued to emerge better and newer tools.

24_BIOLOGY

The field science known as Biology is dedicated to the study of life, its component species, and the variations within species of life forms. The following rock record excepts are from ‘prehistoric planet’:

For most of us evolution is a complicated subject. While everyone understands that black bears are related to grizzly bears and we can even figure they are related to extinct bears, lots of people wonder how scientists can be so sure that bears are related to salmon as well. One evidence is rock layers – specifically, what is called the geologic column. Basically, scientists have learned that rocks are stacked in layers containing fossils with the oldest fossils at the deepest layers, and the youngest, or most recent fossils, near the top. It’s as if rock layers are a vertical timeline. At the bottom of the timeline there are no fossils of modern animals. As you move towards the surface, you find fish, then amphibians, then reptiles, mammals, birds, and finally modern mammals including humans.

We are not talking about an abstract diagram: this is the actual record of the Earth’s crust, recorded in rocks around the world.

But how do we know this evolutionary sequence of layers, one on top of the other is accurate? Why is there any order at all to rock layers? Two laws, or principles of geology explain why rock layers are formed in this way.

25_THE LAW OF ORIGINAL HORIZONTALITY

This law of science tells us that dirt, mud, sand and other sediments are almost always deposited in horizontal layers. As these sediments stack up vertically, they often harden forming rock layers.

26_LAYERS OF SUPERPOSITION

Rock layers are usually ordered with the oldest layer on the bottom, and the most recent layers on top. The law of Faunal Succession explains that fossils found in rock layers are also ordered in this way.

There are thousands upon thousands of layers in the Earth’s crust. However, scientists have grouped these layers into major groups. The most recent three layers are the ‘Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.

These layers represent the last 500 million years of life on Earth.

In the Paleozoic, you find fish, amphibian, and reptile fossils (in that order), but never dinosaurs, birds, modern mammals, or even flowering plants.

THINK ABOUT THAT!

Despite the billions of plant fossils in the Paleozoic layer, nobody has ever found one fossil of a flower, including any kind of deciduous tree or even a single blade of grass. Why not? The obvious explanation is, flowers had not evolved yet.

THINK ABOUT THAT!

The next layer, the Mesozoic, is often called the age of dinosaurs. The Mesozoic has dinosaurs like crazy. Of course dinosaurs are reptiles and that is why you won’t find any until after the Paleozoic which contains the first reptiles. The Mesozoic also has the first flowering plants, birds, and mammals, though few if any, birds or mammals that we know of today.

On top of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic is the Cenozoic. This is the current layer that is still being deposited in oceans, deserts and swamps all around the Earth today. The Cenozoic is the first major layer where we find modern mammal fossils like cats, dogs, monkeys and humans. This layer, or “era”, is often referred to as the age of mammals.

These three layers make up a sort of 3-layer cake. Just like a cake, the bottom layer went down first, followed by the middle and then the top. Since fossils progress from fish at the bottom to humans at the top, we have clear evidence that life evolved through time.

Of course, there isn’t one place in the world to go and see every fossil animal from all time stacked one on top of the other. In fact, it is rare to find all three major layers on top of one another. Why not?

Well the obvious answer is that even in the world today there are places where sediments (layers) are deposited but in other places (like mountains) where they are eroded. So gaps are a common occurrence in many regions.

Also, while the layers are usually deposited in a clear order, those layers are often disturbed later on by volcanoes, rivers, mountains, and shifting continents.

Look at the diagram above. If you were to stand on the cliff to the left side of the cross section, you would see the top layer in two places. The cracks, or faults, in the rock have slid the layers out of alignment. Only when you view the entire area can you piece  the  original order back together.

The crust of the Earth is made of several huge plates. These plates “float” on the hot, soft mantle below the crust. We can actually measure the movement of the plates  using  satellites  in  space. Every year, they shift in different directions, each on their own path. Sometimes the plates collide, causing mountains. Other times, they separate and hot magma flows up to form volcanic islands and new land. It happens slowly but surely and as it does, our nice 3-layer cake becomes a little messier. There are many evidences of evolution, but the geologic column remains the most obvious clue to the history of life on Earth.

I am providing the following timelines for reference purposes:

27_TIMELINE OF EVOLUTION OF LIFE

This timeline of evolution of life as a spiral, represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to emergent diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms to species, and individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins. The similarities between all present day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged through the process of evolution. The dates given in this article are estimates based on presented scientific evidence.

In its 4.6 billion years circling the sun, the Earth has evolved an increasing diversity of life forms:

• for the last 3.6 billion years, simple cells (prokaryotes);
• for the last 3.4 billion years, cyanobacteria performing photosynthesis;
• for the last 2 billion years, complex cells (eukaryotes);
• for the last 1 billion years, multi-cellular life;
• for the last 600 million years, simple animals;
• for the last 550 million years, bilaterians,
• for the last 500 million years, fish and proto-amphibians;
• for the last 475 million years, land plants;
• for the last 400 million years, insects and seeds;
• for the last 360 million years, amphibians;
• for the last 300 million years, reptiles;
• for the last 200 million years, mammals;
• for the last 150 million years, birds;
• for the last 130 million years, flowers;
• for the last 60 million years, the primates,
• for the last 20 million years, the family Hominidae (great apes);

• for the last 2.5 million years, the genus Homo (human predecessors);
• for the last 200,000 years, anatomically modern humans.

Periodic extinctions have temporarily reduced diversity, eliminating:

• Many obligate anaerobes, in the oxygen catastrophe, 2.4 billion years ago
• The trilobites, in the Permian–Triassic extinction event,252 million years ago,
• The pterosaurs and non-avian dinosaurs, in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (KT Event), 66 million years ago,
  

28_DETAILED TIMELINE

• Ma means million years ago. Ka means thousand years ago. Ya means years ago.

DATE EVENT

4,600 Ma The planet earth forms from the accretion disc revolving around the young Sun; complex organic molecules necessary for life may have formed in the proto-planetary disc of dust grains surrounding the Sun before the formation of the Earth.

4,500 Ma According to the giant impact hypothesis the Moon is formed when the planet Earth, and the smaller planet, Theia collide, sending a very large number of moonlets into orbit around the young Earth which eventually coalesce to form the Moon, much as the Earth did around the Sun. The gravitational pull of the new Moon stabilizes the Earth’s fluctuating axis of rotation and sets up the conditions in which life formed. The moon and earth have been found to have identical mineral composition.

4,000 Ma Formation of Greenstone belt of the Acasta gneisses of the Great Slave region, in Canada, the oldest rock belt in the world.

4,100-3800 Ma Evidence from the Moon shows this Late heavy bombardment created an extended barrage of impact events upon the inner planets by meteoroids. Thermal flux from widespread hydrothermal activity during this period may have been conducive to life’s emergence and early diversification.

3,900-2,500 Ma Cells resembling prokaryotes appear. These first organisms are chemoautotrophs meaning they use carbon dioxide as a carbon source, and oxidize inorganic materials to extract energy. Later, prokaryotes evolve glycolysis, a set of chemical reactions that free the energy of organic molecules such as glucose and store it in chemical bonds. This chemical reaction is used in almost all organisms today in its original form.

3,800 Ma Formation of Greenstone belt in the western Greenland region, whose rocks show an isotope frequency suggestive of the presence of life. The earliest evidences for life on Earth are graphite found to be biogenic in 3.7 Billion year old meta-sedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland, and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion year old sandstone discovered in Western Australia.

3,500 Ma The split between bacteria and archaea occurs. The is the lifetime of the last universal ancestor. Bacteria develop primitive forms of photosyntheis which at first do not produce oxygen.

3,000Ma Photosynthesizing cyano-bacteria evolve using water as a reducing agent and produce oxygen as a waste product. The oxygen initially oxidizes dissolved iron in the oceans, creating iron ore. The oxygen concentration in the atmosphere slowly rises, acting as a poison for many bacteria. The Moon is still very close to Earth and causes tides as high as 300 meters.

The Earth has continual hurricane force winds. These extreme mixing forces contributed to evolutionary processes. Life from the oceans likely transitioned to land at this time. Ever see a mudskipper?  They  breathe through their skin.

2,500 Ma The Proterzoic Era. First organisms to utilize oxygen. The Great Oxidation Event led by cyanobacteria’s oxygenic photosynthesis. Commencement of plate tectonics with old marine crust dense enough to subduct. (One land plate goes under another, or they collide).

2,000 Ma Diversification and expansion of acritarchs. Watch it here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_det ailpage&v=8SgnnV8nV9g(opens in new tab)

1,850 Ma Eukaryotic cells appear. Eukaryotes contain membrane-bound organelles with diverse functions. Bacterial viruses emerge. Rock beds show that an oxidizing atmosphere had been produced, which favored the spread of Eukaryotic life.

1,400 Ma Great increase in stromatolite diversity.

1,200 Ma Meiosis and sexual reproduction are present in single-celled eukaryotes. Sexual reproduction first appears in the fossil records. Simple multi-cellular organisms evolve, mostly consisting of cell colonies of limited complexity. Red algae evolve.

1,100 Ma Earliest dinoflagellates and first vaucherian algae.

750 Ma First protozoa

600 Ma The accumulation of atmospheric oxygen allows the formation of an ozone layer which deflected ultra-violet light enough to permit greater colonization of land.

580-500 Ma  This biota represents the first large, complex multi-cellular organisms. Most modern phyla of animals begin to appear in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion. Earliest fungi. Fossil evidence for comb jellies, sponges, corals and anemones.

542 Ma to the present time. Phanerozoic Era means “period of well displayed life”. This marks the appearance in the fossil record of abundant, shell-making and trace-making organisms. It is subdivided into Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, which are divided by mass extinctions.

542 Ma – 251.0 Ma Paleozoic Era. Major diversification of living things in the oceans: chordates, trilobites, crustaceans, mollusks and others.

530 Ma First known foot prints on land.

525 Ma Earliest graptolites.

510 Ma First cephalopods and chitons. 505 Ma Fossilization of the Burgess Shale. 485 Ma First vertebrates with true bones.

450 Ma First complete conodonts and echinoids appear.

440 Ma First agnathan fishes.

434 Ma  The first primitive plants move onto land evolving from green algae at the edges of lakes.

420 Ma Earliest ray-finned fishes and land scorpions.

410 Ma First signs of teeth in fish. Earliest nautiloids.

395 Ma First lichens, mites. First known tetrapod tracks on land.

363 Ma  By the start of the Carboniferous Period, the Earth begins to be recognizable. Insects roam the land and soon take to the skies; sharks swim the oceans as top predators, and vegetation covers the land, with seed bearing plants and flourishing forests. Four-limbed tetrapods gradually gain adaptations which will help them occupy a terrestrial habitat.

360 Ma First crabs and seed ferns

350 Ma First large sharks, ratfishes and hagfish.

340 Ma Diversification of amphibians.

330 Ma First amniote vertebrates.

305 Ma Earliest diapsid reptiles.

280 Ma Earliest beetles, seed plants and conifers. Terrestrial amphibians.

251.4 Ma The Permian-Triassic extinction event eliminates over 90% of marine species and leads to the Mesozoic era. This clearing of the slate led to a great deal of new biodiversity. The “balance of power” in the oceans shifts dramatically as some groups of prey adapt more rapidly and effectively than others.

245 Ma Earliest ichthyosaurs and rhynchosorus.

225 Ma Earliest dinosaurs. First mammals.

220 Ma Gymnosperm forests dominate the land; herbivores grow to huge sizes to accommodate the large guts necessary to digest the nutrient-poor plants. First flies and turtles. First Coelophysoid dinosaurs.

200 Ma Major extinctions in terrestrial vertebrates and large amphibians. Earliest Ankylosaurian dinosaurs.

195 Ma First sauropod dinosaurs. Diversification in small dinosaurs.

190 Ma First lepidopteran insects, modern starfish and bivalves.

176 Ma First Stegosauria group of dinosaurs.

170 Ma Earliest salamanders, newts, plesiosaurs and cladotherian mammals

165 Ma First rays

163 Ma Pterodactyloids first appear.

161 Ma Ceratopsian dinosaurs appear in the fossil record.

155 Ma First blood-sucking insects, rudist bivalves. Archaeopteryx, ancestor to the birds appears in the fossil record, along with different mammals and dinosaurs.

130 Ma  Rise of angiosperms. These flowering plants boast structures that attract insects and other animals to spread pollen. This innovation causes a major burst of animal evolution through co-evolution. First freshwater turtles.

120 Ma Oldest fossils of heterokonts and marine diatoms.

115 Ma First monotreme mammals.

110 Ma First toothed diving birds.

106 Ma Spinosaurous, the largest theropod dinosaur appears in the fossil record.

100 Ma Earliest bees.

90 Ma  Earliest snakes. Large diversification in angiosperms. Earliest ticks.

80 Ma Earliest ants.

70 Ma Multituberculate mammals increase in diversity.

68 Ma Tyrannosaurous, the largest terrestrial predator of North America appears in the fossil record. First Triceratops.

66 Ma to present Cenozoic Era. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (KT Event) eradicates about half of all animal species, including mosasaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, ammonites and all of the dinosaurs, excluding their descendents, the birds. Rapid dominance of conifers along with mammals becoming the dominant species.

63 Ma Evolution of carnivorous mammals.

60 Ma Diversification of large flightless birds. Earliest true primates.

56 Ma  Gastornis, a large flightless bird appears in the fossil record, becoming an apex predator at the time.

55 Ma  Modern bird groups diverify (First song birds, parrots, loons, swifts, woodpeckers. First whale, earliest rodents, armadillos.

52 Ma First bats appear.

50 Ma Camels appear, diversification of primates.

40 Ma Modern butterflies and moths appear.

37 Ma First Saber-toothed cats, unrelated to modern felines.

35 Ma  Grasses evolve from angiosperms and expand. Many modern mammal groups begin to appear. First eagles and hawks. Diversity in whales.

33 Ma Marsupials.

30 Ma Earliest pigs and cats.

28 Ma  Paraceratherium , the largest terrestrial mammal that ever lived appears in the fossil record.

25 Ma First deer.

20 Ma First giraffes, hyenas, bears and giant ant eaters.

15 Ma First kangaroos.

10 Ma  Grasslands and savannas are established, diversity in insects, especially ants and termites, horses increase body size. Major diversification in grassland mammals and snakes.

6.5 Ma First hominin.

6 Ma Australopithecines diversify.

5 Ma  First tree sloths and hippopotami, diversification of grazing herbivores like zebras and elephants, large carnivorous mammals like lions and dogs, burrowing rodents.

4.8 Ma Mammoths appear in the fossil record.

4 Ma  Freshwater turtle, modern elephants, giraffes and gazelles appear in the fossil record.

3 Ma   Various land and freshwater faunas migrated between North and South America. Armadillos, opossums, hummingbirds and vampire bats traveled to North America while horses, tapirs, and deer entered South America. The first short-faced bears appear.

2.7 Ma The earliest species of Smilodon appear.

2 Ma First members of the genus homo appear in the fossil record. The ancestor of cattle evolves in India.

1.7 Ma Extinction of australopithecines.

1.2 Ma Evolution of Homo antecessor.

Convert to thousands of years.

600 Ka Evolution of Homo heidelbergenisis.

350 Ka Evolution of Neanderthals.

200 Ka  Anatomically modern humans appear in Africa. Around 50,000 years before present they start colonizing other continents, replacing the Neanderthals in Europe and other hominins in Asia.

30 Ka Extinction of Neanderthals, first domestic dogs.

15 Ka Woolly rhinoceros go extinct.

11 Ka Short-faced bears and giant ground sloths die out.

10 Ka  The Holocene Epoch starts. The last species of woolly mammoth die out.

Recent Historical extinctions, convert to years.

6,000 Ya Small populations of American Mastodon die off.

4,500 Ya The last members of dwarf Woolly Mammoths die off.

600 Ya The Moa and Haast eagle die out.

387 Ya The last recorded wild Aurochs die out.

326 Ya The Dodo goes extinct.

246 Ya The Steller sea cow goes extinct.

131 Ya The Quagga, a subspecies of Zebra goes extinct.

100 Ya Last known Passenger Pigeon dies.

78 Ya The Thylacine goes extinct in a Tasmanian zoo.

62 Ya The Caribbean monk seal goes extinct.

6 Ya The Yangtze river dolphin goes extinct.

The above lists some of the species which are documented to be extinct. How many have we lost to unknown history? Lost through, lack of being able to record anything. Thousands of generations of illiterant where events and things happen history of an illiterant or failure to document, or are going extinct, or negligence.

Confucius

“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.”

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Next, I want to know, How did we get to know so much stuff? knowledge.

Have a happy day. And don’t forget to smile.