Evolution Talk

3.5 billion years ago microbial organisms appeared on the earth. These organisms combined, split, and combined some more, until the formation of microbes and single-celled algae. One of these single-celled algae-like organisms were cyanobacteria.

In the beginning the Earth wasn't exactly a hospitable place. It was hot, volcanic, and oxygen was a rare commodity. So the question now is how did life emerge from these conditions? We are still asking this 4.6 billion years later. Darwin proposed a primordial pond that was teeming with the just the right materials for life to form. If so, what happened in this little pond 3.9 billion years ago set the stage for everything the followed.

Charles Darwin had a hypothesis was that animals evolved due to a process he called natural selection. He strengthened his hypothesis with tests and observation. Evolution by natural selection has held up to every test. It is because of this that it long ago graduated from being a hypothesis to being a theory. It is a valid explanation for the fact of evolution.

In 1858, Charles Darwin received a paper authored by a young naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace. In it, Darwin found that the young man had reached the same conclusions about evolution that he had been working to prove for the previous two decades.

Over the last 150 plus years there is one subject which has caused its advocates and detractors to butt heads, often with incredulity at their opponents stance, and sometimes with animosity. That subject of course is evolution by natural selection. But what does it mean?

On November 24, 1859, "On the Origin of Species" was published. To say that it made a splash would be an understatement. It changed the world.

In the years following his return from his voyage on the Beagle, Charles settled into a life as a naturalist. On all fronts, both personal and professional, things were looking up for Charles. His days were spent pouring over his notes and the specimens he had collected from his five year voyage. He would take long walks to gather his thoughts and rarely left Down House unless he had to attend a meeting. He wasn't in any rush to publish his book however. He knew that a possible backlash was in store for him when he did. Whether he liked it or not, his views were about to find themselves on the world's stage.

Charles Darwin, at 22, had never sailed before. With his notebooks, gear, rifles, and trunks loaded, he stood on the deck of the HMS Beagle to bid England farewell. The date was 12/27/1831.

Charles Darwin will be forever known as the man who came up with the brilliant, and magnificent, idea that life evolved on this planet from a common ancestor and that the driver, or the mechanism behind this, is natural selection.

If you've ever wondered what all of the fuss was about, or how evolution works, then you've come to the right place. Over the next few weeks, months, and years, we will look at Darwin's revolutionary theory and what it means to the life we see around us.