While
writing these last three posts on our earthly beginnings and our appearance ... every time I turn round another report
comes out saying the scientists have found out more background to life on
earth.
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| Egypt, Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Assyria: The Fertile Crescent supported early man and where Homo Sapiens encountered Neanderthal man |
So this
summary probably won’t really be a summary
- just a post nattering on about how much has changed over 4.55 billion
years of earth, or over the 200,000 odd thousand years Homo Sapiens, as we know
him, has been around.
We’ve
learnt how earth began – then we’re told the scientists are studying the
effects of the world transitioning between glacial periods, through research
into the deep frozen cores collected in the Southern Ocean, around Antarctica,
by studying the atmospheric carbon dioxide trapped inside them ...
The
earliest known life on earth existed between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago,
when sufficient crust had solidified following earth’s molten beginnings ... life adapts in incredible ways ...
 |
| Black Smoker in Atlantic Ocean |
... some of
which we’re still finding out ... the ongoing investigation into the Mariana
Trench – the deepest part of the world’s
oceans – where microbes are found everywhere ... they are very adaptable to
conditions and will survive wherever they are ...
... and life lives around the black smoker in the Atlantic Ocean - researchers are still cataloguing ...
Animals
adapted to survive in a semi-frozen hibernative state until conditions are
right for them to live again – usually to breed ... and then die, while the new
forms start the cycle over again ... for
example the wood frog.
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| The wood frog - which lives in North America |
Early
humans moved as they needed to survive ... sometimes putting roots down for
thousands of years, as in Arabia ... before overcrowding sent them off on their
travels ... ultimately all around the world.
Early
Neanderthals lived in the last glacial period, within the current ice age –
which occurred from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago. Neanderthals would have pushed south away
from the European northern hemisphere ice sheets – where they ‘met’ the
exploring, population explosion peoples from Africa.
 |
| Neanderthal sites marked in red - including two in west England. England and Europe are still joined. |
It is
estimated that the population of Neanderthals was approximately 70,000 at their
peak. Neanderthal fossils have been
found south of the European line of glaciations (approximately 50th
parallel north) – but none as far south as Africa.
Neanderthal
man was better adapted to cold weather than modern humans ... but the ice
receded and Homo sapiens marched on and in ...
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| The Female Perspective - British Museum's Ice Age Art |
The “Ice
Age Art – Arrival of the Modern Mind” at the British Museum was incredible –
more after the A-Z – but suffice to say that the sculptures portrayed people
with muscular legs ... showing that to travel anywhere they had to walk.
We know
that there’s more to us ... than us: Biologists
are discovering what a treasure trove the oceans’ coral reefs are in terms of
finding potential cures; animals display
hidden intelligence ... perhaps because we haven’t been intelligent enough to
realise earlier?! Animals survive until
natural extinction wipes them out – OR man interferes during his stay on earth.
Could a
volcano wipe out human life – it is possible ... Mt Toba, in northern Sumatra,
some 72,000 years ago erupted in what scientists believe is the upper limit of
explosions that can physically occur on earth ...
 |
| House of the Centenary - wealthy resident of Pompeii a preserved wall painting ... the earliest representation of Vesuvius |
...
anthropologists believe that the event caused a sudden evolutionary bottleneck,
with genetic implications that linger to this day. Humanity was nearly wiped out ... but our
ancestors clung on and bequeathed us our current existence.
Recent
research into Vesuvius’ eruption in 79AD where the cities of Pompeii and
Herculaneum were annihilated has shown that there were two causes of death ...
which explains why the skeletons were so different.
The explosion
at Mount St Helen’s gave the scientists their breakthrough ... the different
pyroclastic effects were realised – the residents of Herculaneum were killed by
a very high temperature gaseous flow, which burnt everything .... while the
residents of Pompeii were engulfed in a hot gaseous flow, which killed them –
but did not burn them ... they were then entombed under the ash.
 |
| British Museum's poster for the Summer Exhibition Life and Death Pompeii and Herculaneum |
The
British Museum’s summer exhibition is titled “Life and Death Pompeii and Herculaneum”
– it opens today until 29th Sepember.
From the
recent Chelyabinsk meteor ... the scientists realised the actual ‘crash’ had much
less impact than the ensuing shock wave – giving new possibilities as to the effects
of previous meteor collisions.
 |
| Chelyanbinsk - Meteor trail burst after explosion on 15 Feb 2013 |
Then it
was 60 years ago that “The Secret of Life”
was revealed by the microbiologists Francis Crick and James Watson ... Crick wrote
to his son, in language distilled for a 12 year old, telling him to Read this Carefully so You Understand It
....
... we have built a model for the structure of
de-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid, called DNA for short.
To
think that in these past 60 years we are understanding so much more – yet realising
that we know so much less ...
... we
can trace our DNA back 192,000 years to find our origins; we can re-examine
Neanderthal man and find new interesting facts; we are on the road to
establishing ways to combat various diseases ...
So much
has happened to the earth ... the continents going walk about; earth’s mantle
exploding in various ways ... volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis ... and we know
that mass extinctions of life do occur ... there are two – five major
extinction events in the world every million years or so ...
...
while the ongoing slow evolution of life – flora and fauna alike – mean that we
humans have not been privileged to observe a mass extinction ... hardly
surprising, since they would probably occur so slowly as to be barely
noticeable.
 |
| Mounted Neanderthal Skeleton - American Museum of Natural History |
So now
we move around in wheeled or flying tin boxes ... I can think of an English cousin,
whose family were in South Africa when I was there, she met and married a South
African, they came here for a while, and now live, with their two children, in
Melbourne, Australia - shows us how populations move in today’s age.
To re-enact
that 200,000 years ago ... would have taken 10,000 generations of peoples –
whereas in the 21st century we can make that change to our habitat
in 10 years or less.
The
really important fact that comes out of all of this ... is that we are related
to each other somewhere along the line ... and we are related to each and every
aspect of flora and fauna out there ... SO WE NEED TO CARE FOR EVERYTHING (every living thing) ...
Wired
Science – Southern Ocean exploration
Big Think – Coral Reefs: Nature’s UnderwaterPharmacies
Big Think - The Hidden Intelligence of Animals
BritishMuseum website – What’s on ...
To all A – Zers ....
Please note that Stephen Tremp has had some hassles with his
website – and can now be found here ...
Hilary
Melton-Butcher
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