We

We are all more closely related than you think. The traditional way to view how life developed on earth was in stages (as you can see to the right). The tree illustrates how all life was once one thing (the Root) and progresses into being us, the most complex form of life on the planet.

But the root has always posed a philosophical problem.Where did it come from? What came first the chicken or the egg? It is thought life started from simple inorganic molecules, which interacted to make other molecules which could replicate themselves. Imagine, the simplest thing that can replicate itself, however every billion replications an error occurs making a new type of replicant which then over time repeats this process . Add a dash of evolution and a billion years later you get life...

Wait another 3.5 billion years, and it becomes so complex it is us. Whilst the traditional stepped classification is useful to scientists, as it makes digestible chunks, in the real world the process was much more fluid. Similar to the roots of a tree branching out, although many stems are produced it is still the same macro organism travelling through time, as shown below.

We are all more closely related than you think as we are simply the structures that result from our replicating material, DNA. Much the same as how html is the code that built this website.