Ancient Life

On behalf of All the 'British' folk, I know -They mostly want a day off work, the opportunity to pay their bills and put food in their families' mouths.

None of them see much farther than their own personal space.

As for Americans, Iranians, Russians, N.koreans, Chinese, etc... I guess you're all doing the same - No mention 'For or Against' Anyone, anywhere - in my 'quarters' (I got beeg quarters, too).

As for 'slavery' - It wasn't me.
As for 'Cruxifiction' - It wasn't me
As for 'racism/Prejudice' - It wasn't me.

Have a lovely Everything, Lead.

Here is the sequence.

Back on pg. 8 I said -
(Note lack of nationality.)

You immediately replied -


(Note presence of nationality)

Do facts matter to you?

Don’t say that around here!

And I wish it weren’t true over here as well.

In Britain, nothing to do with the empire.

It did not originate in the Empire it originated here.

What originated where?

My point was that the existence of slavery did not eliminate the need or desire to mechanize industry as you said. I didn’t mention any nationality because that is irrelevant.

https://www.livescience.com/dinosaur-embryo-fossil-egg-discovered

https://www.sciencealert.com/incredible-new-fossil-site-found-in-the-dead-heart-of-australia

Largest bacterium ever discovered has an unexpectedly complex cell
https://www.science.org/content/article/largest-bacterium-ever-discovered-has-unexpectedly-complex-cells

Save

Best to watch this on Youtube and read the comments below.

Ancient tooth of mysterious Denisovan girl possibly found

The discovery of an ancient molar — a tooth that likely belonged to young girl who lived up to 164,000 years ago in a cave in what is now Laos — is new evidence that the mysterious human lineage dubbed the Denisovans, previously known only from caves in Siberia and China, also lived in Southeast Asia, a new study finds.

https://www.livescience.com/possible-denisovan-tooth-found-laos

This 830-million-year-old crystal might contain life. And we're about to open it
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1100972368/830-million-year-old-salt-crystal-microscopic-life-study-discovery

The femur shaking up the history of human evolution: Were our ancestors bipedal as far back as seven million years ago?
The bone was discovered in 2001 in Chad. Since then, it has been the subject of a fierce war between scientist colleagues
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-08-25/the-femur-shaking-up-the-history-of-human-evolution-were-our-ancestors-bipedal-as-far-back-as-seven-million-years-ago.html?ssm=FB_CC&fbclid=IwAR1kUrxzO6wsxsnx3UCNrAblRVCa_thxmRuU13jpRCH-p56oG1P8sgAw9BI

Interesting article. Typical scientific back-stabbing and no definitive agreement.

I think evolution progresses in jumps and starts. We like to think that we were part of the progress from lower life forms to upright bipedal humans.

I like to think of myself as kind of a stodgy resistor of evolutionary progress toward becoming human. It's not flattering of myself and is regressive, but it is realistic. I think when our ancestors made the decision to become bipedal, I resisted that preferring to go on all fours.

Before that I would have criticized those wanting to come out of the trees onto the land to explore the resources. I mean, it's dangerous down there with the lions and leopards and wolves and other predators not to speak of all the dangerous poisonous snakes roaming around. No thanks, I'll stay up in the tree where it's safer.

Way before that when others were leaving the ocean to climb up on the land and roam around, I was telling them that I tried it and it's no fun. I prefer the weightlessness in the ocean over having to drag your body over the land.

I think that may be one reason why we love being in the water so much is the weightlessness. Maybe it's not an evolutionary memory, maybe it's just a memory of being a fetus.

One day they will dig up my femur and say, "What kind of monkey is this?" Fights will ensue.

I like to try to imagine previous geological periods and try to relate them to present life. Now, it really is impossible to imagine anything that far back, but it's fun to try. Currently I'm studying the Carboniferous period, a vast time from 299 to 359 million years ago, the coal-producing period.

In the carboniferous period, the oxygen percentage in the atmosphere was higher than any other time in history, about 35% oxygen. It's currently about 21%.

It was that high because of the abundance of land plants and phytoplankton in the ocean. The atmosphere favored plants and phytoplankton since it was high in carbon dioxide because of high volcanic venting activity and, consequently, warm. The two massive continents were centered on the equator providing extensive ranges for land plants.

Trees were abundant and were very large supported mainly by a very thick bark-like material and little wood. When the trees fell, the bark was broken down into a peat-like substance, but it remained in that form because it's main constituent, lignin, couldn't be broken down. The fungi and bacteria necessary to break down lignin hadn't evolved yet, so this peat accumulated for thousands or millions of years and eventually transformed into coal. At the end of the Carboniferous period, lignin-digesting fungi and bacteria did evolve and that was the end of the coal-producing period.

It's nice to think how wonderful it would be to have an atmosphere with 35% oxygen. Imagine how our energy levels would increase, but there is a downside: forest fires would be constant.

I have only in later life learned that emotion and intelligence are much more common among animals than I ever thought possible. It's just that we are the only ones that broke through to meddle compulsively with everything we come across.

The midbrain: center of consciousness?

The ancient Egyptians believed that the center of consciousness was in the heart. Modern humans believed it was in the neocortex. Now there are arguments that the center of consciousness lies in the primitive midbrain, which we have in common with other animals including an analogue in insects.

"Neuroscientist Björn Merker has argued that the capacity for awareness in humans depends on structures in the midbrain alone."

"…the core of human consciousness is not our impressive neocortex, but our much more primitive midbrain. This simple structure synthesizes sensory data into a unified, egocentric point of view that lets us navigate our world. Insects, Barron and Klein now argue, have midbrain-like structures, including a “central complex,” that seem to allow bugs to similarly model themselves as they move through space."