And two points of view now appear to be completely obsolete and illogical:
1) That everything in the universe is pre defined, and pre designed, and pre decided.
2) That there is no guiding force driving life, and therefor, evolution.
Take the dinosaurs. Why were they so big? Since the first actual dinosaurs were herbivores, it can’t be for offensive/defensive reasons. And without such needs there is no justification for such gigantism. There is a possible explanation but to get to it we must take a couple of lengthy detours.
First we must look at bacterial behavior (i know what does the microscopically small could have to do with the gigantism of dinosaures right? Just bare with me a little bit). When two colonies of bacteria’s meet they immediately go to war. Both colonies start emitting natural antibiotics to annihilate one another. Their genome will then begin to under go fast mutations to defend themselves from the attack. The end result is a new generation immune to the other colony’s antibiotics.
At the same time their own natural antibiotics become more lethal to the other colony. These bacterial chemical warfare’s always end in a stalemate when both colonies have used up all their genetic mutation possibilities. By that time they can no longer effect one another, and so they go their separate ways. The end result is quite quick but these mutations do not really lead to genetic diversity, two colonies walk into, and two different colonies come out of this conflict. Nothing more than the substitution of two species, which ceases to be, by two others.
The primitive earth was a very acidic world. The first bacteria that succeeded in colonizing the earth did it because it could metabolize it into oxygen. That bacteria populated the entire planet and was its main inhabitant for a very long time. But those bacteria consumed all the acidity and replaced it with oxygen (which was poisonous to them). This led to the first, and greatest, mass extinction event of our planet. 95% of the organism disappeared from our planet, because one specie over consumed, over populated and over polluted.
But because of how oxygen helps metabolize energy, without them complex organism could never have risen on earth.
For these bacteria the only escape was in the soil itself. The atmosphere and oceans were contaminated with deadly oxygen and had been depleted of their precious carbon. But not the soil! It still had a rich acidity and offered refuge from the now deadly, oxygen rich waters. This led to two important evolutionary events. First the birth of anaerobic bacterias; who kept digging into the soil to avoid being poisoned by their own oxygen by-products, and then went on to colonize the soils of the entire planet rendering them fertile in the process. Some evolving into primitive insects.
But it's the second event that concerns us. Some bacterias began using other bacterias to process and/or expulse the oxygen. Because their requirements differed they were able to form a kind of symbiosis. Because this relationship would prove beneficial to both, both species would blossom through this symbiosis process. You do understand that; even though the first bacterias had colonized the entire planet it in no way implies that it was the sole inhabitant of our world.
Over the tens to hundreds of millions of years it took them to metabolize all that carbon into oxygen, other species were obviously able to emerge, in the same process they had, using that very oxygen.
This necessary symbiosis led these two different bacterias to seek each other, instead of fleeing or fighting each other, and to link up to one another. Through time their reproduction cycles became synchronized which allowed them to link up at birth. Eventually such pairs would reproduce themselves towards one another which then forced the two new cells to merge into one cell containing both genomes. To reproduce themselves these tertiary cells would use parts of the genomes of both cells. This process eventually yielded a fourth cell that had all four properties: The ability to metabolize acidic materials like carbon into oxygen, without being poisoned by the oxygen, the ability to link up into chains and the ability to stay linked at birth.
These cells obviously had a much greater survival rate than their predecessors, since they no longer needed to seek their counter part to survive. The cells at the origin of this new species had developed the technique of one pushing the oxygen towards the other. So this behavior was inherited by them. The first cell would expulse its oxygen towards the second and the second towards the third etc.... Again from this process two different types of creatures developed. The first types are the creatures that crawl through the ground, which led to worm like creatures and other insect.
But again it's the second type that concerns us. Those who were close enough to the point where the water and the soil meet could disperse their oxygen in the water instead of leaving it there and moving away from it, like their ancestors did and like those who burrow through the ground do (another inherited behavior). These no longer had to move. They simply began growing, and spreading, through the ground to acquire their requirements and growing, and spreading, through the water to expulse the oxygen by-products resulting from the metabolization of the carbon.
And when a cell or a series of cells would fall or break of the link, it (they) could start the process all over again. Through time they colonized the walls of the oceans all the way to the surface. These ancestors of the plant life on our planet achieved this by spreading themselves through the ground like rudimentary root systems and stretching out into the oceans to spread themselves like rudimentary branches. And because each new individual came from the first they never competed for the resources. Instead they shared them equally for the benefit of all, in other words behaving as one.
By keeping in mind that these are not plants as such but multi-cellular organisms; we are reminded that these did not grow feet or even inches long but more like microns to millimetres. We can also see how easy it was for it to go from water to surface, since it didn't really peak much out of the soil it could live equally, or some what equally, in the soil of the oceans as in the damp, and still rich in nutrients, soils around the oceans.
The richness in nutrients promoted growth and spread. The atmosphere transports atoms and small molecules much faster than water does. So on top of spreading the by-products of their metabolisms much faster the atmosphere also brought them water and carbons. This also contributed to the expansion of the species in quantity as well as in size and length. And in this process, which occurred all over the world with each individual colonies developing in their own individual ways, their own survival techniques and genomes, the earth was slowly colonized by these individual colonies separated by vast distances.
But time eventually closed the gaps that separated them. And, wherever two such colonies would meet, war would breakout. And just like the bacterias from which they descended, it began through the toxins they could emit. But they had an extra weapon: the ability to grow as much as the nutrient availability could allow. With multi-cellular organisms everything becomes a question of equilibrium. A single cell organism can't really absorb more than it can process. But a cell within a multi-cellular organism can easily pass the excess to the next cell and this process can be repeated for all the cells of the organism.
And even if a single cell organism can use the excess materials to multiply itself, it can't reproduce itself in continuity. A multi-cellular organism can rely on multiple reproduction cycle to use the excess elements syphoned out of the ground to starve the invaders. Because they stay together each newly created cell then serves this process and enhances the organism's ability to wage the war.
The greater the amount of cells an organism possess the greater the amounts of reproduction cycles it can rely on to cycle through the elements contained in the ground. In the process these primitive plants began to grow exponentially. Their roots became bigger and longer, as they spreaded through the ground. And, their branches grew bigger in the process, due to the fact that their roots were absorbing far more nutrients than their individual requirements. This war was not limited to the frontiers where two such colonies would meet. The wind would spread pieces of one colony into the field of the other, carrying in the process their toxins within enemy territory.
Many of these kamikaze invaders carried by the wind ended up in enemy territory as single cell individuals able to restart the growth process all by themselves. But as single cell organisms they could also rely on their ability to mutate their own genomes to attempt survival. By developing immunity to the enemy’s toxins they could weaken them from the interior. Of course these aren't acts of consciousness but simply natural chemical reactions that we refer to as biological functions.
These processes, which started with few species of very small organisms, led to an explosion of varieties and lasted for millions of years. But after countless generations of organisms seeking to exterminate each other through chemical warfare and suffocation, they had developed excessive growth as an inherited behavior. And so they kept growing for millions of years disturbed only by the elements. From microscopic life, to small plant like life, to actual plants, to trees. Because the more they grew the bigger and heavier they got. And, as their bodies became bigger and longer they also became firmer and stronger, just like every tree begins as a small easily pliable plant.
Taking in consideration the dimensions of the trees of our present days Rainforests, left undisturbed for thousands of years, we can imagine how these trees, left undisturbed for millions of years, could have grown to unfathomable sizes (dwarfing the rain forests in size). Trunks the size of houses making them impossible to climb. And this is where we end our first detour, with these enormous trees whose bottom branches where tens of meters high.
For the second detour i must ask you to think about the following question:
Which of these make more sense?
1) Some deity snapped its fingers and a bunch of monkeys appeared on the branches of a trees knowing exactly what to do to survive, stay alive, feed themselves and procreates.2) A random genetic mutation occurred in a creature which gave it the ability to climb a tree. So it began climbing a tree.
3) A creature who wanted the fruits up in a tree began to try to climb it, even though its morphology didn't allow it to. Its offsprings began imitating it and since they were still developing it allowed their morphologies to change. Through generations of inherited behavior, their paws began to pivot more towards the front. Their extremities began developing stronger limbs as their musculatures and skeletons evolved. Eventually developing into appendages capable of grappling a tree; slowly acquiring the ability to actually climb a tree in the process. Finding life in the trees much safer than on the ground, no predators, they developed an arboreal life style. Then wanting to move from tree to tree, instead of on the ground where there are predators, they began jumping from tree to tree and in the same process their morphologies again transform them. Eventually leading to the simians species. In other words , to apes and monkeys.
Random genetic mutations are hazardous even for single cell organisms. but when it comes to multi-cellular organisms they most often will prove deadly. The morphology of a creature can be altered simply by modifying the way certain series of genes are express. But this method requires more energy as the genes that are expressed in a different manner requires more control to ensure that they will generate a symmetrical result (the body and limbs of a creature must preserve certain ratios for it to be viable). It's only once such evolutionary steps prove to be fruitful that the genomes of creatures will be altered in a way that will allow for these new features to be generated in the somewhat automated fashion that most, if not all, creatures are generated through their DNA.
What does all this have to do with dinosaurs?
>Well everything!<
Before life started to spread on the surface of the earth, the trees had been left undisturbed for millions of years. And, has i have mentioned before, taking the rain forest as example, it’s easy to imagine how tall and large these trees must have been. The best branches were not at the bottom of the tree but extremely high. It was impossible to climb such trees, so for millions of year’s animals kept trying to reach always higher continuously stretching their bodies upward. It’s this desire to reach the best leafs and branches that fired up this gigantism. It’s those who became bigger who ended up being the best feds. And the best fed had a better chance of achieving procreation and, therefor, of passing their genes to the next generation.
The first dinosaurs were herbivores, gigantism developed much later in carnivores. The biggest dinosaurs were herbivores with necks that stretched out some 10 to 13 meters and weighing up to 100 tons. This evolving gigantism ended up affecting the entire food chain. As these creatures began to stretch to reach the lower branches, their neck began to stretch through generations of imitated behaviors. To balance the animals their tales also had to elongate. These required that the body also became continuously more massive and much stronger. And to move this ever growing mass the legs were also required to become more massive and stronger.
Generation after generation through this inherited behavior; these creatures kept growing bigger and longer and heavier. These creatures required more and more energy and began consuming more and more food. They consumed everything they could reach and since they kept becoming bigger they also kept reaching higher. Eventually they could eat the smaller trees, who would try to grow in between the giant one, entirely. They got so massive that they could lean on giant trees and shake them, to make all their fruits fall down. Even knocking them out of the ground by repeatedly slamming their massive bodies against them.
After millions of years of this, they had begun to deplete the still small herbivores of food, reducing their ability to procreate in the process. By reducing their numbers they also depleted the small carnivores of their food sources. All these creatures had to adopt new survival techniques. The firsts to be forced to compete for food sources were the herbivores and so it was amongst them that gigantism began a second time. But this time it was not to try and reach higher but it was to defend their territories and its resources. They didn't seek to be longer, they sought to be stronger while preserving some agility.
Can you imagine the shear energy required to move a thirteen meter long neck weighting more than 20 tons (for the Argentinosaurus) in any direction. You can forget about agility and speed. A 90 degrees displacement represents a displacement of some 21 meters on an arc. Of course that creature also had to swivel its enormous tale in the opposite direction to keep itself balance. This is a balancing act in which the creatures must not only control the balance of their body, through the counter weigh provided by their tales, but they must also control the individual centres of gravity of both their necks and tales to avoid them slamming into the ground. All the while avoiding massive G-force from acceleration. This required lots of strength and energy but couldn't be done with speed or agility.
That's why this second evolution of gigantism generated creatures whose necks and tales didn't reach as far. They sought to defend their territories from giant creatures, because even though their small size allowed them to easily elude these giants they required strength to fight them. You could almost say that they wished themselves bigger and began to grow bigger, but let’s not get carried away here. But since they became bigger while preserving their centres of gravity, by keeping their extremity closer to the body, they also preserved their agility. With the strength provided by their massive bodies and their preserved agility they could defend their territories against some of these giants of the first generation.
For the carnivores it was these new, but smaller, giants that forced them to become bigger and deadlier. The biggest carnivore was the Spinosaurus weighing in at around 8 tons. The best predators developed the habit of standing on their hind legs to fight which caused their morphologies to develop towards bipedalism. Their front limb became shorter because it's easier to hold a creature firmly close to the mouth with shorter stronger limbs. Their sharp nails could lacerate the skin while maintaining their pray in place allowing them to chew through their hide.
It's all these inter-mingling processes that saw the earth become populated, and dominated for millions of years, by giant creatures.
But dinosaurs were an evolutionary dead end. Their sizes were nonviable. Their energy requirement was as enormous as they were. They were heavy oxygen consumers and heavy co2 generators. It's because they lived in an oxygen enriched environment that their bodies could reach such enormous sizes. But the atmosphere was no longer as rich in oxygen as it was during the major part of their evolution. They ate every thing in site reducing food stocks and barely leaving saplings behind. And they crapped all over the place; imagine the size of the dunk of a creature that consumes a couple tons of food every day? They probably ended up eating so many trees that not enough were left to nourish them and to provide the oxygen they required, but this, in time, allowed new smaller trees to grow in place of the giant ones.
By the end of the dinosaur era they had already begun shrinking in size. Since they had only themselves as enemies (no animal has ever been known to chase another into extinction, except for us that is), this can only be explained by their impact on their environment. After millions of years of domination, the true giants were the first to disappear. Carnivores also became smaller from the Spinosaurus to the t-Rex all the way to the raptor family. In their case though it was coupled with efficiency requirements. The Velociraptor was a fast agile mean shredding machine. It could easily jump on a pray and truly lacerate it with its sharp nails, while holding on through shear strength. And with its mouth equipped with razor sharp teeth it could tear through almost anything.
What works for one also works for the others. The herbivores that didn't have access to all the resources required for their gigantism began shrinking but, because it is easier to move with a smaller shape, this gave them more speed and agility than the bigger, fully nourished, ones. Being a predator is a demanding act in which a creature expends vast amounts of energy in a very short period of time. For that reason predators can never sustain the hunt for extended periods of time. A predator will often choose to fight with a slower though stronger pray than to try catching up with a weaker but faster one. Even if it doesn't win the fight with the massive pray the probabilities of it being so wounded that the predator will have time to recuperate and attack that pray again and kill it that time are much better. But if a faster pray succeeds in evading a predator for a long enough period of time the predator will have to give up the hunt and rest to recuperate and then start all over again, which is not good for survival.
Once it was the biggest that had the best food. Now the smaller ones were the ones who had the better chances of meeting their energy requirements. As the bigger ones were slowly loosing their ability to procreate, the smaller ones were now the ones with the better chances of procreating and passing their genes to the next generation.
The final blow was, most likely, delivered by a comet.
But they were doomed from the start anyways. We can easily estimate the impact of such an event on them.
If the 2010 Japanese earthquake moved the planet a couple of inches, imagine how much the impact of that enormous rock would have moved it. The oceans waters are not attached to the earth. It's gravity that holds them in place. But, just like when you suddenly move a container towards the ground the water it contains doesn't fall at the same speed as the container is moved, the waters began moving after the earth did. Causing them to slam back upon themselves and, in the process, sending waves after waves of massive tsunamis throughout the entire planet.
The atmosphere very quickly heated up to an extreme and got filled with hyper heated particles and toxic elements like sulphur etc.., as it was depleted of its oxygen. The land masses were submerged by massive amount of waters liquefying their soils in the process. The dinosaurs were either submerged and drowned or were swallowed by the soil which had been liquefied by the combined effects of the vibrations engendered throughout the earth by the massive shock wave of the impact and the vast and massive amounts of water that submerged and quickly filled the soils in the aftermath.
The only creatures that could survive were the truly small ones that could subsist on a couple of fruits or nuts a day and required very little oxygen, and the small carnivores. And only those who found proper and adequate shelter from this literal apocalypse did survive. But for the dinosaurs it was game over.
Understand that the tsunamis that followed the impact were actually quite beneficial to these smaller creatures. Anyone that has ever tried to solder a pipe that still contains water knows that it's impossible to heat up the pipe, no matter how long you apply the heat from the blow torch. The reason is simply that the water carries the heath away while slowly boiling. And the same reaction occurred on earth. As the energy from the impact heated up the atmosphere of thousands of degrees, the waters that were submerging, liquefying and filling the land masses prevented that heat from actually reaching into the earth. And this created many small oasis where creatures could find shelter. Hence ensuring their survival.
Actually when you think about it, this could explains, some of, the oil wells.
When the earth liquefied, due to the intense compression waves that reverberated through the earth following the massive meteorite impact and the ensuing tsunamis, everything sank. The more massive the object was the deeper it sank. The earth had turned into a giant ball of quick sand in the laps of a day or two! Not only did all the big to giant creature rapidly sank to the deps of the earth, but the tree trunks also sank.
All that biological mass found itself compressed under tons of earth. And, as the water receded through boiling and through the ground back to the water beds (as it always does), the earth mixed with all that biological matter began to solidify. The end result was a porous rock filled with the viscous left over of the decomposed and compressed biological matter. But it also explains why there are no dinosaurs around the layer deposited by that impact. They had sunk through the liquefied earth before that light layer was deposited like sugar on a pancake.
The passage from water to land could be explained in a similar fashion. The millions of years spent trying to escape predators and millions of years spent trying to get to the source of food that would fall in the water, brought about series of genetic mutations that led creatures to develop the ability to metabolize oxygen directly. This eventually led to the formation of primitive air bags which later developed into lungs. This saw them often ending up in a position from which they had to propel themselves back to where they came from. Through time they developed their fins into limb through the same process of our earlier mentioned simians.
Sexual reproduction is a bit trickier. We know from bacteria’s, viruses, germs and some insect that sexual reproduction is not necessary. We also know, from the study of genetic evolution and mutation, that the Y chromosome used to have more genes and that eventually it will disappear completely from our genome. From the study of gene behavior we also know that the Y chromosome acts more like a virus than anything else.
The fact that it is shrinking makes it seems like our organisms are trying to weed it out of our genome. In other words it acts like a virus and living organisms seems to be fighting it as if it was one also. It’s not that surprising after all cells can clone themselves, but this process doesn’t bring diversity.
Biodiversity stems from genetic diversity which is due to genetic mutations.
Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, allows for two genetically different individuals, who have had different life experiences, to mix their genomes. The fact that the encounter of two colonies of bacteria’s sparks a frantic, half hazard process of genetic mutations proves that genetic mutations can be induced by life experiences. Cells are all based on the same concepts, whether it’s the cell of a leaf, a virus or skin cells.
But the more you advance in the evolution of species and the more complex do the cellular processes become. In a way the easiest part of a cell to understand is DNA transcription. Just as a reminder a cells genomes is held in a structure called a double-helix which is actually 2 sets of allele that are held together by the associative nature of their individual constituents (adenine (A) links to thymine (T) and guanine (G) links to cytosine (C) and each rung is held to the next by alternating molecules of sugar and phosphate. The double-helix form is due to the various electromagnetic fields contained within each of these series of molecules (which is the reason why a DNA strand is so twisted and filled with loops and knots).
A gene is a succession of these chemical complexes under their 4 possible configurations (AT, TA, CG, and GC). A chromosome is a succession of genes held together between 2 telomeres. Transcription occurs one gene at a time. Each rung of one allele of that gene will then be transcribe one by one into an RNA sequence (the Thymine is replaced with Uracil (U) the other three are simply copied).
In more primitive cells (microbes, viruses, etc…) RNA sequences are used as they are transcribed. But along the evolutionary ladder cells acquired the ability to manipulate RNA sequence by splicing up the strand and recombining it in another form to generate a different chemical compound. This allowed more evolved cell to produce a greater variety of chemical compounds with less gene (this is the reason why the human genome is much smaller than expected).
The first thing that appears clear in bacteria’s is that: the genetic reactions induced by the encounter with another colony have only 2 purpose; survival and domination. Sexual reproduction offers a great advantage in this regard. Sometimes a gene randomly mutates and the result is most often armful for the organism. By having both parents providing a copy of their genes, the organism can rely on the non mutated copy of that particular gene.
Viruses unlike bacteria’s, who simply proliferate wherever the environment permits, often invade cell’s and use the genetic processes of that cell for their own survival and proliferation. Some viruses even inject their genetic material directly into the cell’s genome, to be replicated when the cell will clone itself.
The X chromosome is much older than the Y chromosome and is much more complex and vital for complex organisms. Amongst other things, the genes that generate the photo-receptors called “cones” that are sensitive to red and green light are located on the X chromosome.
We can say that the, always active, X chromosome simply generates a life bearing organism. And the Y chromosome simply modifies that organism into a male.
Long ago a virus like organism that couldn’t replicate itself forcefully injected its genetic material into a cell that could replicate itself. When that second (host) cell cloned itself, it duplicated the first cells genes in the process. The first result was a sterile cell that could only replicate itself in the same way that it was created. Through the rape of a self replicating cell (or, if you prefer, by forcefully injecting its genetic material into a self replicating cell).
The second result was the emergence of species that evolved in ways that facilitated sexual reproduction.
Can we still claim that this is solely due to random chances and pure luck without purpose? Like a true fractal equation, every time one form of chaos yielded a new, less primitive, structure the universe evolved one step closer to creatures such as us. As if the end result was the source of the road that led to itself. There is nothing esoteric or mystical about this; after all it’s simply logical that life would be the very meaning and purpose of the universe.
This combined with the newly emerging behavior of cells staying together after replication, which could only happen in a low acidity well oxygenated environment, because the chemical links that bind cells together are easily dissolved in acidic environment, was the true turning point of evolution for us.
The road to multi cellular organism was now open and so was the road to cellular diversity, with all its ramifications.
Instead of one species made up of identical unicellular creatures, the world was slowly becoming populated by a wide variety of multi-cellular organisms. Eventually, war broke out! As self propelled motion, impossible for unicellular life, was becoming a reality for multi-cellular life, the energy requirements grew exponentially. Each creature slowly began requiring more and more resources. But, since every (and any) cells simply extract energy from matter by transforming it from one state to another (usually toxic to itself), with greater consumption rates come greater amount of toxins being released in the environment.
Competition for resources equals competition for territory. The first weapons ended up (involuntarily) being these simple toxins rejected naturally after the transformation of nutrients. The first defence mechanism ended up (involuntarily) being gene mutations. As these organisms individually began acquiring new genetic configurations that allowed them to survive in this toxic environment, they also began diverging greatly in genome and overall configurations.
Some became deadly to others through simple contact. This accelerated the rapid and half hazard mutation processes. And even if this process often proves itself to be deadly to the organism; it always ends up being beneficial for the survival of the specie. With new genetic properties comes new means of transforming matter, and therefor new forms of toxins. The means to destroy the enemy can be greatly increased in the process.
Now imagine the benefits for two such individual, who both have emerge from such a war, with genetic affinities, each having developed their own survival strategies, if they could mix their genetic material to create a new life form. But this action required a completely new set of genes to be achieved. Not just an extension of what already existed but a new strategy to accommodate this new gene combining concept. Since the primitive multi-cellular organisms could only create copies of themselves, the intrusion of the Y chromosome now provided the means for a new differentiated species to emerge.
And as this new differentiated species evolved in complexity and form so did the modes of reproduction evolved from simple cloning to actual sexual reproduction.
To think that the dinosaurs were an evolutionary mistake would not be very logical. Creatures such as us could not have emerged on a planet like the pre-dinosaur earth. Through hundreds of millions of years the earth had slowly covered itself with millions of years old giant trees. By the time the dinosaur reign was over, because they had eaten them all, those trees had been replaced by smaller ones. That’s why smaller creatures could emerge during their reign, as they decimated the tall trees (which were not just tall but also extremely large and, therefor, occupied a large volume of land) many smaller tree could now grow in their places. Smaller trees and more bushes meant that smaller creatures could have access to the fruits that grew in them.
The dinosaurs required vast amounts of food, water and oxygen to survive. Eventually there was not enough food and they began starving. The meteor that saw their final doom depraved them of those vast amounts of oxygen. But for the smaller creatures the story played out very differently.
With the dinosaurs gone and all the giant trees replaced by smaller ones, and lots of small bushes, they were now free to take over the world. Because they were spread out all over an almost post apocalyptic world they each had to face their own environment and develop their own survival strategies. All these circumstances led to the greatest explosion of bio-diversity this planet has ever seen.
Trees could still grow very tall so to access their fruits and to escape predator’s species began climbing and dwelling in the trees. This gave rise to marsupials and simians. The simians developed a very pronounced social behavior. By living in clan with social hierarchy they could develop simpler more effective survival strategy. Together they could chase off predators more easily and were more effective at protecting their descendents.
This in turn allowed them to live longer lives and generate more offsprings. Because they were well nourished, their struggles amongst each other for sexual dominance made them bigger and stronger. This in turn gave them even better means to survive. It’s this process that transformed the small simians into the big apes.
They also acquired, in this process, something that no other creature really had before them. TIME! You may not realize the importance of free time for the evolution of a species, but it’s in your free time that you commit all your real thinking. And if thinking is too big a word for apes, observing would be a better one.
By living together, hunting together, fighting together, defending the clan together, they were able to observe and learn from one another. This is how empathy was developed. Through observation of the others you come to perceive each others emotional states. Pain, sadness, happiness, fears, they began perceiving their own emotions in each other and could recognize them and act on them by comforting/protecting one another.
All these things that they were learning from one another caused their brain to keep growing. With bigger brain they could develop new strategy that provided for their survival. And slowly through this process of learning from one another they began to evolve as they began to explore new territories and had to develop new strategies to survive in them. Through millions of years, on an ever changing world having to continuously face new challenges, adapt and develop new strategies to survive in new environments, the great apes slowly evolved towards homo-sapiens, as their brains kept growing to adapt to all their new thought processes.
The only species of animals on this planet that has exposed skin (they're also the only species that has black skin) are the simian species (the great apes family) and us.
Indeed all other animals have fur to protect them form harmful UVb radiation. But fur also traps heat which prevents animal from having truly active life styles. Most predators must also expand great amount of energy to catch their prey. For all these reasons many animals developed nocturnal life styles, life style that is greatly limited by the absence of light. The fact that animals have nocturnal sight is simply due to the fact that their eyes aren’t cluttered with colour specific cones. If a room is lit by a little bit of red light, a little bit of blue light and a little bit of green light our colour sensitive eyes will perceive that illumination exactly in that format, a little bit of red, a little bit of blue and a little bit of green. And sum it up to a little bit of white light.
But animals only perceive variations in the over all level of illumination. In other words, instead of dividing the illumination into its quantum constituent (extracting the maximum of information out of the environment in the process) they perceive it as a whole. As in us each quantum constituent (photons) will excite each specific receptor in our eyes in a specific way, in animal each quantum constituents (photons) of light excite the same receptors all over the eyes. So if the ambient illumination was mad up of 1 lux of red light, 1 lux of blue light and 1 lux of green light we would only perceive 1 lux spread over 3 spectrums while animals would simply perceive the sum, 3 lux. The low level of illumination at night makes colour perception a disadvantage for survival but it also prevents animals from truly studying and learning from their environment and from each other.
The apes had incredible advantages compared to other animals. By living in large clans they could fend of almost all predators and invaders. Securing vast territories and the resources they contained. By mainly evolving into vegetarians they avoided the dangers involved in the hunting process. Millions of years living in, and climbing, trees slowly transformed their simple paws into grapplers which slowly developed into hands. They began by simply digging their claws into the bark of the trees to climb them which, through repetitions, re-enforced the limbs to which each claw was attached. Evolution was provided by the positive re-enforcement created by the high survival and procreation rates that ensued. Through generations the limbs began to grow to provide the better grip that they desired, eventually becoming fingers. The paws transformed into hand for the same reasons. The shoulders enlarged and gained more mobility and strength as they began jumping from tree to tree and so did the hip bones.
These advantages allowed them to develop a diurnal life style. As they did so their bodies started to shed their fur to exult the excess heat. But the unprotected exposed skin cells were being destroyed by the excessive UVb radiation present. The next survival technique came from the cells themselves, melanocytes and melanogenesis. The colours of all fur, hair, or eyes, for all animals on earth are due to a pigment called melanin which is created by a process called melanogenesis, by cells called melanocytes. Some skins cell simply began activating the genes responsible for melanogenesis in an attempt to survive. The Positive re-enforcement provided by the high survival and procreation rates, due to the fact that melanin is a very good UVb absorber, simply accelerated the process of hair lost whilst the melanocytes (cells responsible for the production of melanin in the skin organ) contained in the follicles remained in the dermal layers of the creatures skin.
With all these advantages the apes could come down from trees and begin a diurnal life on the ground. Without real predators, able to fend of intruders, vegetarians, able to cope with daylight heat, ample mates to procreate with, the apes were now free to dominate their entire territory including the ground.
The apes found themselves in a position that no creature had ever attained before. They no longer had to rely on instinct alone. Not being hunters but vegetarians is a lot less demanding energy wise.
As example for a lion hunting is almost a life or death situation. The speed and strength of the lion demands lot of energy which can not be provided infinitely by its organism. After a couple of minutes the lion is extenuated and, if it hasn’t caught its prey yet, it will have to give up the chase and rest until it as recuperated enough energy to begin again. That’s why when a lion finally catches a prey, it eats until it’s so full that it falls a sleep within minutes. Gathering nuts and fruits or picking ants and other insects demands very little energy in contrast. It’s also a lot safer and since fruits and nuts grow back and, like insects nests, they're all over the place. Apes no longer spent their days sleeping and their nights scavenging for food, hunting or trying to avoid predators. Now they had time. Time to swing from the branches just for the fun of it, or to go for a walk or a swim. Time to groom one another and time to bond.
But most importantly time to observe and learn from one another and the environment. It’s easy to see how this particular species developed a greater sense of empathy than any others before it. After countless generations of sharing the benefits and advantages of this form of tribal living the apes had developed a strong sense of order, hierarchy and belonging. If a female starts to screech the entire tribe recognizes her by her voice. They will rush to her to see what’s wrong and if it happened to be a mother whose child is in danger, either from a fall or being attacked by another animal, they wouldn’t walk away but would do everything they could to save it, even from a lion. This is empathy at its best and was crucial for the specie’s evolution.
There are three factors involved in evolution:
1- Desire and will to adapt to the environment,
2- Changes in the environment.
And lastly,
3- Genetic mutations.
Which of the following is the most logical: creatures mutated into tree climbers so they began climbing trees or creatures who had begun to climb tree kept trying to get better at it so they evolved into tree climbers?
Apes were not dreaming of the day they would be building rocket ships. They weren’t trying to become homo-sapiens. They simply evolved a bit closer to us every time their environment drastically changed forcing them to re-adapt and develop new survival strategies, in the process their brains grew to allow for the new thought processes involved to be retained.
By observing the world around it wasn’t hard to notice that insects will voluntarily climb a stick, any stick. So from there to sticking a stick in the grounds, there isn’t a great distance. Learning to use tools, and later to actually build them, comes from observing the environment. Evolution comes when a behavior is successful and is successfully learned and adapted by all.
This is the how and why from a simple creature trying to climb a tree came the simian species and then the ape families. And then a Pleiades of homo-genus and pre sapiens, spread out through time and lands, all with their own adaptations and specialities. But in the end only one branch of this evolutionary ladder turned out to have all the abilities to adapt to everything the earth could throw at them: homo sapiens sapiens (or “man wise wise” ).
When conception occurs the females always provide the foetus with their maternal X chromosomes. Whilst the male will either provides its maternal X chromosome, and generate a female, or its paternal Y chromosome, to generate a male. If they have a female she to will transmit her mother's X chromosome and discard her father's X or Y chromosome. This fact allows scientist to trace back it’s evolution through time in our specie, by comparing the various mutation it contains across the planet. This has allowed scientist to approximate the emergence of what is to be considered the first female of our species (woman to be more polite), the proverbial EVE, to about 100 000 years ago. This means that 100 000 years ago a woman was born with a genetic mutation that gave her, and all her descendant since, an advantage over all the other members of the homo-genus family, even her own sisters. And so she is the mother of all other homo sapiens sapiens women. And, in turn, of our modern day human race!
In the same manner the Y chromosome of the modern males of our species can be traced back to about 50 000 years ago for the proverbial ADAM. This means that 50 000 years ago a male descendant of that woman was born with a new genetic mutation that gave him an advantage over all other homo Sapiens, even his own brothers.
Though it is impossible to actually say for certain what the result of those mutations were, it’s not far fetch to assume that they had to do with brain configuration and behavior and that they were related to communication skills.
From that point on our ancestors began to colonize the world by travelling everywhere they could. First by walking and later, as they figured out how to build them, by boats. As our ancestor began moving north they arrived in territories where the amount of UVb radiations reaching their skin was greatly reduced by the axis of the position of that part of the world in regard to the direction of emissions of photons from the sun. Melanin absorbs UVb radiations, the darker the skin the greater the amount of melanin present and therefor the greater the rate of absorption per volume of skin. But UVb radiation is crucial for our survival because it breaks down vitamin C into vitamin D inside the skin, it helps: the immune system, bone growth and remodelling, regulate calcium and phosphors in the blood stream etc… And without this process we become sick easily, our bones become brittle, children are born weaker, etc…
Once again the solution came from our cells themselves: reduce the amount of melanin in the skin by reducing the melanogenesis rate and, eventually, the amounts of melanocytes themselves.
The Neanderthals and the homo sapient did mix and on this we have genetic proof within the Y chromosome. The funny thing is that these genes, that had been considered for a long time to be of a primitive ancestor have actually been found in the Y chromosomes of the recently decoded Neanderthals DNA, are present in every population of the earth except for the Sub-Saharian region. And the funniest part is that this region actually has a greater rate of genetic diversity than the rest of the populations of the earth.
But white folks, guided by their all knowing priest of god, have claimed for centuries that Neanderthals behaved more like animal than like humans and that they didn't have intelligence. They also claimed that the Africans were inferior to white people, after all god is white and made man in his image (said their holy all knowing never faltering priests of god). But if Neanderthals were has they say then shouldn't it be the white race that is considered a sub-species? All kidding aside, a small group of genes here and there inherited from various half hazard encounters between these two races of humans does not really constitute a race!
First we can easily suppose that because of their differences in morphologies these were not encounters of passions and mutual attractions. But most likely they were violent in nature. Second these encounters could explain how our ancestors acquired so quickly a lighter shade of skin. The Neanderthals had settled mainly in and around the European continent while it was covered with ice. And they lived there for a very long time. It does make sense that their skin would have been quite white by the time the first sapient arrived. So it is quite most likely that it's their genome that developed a different way to produce melanin, or rather to conceive the melanocytes.
It could also explain why they never truly evolved! The time it took for their skin to adapt kept them from generating new brain structures due to lack of vitamin D.
And it's through multiple exchanges of genes, not only between Neanderthals and homo Sapient but between, the various homo sapient populations that later evolved separately, over different foreign regions with variaties of nutritional habits and environmental constraints, causing the generation of slight variations in their individual genomes, that the skins of the various population of the earth acquired such a wide variety of shades of brown. And, before you start claiming that a couple of genetic differences here and there between a group and another makes a race, i would like to remind you that there are people on earth who can twist their tongues and others who can't. The reason in a set of genes that the first possesses but not the second. Would this then make them two different races?
This is just the process that saw the birth of every variation of skin pigmentation that exists on our planet. The skin of Africans remained dark brown because their ancestors stayed in Africa for those thousands of years afterwards. Vikings, like Inuits, had white skin because they lived where there was little solar illumination and the temperatures were cold so they had to cover their bodies to protect them from the cold. And they might (the Vikings) have kept more of those Neanderthal genes and the remnants may exist in their descendants (the Scotts and the Irish).
All the rest of us stand somewhere between those two extremes of skin pigmentation (fully pigmented or without any pigmentation) for reasons that obviously also stand in between those two extremes (excessively rich UVb radiation environment or excessively poor UVb radiation environment) coupled with nutritional habits. Except for the “Albinos syndrome”, people(or animals) that are born without the genes for melanogenesis, every human being on earth has the genes responsible for the black skin of Africans. In the Caucasians melanogenesis is actually completely controlled by the UVb radiation levels. But how can a single gene set be responsible for such a wide variety of skin tones you ask? By being switch on and off in a specific ratio of course.
Gene expression is mostly controlled by two chemical complexes called ethyl and methyl groups. Genes that are heavily methylated tend to not be transcribed at all (they are not used to generate the chemical compound they hold the recipe to because the Methyl groups tightens the rungs closer together) whilst genes that are heavily ethylated tend to be very expressive(They are use to generate the chemical compounds they hold the recipe to because the Ethyle groups loosens the rungs of the genes they are attached to). The question that remains is: what controls this ethylation/methylation process? By now i hope that you can see that cells aren’t just the result of half hazard chaotic random chances, but that they are actually an incredible evolutionary device.
If i was to describe to you all the amazing nano-machinery at work inside a cell, carrying compound between cells or splicing RNA strand or repairing a faulty knot inside a DNA strand or providing energy, transcribing DNA into RNAs, transforming series of RNA strands into chemical compounds. You would realize how amazingly complex and precise are the inner workings of a cell and you would understand why it took almost 4 billion years for the cellular processes to form living biological entities. But, though the principal maintenance of the genome is provided by a gene called FOXO, this machinery which works like clockwork is not control solely by that gene. Same for the ethylation/methylation processes.
It would be completely illogical to consider that these nano devices are autonomous. Something must control/direct them so if it’s not in the active DNA it must be in that part of our genomes that scientist refer to as scrap, or garbage. Take your computer for example. While you are doing whatever you are doing there are actually tens if not thousands of programs running, kind of, simultaneously, even though what ever you are doing seems autonomous as you work. But the truth is that your operating system (your computer’s artificial intelligence) controls all their operation moving through them one by one allowing them to perform their tasks, if any, but only for a limited amount of time then it moves on to the next.
A cell is a hell of a lot more complex than your computer, so how could it perform the creation and maintenance of an organism with just a series of functions but no control mechanism to operate those functions properly and in the right sequences. Why does it make sense to consider that 75 to 90 % of our genome is junk? Knowing that all creatures form in the same order of foetal evolution and that some of that junk has already been found to interact with the transcription of certain genes, wouldn’t it make sense to consider that the control mechanisms for cellular functions and genetic expressions should be found within that portion of our genome.
After all a lot of those genes are actually RNA genes not DNA genes. The reason why this matters is that DNA genes are very stable and they don’t mutate easily, but RNA genes do. Through the evolutionary process, as the organisms grew in complexity, the way genes are expressed, and therefor utilized, began to vary greatly. The same sets of genes that served to form the basic paws with claws of the primitive simians now serve to form our hands and fingers and still serve to form the fins of aquarians. Something must adapt to allow for this process of modifying the modes of expression of a gene.
Since this is not found in the coding part of our genome it can only be in the part they call junk. And RNA genes would be the perfect culprits for this evolution process.
Many of the cellular processes at work in cells evolved separately, and this includes RNA strands and the cellular envelope themselves. A cellular envelope is nothing more than a permeable shell. And shells form naturally in oceans. An RNA strand is nothing more than a succession of chemical complexes that bind to one another easily but in a specific order, or format. A simple chemical reaction is the direct transformation of 1 element into another, like when our organism uses oxygen to clean up the used up carbon from our cells by transforming 1 Carbon and 2 Oxygen atoms, well actually (Molecular Oxygen) an o2 molecule, into 1 co2 molecule. A more complex chemical reaction is the reorganization of pyrimidine bases and purine bases into one of the four RNA types (A, G, C, U). This is how the nano device that replicates DNA into RNA strand does it.
These three things can exist independently from one another. In the primitive earth all types of chemical reactions could, and most likely did, occur. Matter was comtinuously being rearranged in wide variety of compounds. Amino acids, desoxyribose, sugars, nucleotides, nucleosides, pyrimidine bases and purine bases were all present and also being reorganized in continuity. Eventually a device, series of chemical complex that uses energy by transforming matter from one state to another, appeared (evolved) that could combine these pyrimidine bases and purine bases into ribonucleic acids (RNA) through chemical reaction. These RNA bits could then link up through sugars, phosphors and hydrogen etc… to create strands. It’s only when one such device acquired the ability to attached itself to one such strand that the process of replication could begin. And it’s only when one such union found itself stuck inside one of those permeable shells, which forms naturally, that the actual cellular concept was born. And with it, the road to us, EVOLUTION.
There are no missing links. Today science can explain the evolution of matter in our universe from its birth all the way to creatures like us.
Of everything that i have written so far nothing comes from angels or prophets. Not a single word was based on mythologies or belief system. No alleged word of god here! No! All of it was painstakingly gathered by thousands of scientist through the last hundred years or so. They were not seeking to disprove the existence of god but were seeking to explain us, life, the universe, THE TRUTH. This knowledge was acquired through cogitation, speculation, and theorisation. And was proven through experimentation many times over. And the future will bring us even more knowledge about these evolutionary steps that our universe had to go through so that one day creatures such as us could emerge.
Brief note on the subject of genetic manipulations:
Since the day we began farming and tending to herds for our food; we began manipulating the genomes of the species of plants and animals we grew. When an animal developed a new trait that was beneficial for us we would over breed that animal until the entire herd had the new trait. Same for plants, though we often cross bred two different types of plants or vegetable or fruits to generate an all new species. These are all forms of genetic manipulations. But there is a great and very important difference between this and the way scientist manipulate genomes in their labs.
When you enter a gene inside a plant's genome; that gene will be present in every single cells of that plant. That gene may then simply be transcribed continuously in every cell of that plant, which is rarely the desired effect. It’s obvious that through cross breeding whatever mechanisms that are involved in the control of the expression of genes are transmitted properly and are functioning properly. The result is that the new genes will be expressed only where they are needed, for the desired effect, and nowhere else. But when you insert a gene inside a species genome you have no way of knowing or controlling the way, or the location where, or the rate at which, that particular gene will be expressed. This often leads to undesired side effects.
So the answer to the question “how many races of human being are there on earth?” should now be quite obvious. Whatever your lineage or genealogy, wherever you come from or live on the earth, whatever language you speak, whatever you believe in, whatever you pray to, what ever your height, weigh, size and appearance, whatever the colour of your skin, eyes, hair, whatever your gender, whatever your sexuality is;
you are a member of the one and only race of humans that inhabit this world:
THE HUMAN RACE.
And to the rabbi who said “Half and eye is not an eye!” i would simply say:
Why then do plants turn towards a source of light, knowing that that light doesn’t generates any kind of electromagnetic effect in that plant but simple biological chemical reactions?”!
In conclusion:
We all come from the same evolutionary process that began in the vacuum of space long ago and continued on earth through the natural chemical actions and reactions of the cellular evolution process that has led life on our planet from simple chemical reactions all the way to us!
And no extra-terrestrials or deities were required.
Excerpt from ch:1 of
Humanity
A story in time, In a time of stories!
By Stephane Vincent
Comments are always welcome, no matter how brief!
Wishing you peaceful but event filled lives!
No comments:
Post a Comment