30 million years ago
Because we perceive as individuals, each of us feels himself to be the center of the universe. As a species and culture, we are similar: like the proverbial carpenter, who sees everything as a board to be nailed, we see the universe in our own image, as centered around and focused upon ourselves. This may well be an illusion of the sort mentioned by magician Jerry Andrus who was told as a kid that Albany, Oregon was the center of the universe. In fact, eighty percent of life's history was microbial, and humans may be no more central to life, the universe, and everything than Albany, Oregon is to geopolitics and world history! (There are, however, different interpretations.) Remnants of bacteria, with DNA identified by moleular biologists as extremely similar to free-living bacterial DNA, divide as mitochondria within the nucleated cells of people as these lines are read. It may be a blow to our collective ego, but we are not masters of life perched on the final rung of an evolutionary ladder. Ours is a permutation of the biosphere, and the cosmos generally. We did not invent genetic engineering, we insinuated ourselves into the life cycles of bacteria, which have been directly trading and copying genes on their own for billions of years. We did not invent agriculture or locomotion on horseback, but became involved in the life cycles of plants and animals, whose numbers have increased with ours. We are probably descended from mothers such as Lucy, whose name comes from the Beatles' song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was playing at the archeological dig during the time of her discovery. Lucy was a north African apewoman whose fossil remains date back over three million years. She was an upright walking and running animal but only about three-and-a-half feet tall. If she were crouched on the back of a subway today, you might mistake her for a bag lady. Learn More
© 2005 by Sciencewriters
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