Soon or later we are going to ask ourselves seriously where we come from? That time did come to me more than a year ago, and then I started researching more about it. I looked on both religious and scientific view points, and I ran into 2 scientific theories. The first one is the big bang theory that describes how the universe was born, and the second one is the evolution theory that describes how life was born on Earth.

What does the evolution here mean?

It is a process by which, species (or lives) have changed their characteristics (traits) over times and passed the new traits from one generation to the next. The traits are such as eyes color, hair color, height, skin color, less or thick body hair, blood type, bird's beak, color of flower, and etc. Overtime the changes could create a new specie. The change is mainly cause by natural selection. The detail of natural selection are not covered here at this time.

What is the evolution theory about?

In earlier on, scientists did not have DNA to work on, but they had time and curiosity to observe all species (both living at this time and the ones already died). They compared anatomies, ways of living, and birth from one specie to another. Scientists just kept documenting of what they found from one generation to the next. Later on, scientists found fossils of lives that were under rocks for thousands, millions, or even billions years ago. And lately in 1953, scientists James Watson and Francis Crick found DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid), which is a building block of all lives and also a blue print that determines every characteristic (trait) of a living organism. Each living being has its unique DNA except the identical twins. This also means that with DNA data, scientists can differentiate from one specie to another and determine how close they are related.

From millions of fossils they have discovered, all documents they have accumulated, all experiments they have done from one generation to the next, and DNA data to distinguish species, scientists come to the below conclusion.

1. All species (lives) are related from one to anther sometimes in the past. Some are closely related such as humans to chimpanzees. Some are far related such as human to dog, fishes, plants, and etc. This leads to the next conclusion.

2. All species on Earth including humans, chimpanzees, dogs, reptiles, birds, fishes, insects, plants, microbes, and etc. have the same origin. This means all species share a common ancestor. Based on what researchers have discovered, that earliest ancestor are the primitive single cell organisms.

3. These primitive organisms were believed to be formed from organic molecules about 3.8 billion years ago. Currently there are 3 hypotheses for this formation theory: a) from meteorites fell down on earth, b) from deep see vent, and c) from the lightning in the reduce atmosphere of the earlier Earth. These organisms are similar to our current bacteria. These single cell organisms are believed to be very simple, not having membrane and DNA as building block; instead they may have RNA to replica themselves.

Here are other things they say about humans.

1. All living humans came from the same mother, who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. This will be covered on another essay, and perhaps it is my next writing.

2. Chimps are our closest relatives.

   • Chimps are our closest relatives with DNA 98.8% identical. Genetic and other studies show humans and chimps shared a common ancestor that lived in the African rain forest 6-8 million years ago. The descendants of this common ancestor split into two lineages - one that led to chimps, and another that led to us. There was another specie that is much closer to us than chimps, but that specie died quite sometimes ago. They are called Neanderthals. Perhaps we should called them our brothers. Scientists consider Chimps as our cousins.

   • Scientists unearthed 47 skeletons of human like creature, and they called her “Lucy” who lived around 3.2 million years ago. Like chimpanzee, she had small brain, long dangle arm, short leg, and big belly, but the structure of her knee and pelvis show she walked upright with two legs like us. Walking up right with two legs is the defining characteristic of human kind. Thus they consider Lucy is the earlier human kind we have found so far; she has half characteristics of chimpanzee and half of human. This may mean that Lucy can claim trees and walk.

3. An ancestor common to all apes (humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons) lived 25 million years ago.

4. An ancestor common to humans & reptiles lived 300 million years ago.

Believe it or not?

Yes it is hard to believe that I am related to the chimps, reptiles, dogs, birds, fishes, and for sure to plants. How dare scientists say I am related to them? But that is what they have discovered from many many years of scientific research. Unless there is another theory and facts to show otherwise, they would say all lives are related. Believe it or not depends on each individual.

Can we say all lives have more or less similarities just by unscientific observation?

From daily life observations including watching documentary films, I would say chimps look and act like us. Wouldn't you agree? For sure they are similar to us more than other species. I would say their internal and external anatomies are similar to ours too. So do their emotions. When they get mad, they act like us; they fight really hard and sometimes kill their opponents just because of their anger. Their youngsters play together the way we do too. They act as a group like we do too when needed. The way they take care their youngsters are also similar to us. However they do have some differences. We are much smarter. We walk on two feet and stay on ground while they walk mainly with both feet and both arms, and they prefer to be on trees. Their body hairs are much sticker and longer.

When looking at our domestic animals such as cows, dogs, chicken, and birds, they too have some similarities to us, even though they are not as much as chimpanzees. Of course their appearances are different from ours; if we look a little deeper, we may see and say yes there are some similarities. They have eyes to see, mouth to eat (beak to pickup food), ears to listen, skins sensitive to touch, and feet to walk. How about the internal organs? Yes they do breath and eat. They have stomach, intestines, kidney, liver, lung, heart, blood, etc. Of course they do feed, care, and protect their youngsters too.

When looking at insects, microbes, plants, then I would say the similarity is very least, but they do reproduce their offspring and strive to live like we do too.

Here is the Basic Time Line of Life from Wikipedia:

• 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes – primitive organism),

• 3 billion years of photosynthesis,

• 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),

• 1 billion years of multi-cell life,

• 600 million years of simple animals,

• 570 million years of arthropod (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans)

• 550 million years of complex animals

• 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,

• 475 million years of land plants,

• 400 million years of insects and seeds,

• 360 million years of amphibians,

• 300 million years of reptiles,

• 200 million years of mammals,

• 150 million years of birds,

• 130 million years of flowers,

• 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,

• 2.5 million years since the appearance of the genius homo,

• 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today,

• 25,000 years since Neanderthal died out.