We

We are all more closely related than you may think.

Figure 1. The traditional stepped view of the tree of life.

Historically, the development of life has always been portrayed in distinct, stepped stages. Life starts at the Root (Figure 1) and through time, evolution irons out the kinks, ultimately to make us, the most complex forms of life on the planet. But this has always left an important question, where did the Root come from?

Life is thought to have started from simple inorganic molecules (Figure 2) and evolved in increasing complexity. Smaller particles combined to make larger more complex molecules which at some point gained the ability to replicate themselves.

This first self replicating unit is called "the replicant" as it was the first entity on earth which could replicate itself. However, even thought the replicant mechanisms were near perfect, every billion replications an error occurs, which in turn, made a new form of replicant. This process then repeated over of billion years until...us.

Figure 2. From the simplest inorganic to the more complex organic.

This process is called abiogenesis. If you wait another 3.5 billion years, the process becomes even more complex, and results in multicellular organisms, like us. Whilst the traditional stepped classification (see Figure 1) is useful to scientists, as it makes digestible chunks to interpret, in the real world the process is much more fluid. Similar to the roots of a tree branching out, although many stems are produced it is still the same super organism travelling through time, as shown below.

Figure 3. The superorganism.

We are all more closely related than you think, as all life, in short, is us travelling through time!

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Further reading

• The Selfish Gene - Dawkins, Richard, 1941. Oxford ; New York :Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN: 978-0198788607

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References