Luca

Luca

"Man with all his noble qualities still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."
Charles Darwin

All living species consist of ninety-eight hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. The last Universal Common Ancestor was Luca, and scientists believe SHE was bacterium, which lived in a warm pond, or maybe a hot spring -- or maybe deep underground in a fissure of hot igneous rocks feeding on sulphur, iron, hydrogen and carbon.

The purpose of life is to survive. That is what ALL species do. They adapt. A species survives. And Homo sapiens have done it better. There are 6 billion of us. In combined body mass alone we are enormous. We are not necessarily better; we have just survived longer, either by luck or by our unique ability at adaptation. We did adapt better given the right conditions to be able to adapt to environment pressure and necessity. But is that enough? Is just being here enough?

Some other species have also survived well because of a symbiotic relationship they have with each other or with us. Domestication is a process where animals have been changed to depend on humans for food and comfort and Homo sapiens also receive from animals food and comfort. Sometimes there is an imbalance to this dependency.

DNA
DNA is the coded genetic record of all inherited behavior and chemistry, including how life survived; how it lived. It is a record and a script and we are just now learning to read it.

Our closest ape family cousin is the Chimpanzee, which has twenty-four chromosomes, as do gorillas and oranutans. Two ape chromosomes fused together and we now have twenty-three chromosomes. Does that mean we are an improvement over the Chimpanzee, or Bonobo, which split from Chimpanzees after they split from us or an improvement over our other cousins? Not at all. We are just different. Many who believe in god would consider that a blasphemy, to consider us the same and not better, but what proof is there that we are an improvement over other apes or any life for that matter?

Chimpanzee and Human DNA
are exactly the same for 13 Chromosomes.

Matt Ridley, author of Nature via Nurture, The Origins of Virtue, Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation and other science books, who is the U.S. editor for the Economist writes in his book, Genome, 1999: "The pope notwithstanding, the human species is by no means the pinnacle of evolution. Evolution has no pinnacle and there is no such thing as evolutionary progress." He says, "Natural selection is merely the process by which life-forms change to suit the myriad opportunies afforded by the physical environment and by other life-forms." Evolution is the process of perfection, an adaptation to conditions. Life is survival.

Humans have an enlarged brain the purpose of which must be to better adapt which after-all is the prime directive and only goal of evolution.

Dreams Made from Rayon
I hear the phlegm of fairy tale jive,
And see the pursuing of rayon dreams.

I am fully aware of wild jousting
In fast forward to nowhere.
Wood nymps humming their way
Through peaceful forests without me

Because I live in turbulence.

The flutist plays
His melody with zeal
But I cannot hear him

for I am listening

for my own death.

I am listening to the epicenters
Their madness on the wings
Imaginary angels and
Say goodbyes to drabness,

With kabbalist nostrums

But we never miss

Our own death.

Each era during the time Homo sapiens have been on this planet is particularly remarkable for the length of time of dominance which can be measured as a "period of time" that has been "one-tenth" of the previous era.

For instance beginning with life on the planet through various cellular forms and the vertebrates, the mammals, early man, and modern man and continuing into the present period, the hunter-gatherers as they transitioned to agricultural and pastoralization were periods of time of about 50,000 years but the next transition to the development of cities and towns has been about 5,000 years. Since the next era of when everyone could read books which began with the Gutenberg movable type there has been about 500 years. One-tenth of this next era, the present information age with computers and communications will be about 50 years, only about half of which has passed so far. So are we on the precipice of a new era or perhaps an extinction?

Each new human era is the development of newer and much more knowledge. More than 85% of the scientists who have ever lived are living today - and in this information age we are learning more about science than ever before. We have just mapped the human genome and cracked the code of life by sequencing DNA, which is the history of life and the recipe for life.
Hopefully, we can and should find a new trajectory and make those exponential advances that will improve and respect existing life instead of denigrating and destroying it.
Muse - Mt Weather - White House - DSA - Humanity - POTUS
Re-up - Coevolution - France - War Room - Ike - Hackers - ENIAC
Teddy - Patriot - Ana-Mae - Ancestors - Hotel - Military School
Army - Special - FBI - Jane - South - Luca - Link - Reason - Shop
Up-Hill - Capitalism - Family - Down-Hill - Struggle - Vagabonds - Left
Children - TN - Liberal - Angst - Faith - Extinction - Curse - Blast #1
Blast #2 - DARPA - WormHole #1 - WormHole #2 - Crypt #1 - Crypt #2
Hack Attack - High Crimes - (BHG) Jewelry - Golem - Pyramid
Epilogue - Epilogue to the Epilogue - No Coherence - Nature of Nature