Billions of Years in the Making

Having been rather depressed and stressed out lately, it is odd that I would actually be rather pleased to have woken up around four this morning and only dozed hear and there after. But I was stuck on a line of thought that rarely fails to excite and invigorate me - possibly why I managed little sleep. It is a thought that is so much more exciting to me than any of the religious and spiritual ideologies I explored over the years. It started small, in context to the relative scale of the whole - starting just before the dawn of modern man and moving backwards. Started in the context of what I am studying now and moving back to the beginning - or at least "a" beginning and then sling-shooting from there into the distant future.

Just considering the context of our human race, we are many, many thousands of years in the making - each and every one of us. We fought, we died - but some few of us lived, at some points the underdog of two legged mammals - our contemporaries often times far better adapted to the environment of a given time. They were too well adapted though and while many of our ancestors died in those harsh environments, when the environment changed again they were the one's left standing. We were the one's left standing, because through the eons, the genes of those ancestors are a part of who we are - right now - today.

I could move forward, but I think that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with what happened next. Through near extinction, to near extinction we evolved until we hit on a lush environment where we thrived and continued to adapt. Eventually we became very much like we are today. Having developed rudimentary language and culture, our brains became something very similar to the brains we have today - though there was considerable development as language evolved and culture evolved.

At some point I would love to write in considerably more detail about the terrible and wondrous story of human evolution, but for now we are going to go in the other direction - quite a distance through time and space, in the other direction. Because our story doesn't start there, where and when we stood up on two legs and walked. It doesn't start hundreds of millions of years earlier, when single celled organisms started to divide and evolve in that lush (for such organisms) primordial environment. It doesn't even start a few billion years before that, when this celestial body we call home was born of gravity and fire. These are mere historical footnotes in the chain of events that brought us to this time and place, where I am sitting here typing on an amazing device that totally blows those nifty digital watches out of the water.

Right now, I want to take us back further, because we are so very much older than less than a hand-count's billions of years. And it may well be that the molecules that make up our being are even older than the beginning at most of us consider it. But there is no question whatever, that every proton, neutron and electron that forms every atom that forms every molecule that forms every cell that forms us, has traveled billions of light years and billions of years to be here, today, making up every one of us. And because of the basic principle of matter, that matter can neither be created or destroyed, every bit of who we are is going to journey on, for billions of years and more when our neuropathways shut down and our last thoughts fade.

Whether the universe faces infinite expansion, or it will slowly draw in on itself until every bit of each of us, along with all other matter in the universe coalesces into an unbelievably dense bit of matter, reached critical mass and explodes - we will be there, every physical fragment that makes up our bodies, continuing on a grand adventure. Personally, I hope that the universe coalesces and explodes into a new universe. I love to think the fragments of everything and everybody that has existed or will exist in this vast, mindbogglingly huge universe will all be smashed together into a tiny ball of matter so dense that it's gravity is powerful enough to draw in and crush into itself, every bit of matter that exists in this universe.

The scale and scope the true story of human life and every other life in this universe, is enough to make a person weep at the inconceivable beauty of it. These remarkable minds we possess - minds that conceived of digital watches and computers the size of a trade paperback and so much more - they balk at even trying to comprehend the scale of our story - the story of everything around us. When you think about it, we, in this tiny fraction of time, on our tiny planet in a backwater galaxy - interstellar bumpkins really, we are truly remarkable creatures. Our existence - how we came into being, is at truly incredible story.

Not magically poofed into existence, not the result of some superbeing mucking about with our evolution - not even the result of some universal intelligence trying to experience physical substance...We, with our digital watches, computers, painfully slow space craft and sometimes wholly remarkable superstructures are the result of a far more amazing series of events. Following what the best evidence, best understanding we have of the universe around us, a story that defies imagination unfolds - so much greater than any magical explanation could ever be.

We truly are made of star stuff, the residue of an immeasurable (at least at the moment) explosion.* We, and every other sapient creature - every other life form - the placement of every bit of matter everywhere is there by chance. We just happened - through explosions and and a nearly infinite number of other chemical reactions. And here we are - quite likely others are as well, on other planets - in other galaxies and if certain theories of physicists hold out, in other universes as well.

If it is possible to consider this story, the story of us, without tears forming in your eyes, I would like to know how.**

*(bastardized in part, from a quote by Carl Sagan, Cosmos)
**(especially as I am finishing this up in the cafeteria at school)

A Fucking Brilliant Time to be Human

It is easy to get caught up in the bad, sometimes outright evil perpetrated by us humans. In just the last 150 years, we have wreaked more destruction than this planet has seen since the dinosaurs went extinct. We still see human rights violations across the globe, sometimes perpetrated by our own "enlightened" governments. In so many ways, us humans kind of suck ass. And in such an ass sucking existence, it is easy to forget the truly wondrous, awe inspiring achievements we have made. It is also easy to forget that many of us are struggling against this ass sucking, to make our home more tolerable, more livable and above all, more humane.

But we are also the people who have managed to cure diseases that were almost certain death and/or maiming, just a scant eighty years ago. We are a people who have managed to find ways to extend the mortality of the general public, even as we have thrown more abuses to our bodies than our ancestors ever dreamed possible. And whatever problems there are for those of us without health insurance, even the poor are able to get unprecedented access to lifesaving medical care - imperfect as that access is.

And we are a people who decided to point a telescope at absolutely nothing, to see what might be there - how fucking brilliant is that? And what we discovered - images that have been traveling towards our position in space, since billions of years before this planet was born of fire, gravity and debris - the very star-stuff that makes up not only this planet, but everything we are and everything we see - every material we work with. Images that help us to comprehend, just a little, of what our universe consists of - billions, upon billions, upon billions of other galaxies. Not solar systems and stars - but fucking galaxies. Numbers that are so staggering, as to be incomprehensible, yet are comprehended just a little, when we look at nothing and notice thousands of galaxies, in just that tiny speck of nothing out there.

We are also the people who managed to send people outside our precious blanket of atmosphere, to walk on an extra-planetary body. That it is our own moon, our own planet's satellite does not detract from the awesome wonder of having sent a human to step foot on another chunk of rock, hurling through space. And we have people up there right now, outside our atmosphere - living and working on a space station of human construction.

And we managed to send vehicles to another planet altogether, to see what is there, learn about one of our close neighbors and see what it looks like up close and personal. We have seen image after image, sent by these probes and seen a landscape that was invisible before, that is not only visible, but has been altered ever so slightly, by our proxy presence there.

We are, to our cores, explorers. We absolutely have to go out and check things out. We simply can't stand not knowing what is around that next bend, what is under that rock - what is at the bottom of that miles deep ocean trench, what is such staggeringly huge distances away from us. We are insatiably curious creatures, with an almost inherent desire to know what there is to know and when we have managed to learn that, we want to know some more. And today, this day, this fraction of a blink of an eye, we are seeing more, learning more - knowing more than ever before and that knowing is coming at us at an accelerated rate.

To think, just moments ago, we were tiny, four legged creatures, trying desperately to evade the smaller scavenger dinosaurs - those old guard rulers of this planet earth, who would shortly be dead and gone. A moment later we were struggling against all odds to survive, to adapt to a constantly changing earth - spending less time in trees and enough time walking in the ground, that our hind hands turned into feet and lost their opposable digits. Moments after that, our brains growing with our increasingly protein rich diet, we started to communicate verbally. In a mere blink of an eye, we went from these tiny, innocuous creatures, to what we are today - so insignificant and small - our entire existence an infinitesimal footnote in the history of our infinitesimal planet, in the backwater of our tiny little galaxy.

And yet we are here!!! Much like the Whos, on that speck of dust, in Seuss's Horton Hears a Who. We shout out to our galaxy and to our universe that we are here, with an unspoken, "we will soon be there. We are no longer bound to this single piece of rock, this starship Earth. We are going places and somehow, someday, if we survive, we will go further and further - because we are fucking human and that is what humans do. We want to know, we need to know, we absolutely must know - more.

If we manage to survive, imagine what we will be in another blink of the eye - where we will go, what we will become. Dream, in this universe of virtually infinite wonder and beauty, of what tomorrow may look like - that you may truly want for a tomorrow, another blink of the eye. Dream of what our ancestors may be - as alien as we would be to our own early hominid ancestors? Dream of tomorrows without limit, so that when you focus on today, you have a purpose.

Dream, because you are human and humans must explore - even the places and times that can only be explored in our dreams

Library Unit Four: Fun With Menstruation

“A Women's Curse?”
Meredith F. Small
The Sciences, Jan/Feb, 1999 p. 24-29

The bulk of Small's article discusses the work of UofM anthropologist Beverly Strassmann's study of menstruation among the Dogon of West Africa. What she was seeking was the possible roles that menstrual taboos could play into “natural fertility” populations. Strassmann believed that there were important biological roles being generally ignored, in regards to menstruation and reproduction.

The Dogon worked out to be a very good choice for study. The Dogon women spend their menstrual cycle segregated to the menstrual huts. Through urinalysis Strassmann determined that this segregation was closely adhered, in spite of most of the women finding the experience extremely unpleasant. This made it very easy to follow the cycles of the women in the villages Strassmann was studying. And with nearly two years of data on 477 complete cycles, studying ninety-three women, there was a great deal to work with.

One of the reasons for the taboo, she discovered, was to help determine paternity. In a culture where the father is responsible for his children and where property is passed along to male heirs, it is critically important to keep track of who the father of a given child is. And when it is everyone can see who is going to the menstrual huts, and who isn't – it becomes easier to determine who impregnated a given women. This is also important because the Dogon people are polygonous and there is no taboo against sexual intercourse for those who are unmarried.

This taboo also managed to make it clear if a woman happens to be infertile or menopausal. When a women in prime reproductive age is always visiting the hut, it becomes apparent that she is obviously not likely to reproduce. On the other hand, when I women stops visiting the hut altogether, is it obvious she is no longer fertile.

Strassmann also hypothesized that menstruation may have evolved as a method for conserving resources – keeping the body from using too much energy on reproduction, during a cycle that renders women infertile for a period of time. Instead of producing the excess that usually goes into creating a fertile place for a potential zygote to begin gestation, during the period of flushing things slow down entirely.

What I found most interesting however, is the possibility that women in Western society are at a distinct biological advantage to women who live within a natural fertility paradigm. The data shows that women in Dogon society, for example, only have an average of 110 menstrual cycles in their lifetimes, compared to the average of 350 to 400 for Westerners. Between reproducing at a significantly higher rate than Westerners, and breast feeding vigorously for longer periods than most Western women, they don't menstruate nearly as often.

I also found the discussion of the way that Dogon culture utilizes menstruation as a multitool for determining a great many issues within their society. While the underlying reasoning is significantly different, it turns out that this is a very useful tool for their culture, for a whole lot of reasons.

Finally, I find the interconnection of anthropological study, biology and sociology extremely interesting. Beyond the subject matter, the cross discipline integration is of particular interest to me – especially as I am seeing that there are a lot of other disciplines and even very different fields of study, that have a great deal of relevance to the direction I am going with my studies and where I want to go with my career. It is terribly exciting to discover new directions, new areas that have are potentially critical components of the places I wish to go – the ideas that I am keen on fostering and developing.

Library Unit One: Cultural Anthropology

“The World of the Little People”
Morwood, Sutikna and Roberts
National Geographic, April, 2005, 207:4 p3

On the Indonesian Island of Flores, Morwood et al set out to find more evidence of whoever had left tools that were more than 800, 000 years old, in a cave. This is not very different than what a lot of archeologists do – nothing particularly exceptional about this dig, except that the island of Flores was separated from the mainland of Asia, by about fifteen miles of ocean in the lowest of seas of that period. This doesn't seem like a very long distance to modern humans who have traversed the oceans of our planet earth for thousands of years now. But the notion that there might have been protohumans this far from the Asian mainland, even ten thousand years ago, flies in the face of everything we thought we knew before.


What they eventually found, in late 2003, was an even bigger surprise than they were expecting. Because rather than finding fossils of Homo erectus, who existed on the Asian mainland, around the time that the tools found by priest and amateur archeologist, Theodor Verhoven in the 1950's and 60's were made – they found the fossils of what was later named Homo floresiensis. First thought to be the fossil remains of a child, it was soon realized that Hominids weren't immune to natural selection. Assumed to be the ancestors of Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis fell prey to the same thing that island populations of many species undergo – they shrank.


But while their brains had shrunk with the rest of their body, they were certainly intelligent. Found amongst the remains of their living spaces, was evidence of fire, spears and the bones of stegodonts – some with clear signs that they had been hunted by these spears. What makes that so remarkable, is that the stegodonts of Flores, were the dwarfed cousins of their ancestral line from the mainland – at only 800lbs on average, these early cousins of modern elephants were still quite a match for a hominid species whose adults were about the size of an average preschool child. Presumably, H. floresiensis didn't need to kill very many of these stegodons, to fill their small bellies for a good while.


But most breathtaking of all, is the short time ago, that the latest remains found date from. There is strong evidence to indicate that Homus florensiensis was alive on Flores, a mere thirteen thousand years ago, with the oldest remains dating from ninety-five thousand years ago. Keeping in mind that the first tools discovered by Verhoven, were about 850,000 years old. It would seem apparent, that hominid life flourished on Flores, for hundreds of thousands of years, without modern humans stepping foot on this island, until about four thousand years ago. While the modern human race was spreading it's tendrils of population around the globe, Homus florensiensis was flourishing still, on Flores.


This fits well with discussions about evolution and homids, really making for a very exciting read for someone who has a strong interest in primate and hominid evolution. Being especially fond of clearing up the common misconceptions that many people have, as to the nature of evolution and especially human evolution, it is very useful to have examples such as this to draw on. Showing that rather than being a drive towards a particular pinnacle of achievement – a ladder up to who and what we are now, evolution is about adaptation and mutations that are not always functional and can sometimes be harmful in the long run.


The other thing that is so very exciting about this, is the discovery of very similar remains at Dmanisi in western Asia, more than six thousand miles and separated by roughly 1.8 million years, from Homus florensiensis. This leads us to more questions than answers and is evidence that there are probably more isolated hominid populations, just waiting to be discovered. And it leads to some very interesting questions about how two populations, separated by nearly two million years and thousands of miles, could be so very similar.


Millions of years after our early hominid ancestors took to walking upright, it has become an exciting time for discovering more and more interesting things about these, our ancient ancestors and other protohuman species that diverged at various point along the way, but who didn't survive all those millenia.

Exciting times indeed...