Outline History of Life and Human Evolution

The following Outline of the History of Life on Earth, and Human Evolution was written by my friend HWPTRA, a Life Sciences scholar. This outline history is a list of some of the significant events during the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history. Any one of the entries in this list is itself a vast topic with an enormous literature (both scientific and popular) behind it; the brief descriptions here are little more than labels pointing the interested reader toward that literature (as on the Internet) for all the details.

The years and periods listed for the events are always to be taken as very approximate. As science advances, the time or period estimated for a listed event can be found to be different than previously thought, sometimes significantly different, and the sequence of events can even change as a result of new knowledge. So, this list is a snapshot of our knowledge today, where we understand that there are limits to the precision of that knowledge. Even so, it is a fascinating and enlightening presentation, which can help us gain a bare-bones yet integrated overview of the natural history that eventually produced us, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Following the outline history of life on Earth, I post a Histo-Map of human civilizations, compiled by John B. Sparks in 1931. To help the reader, I have posted six images of this map: one of the entire map, and five of sequential sections of the map. Also, I list a link to a website that shows a “big” version of the entire map. In all cases you will find lots of tiny print, and may wish to expand an image for easier reading (until it becomes fuzzy due to the low resolution of the original). The Histomap covers the interval of 2000 BC to 1930 AD, perhaps half of human history, and a very late 0.86 millionths of Earth’s history. Enjoy.

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Outline of the History of Life on Earth, and Human Evolution
(by HWPTRA)

If the entire 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history were compressed into a single year:

1. January and February: it was too hot for any life to evolve.

2. March 1st to July 25th: bacteria were the only life forms on the planet.

3. July 25th: oxygen in the atmosphere was finally at near modern levels, and oxygen-using eukaryotic cells evolved.

4. November 20th: animals with backbones appeared.

5. December 22nd: first placental mammals appeared.

6. December 29th: the first apes appeared.

7. December 31st, 6:00 PM: Homo erectus appears.

8. December 31st, 11:46 PM: Homo sapiens (modern man) appears.

9. December 31st, from 11:59 PM to 12:00 AM (midnight): all of human history.

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histomap-version-4

Histomap 2000BC-1930AD
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/12/the_1931_histomap_the_entire_history_of_the_world_distilled_into_a_single.html

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Addendum (1 March 2017)

From:

Earliest evidence of life on Earth ‘found’
1 March 2017
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39117523

Two Flowers, Two Thoughts

“The fact that your talents and contributions go unrecognized does not mean they lack merit. Many excellent accomplishments and worthy actions by individuals go unnoticed, because neither awareness nor gratitude are as common among the population as one could wish. If what you achieve and what you do causes no harm and does some good, however limited and unnoticed, then you can be heartened by a justifiable and realistic self-esteem.”

— Albert B. Coutras

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“As the bee takes the essence of a flower and flies away without destroying its beauty and perfume, so let the sage wander in this life.”

— The Dhammapada, 49 (translation by Juan Mascaró)

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School Trolls and Choice Schools

Multi-culturalism doesn’t work. Every ethnicity wants to promote its own and win “success” over all others. That is why there is a visceral preference for segregation by every ethnicity everywhere. On the idea of integration, American schools have proved that: if they are public and separate they cannot be equal; if they are integrated and public they cannot be excellent; if they are private and selective they can be integrated and good. “Excellent” means every student graduates with a good education. “Selective” means expensive for the average student, and free for cherry-picked exceptional talent in poverty.

To be excellent, a school must be staffed with educators, those who enable each student to succeed at learning how to become a motivated critical thinker who proceeds to carry on their own career. Being an educator requires talent and awareness that can deliver teaching suited to each individual student’s needs. American schools are too rigid and disorganized, and have too few educators and too many bureaucratic gatekeepers and trolls (as in the story “Three Billy Goats Gruff”). These trolls maintain the barriers students are supposed to overcome on their own “to prepare them for college.”

These barriers are quite simply a lack of teaching: a lack of clear specific answers to individual students’ questions about assigned work (“see my blog”), substituting “homework” as self-learning by students in place of “the teacher” actually presenting informative classroom instruction, and an obsessive rigidity about grades and schedules (on which public school income is now based). The consequence of these barriers and the “preparation” they provide is to frustrate natural talent and to inculcate onto succeeding generations the intellectual mediocrity that the school trolls embody.

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http://angelsandsuperheroes.com/2017/01/09/1112/

18 February 2017, response to above, on US Public/Mandatory Primary Education:

[The School Accountability Scam, and mandatory standardized testing] “is an intentional set up to bring about the demise of the public education system” BINGO! “The future of our educational system, and the future of our children, is at stake.” NOT A CONCERN. $620+B of public money is spent on public education in the US each year. The FREE MARKET sees this as a waste, and wants to get this bountiful money stream flowing into its hands as another goldmine of profitability (“privatize”). This is what all the hysterical propaganda (lies) and the push for “vouchers” to for-profit schools is all about. The economic dream is to have Harvard-level tuition for “competitive” Pre-Schools and all the way up: Elementary, Middle, High School, and college. Just as good money can be made from your-money-or-your-life “private” and “voucher” health care (“insurance”), so will parents desperate for successful children “pay anything” for getting their baby into a “good” school (without “those” low class students) which will guarantee (ha ha) their baby graduating into the success class of American society. School privatization is purely stealth segregation on steroids, and sadly, most Americans are prejudiced enough and delusional enough (about their own merit) to believe in this. Betsy DeVoid is not an aberration, she is the face of the popular national ignorance — and prejudice and greed. For these “success” people (who are intrinsically anti-democratic), mass public education is solely for the purpose of grinding down childhood creativity and curiosity into featureless, unquestioning, obedient and reliable robots, to be used as disposable laborers in the economic enterprises of the success people. If the US corporations really need workers who know math or science, they can just import them on H1-B visas from Malaysia or Russia, or wherever they actually teach youngsters. It’s all about the money; it’s all about exploitation; people don’t count because that is an unwanted overhead expense to mechanized systems of profitability (capital gains!). There is no national solidarity, it is all colonialism with a plantation economics mentality.

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Mandala Jesus

Mandala Jesus

Jesus was an old man when he died.
What were his kids like?, his wife?, his girlfriends?
What kind of love and gratitude
brought Mary Magdalene to his feet?
Is there any way left of recapturing
the humanity of Jesus,
or are we stuck with the mummified wrappings
of religion, fantasy and cult?
How did it feel
to sit with Jesus drinking at night
meditating on the course of human events?
The dreams and visions of Jesus were those of a man.
Perhaps we deify him
to avoid the burdens of paradise.
“The kingdom of heaven is within you.”

11 January 1983

Russian-Hacked USA, and Other Follies

Tonight (10 January 2017, President Barack H. Obama delivers his televised farewell address. In 10 days, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States of America. Below are some of my thoughts at this juncture.

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On “Russians hacked the election making the USA have Donald Trump as president, and not Hillary Clinton”:

Reading the commentary and all the comments here (on Juan Cole’s blog, “Informed Comment,” on 6-9 January 2017), I think your consensus is:

#1, that the public exposure of the Podesta (Clinton, DNC) e-mails did sway the election “to Trump,” specifically away from Clinton; and

#2, that this was a bad thing, a cause for anger, and that the perpetrators of these leaks should suffer retribution from the US Government.

On point #1: there has been no doubt cast on the veracity of the leaked e-mails, therefore if a portion of the public was swayed to vote “away from Clinton” because of these e-mails then they were swayed by truthful information that had previously been hidden from them: “transparency.” I favor transparency, and believe it serves the public interest.

On point #2: If voters being swayed by the exposure of truthful information of public interest is “a bad thing,” then those who believe this prefer voters being fooled and “guided” by powerful insiders (Orwell called them the Inner Party).

Those angry that insider (mainly DNC) plans went awry are angry at the workings of democracy with better informed voters. Why not be angry at the betrayal of fair-play and democratic principles that thwarted the Sanders campaign (the most popular option nationally)? Why not be angry that such a monumental betrayal of public trust was done for the benefit of extremely corrupt and deceitful insiders (H. Clinton and associates)?

The effort to pin blame on “the Russians” for spoiling the insider’s succession gambit is just a poor and cowardly excuse to deflect attention from the Inner Party’s colossal failures:

– to devise an economy that serves the public (the major grievance of Trump voters, also Sanders voters), and

– to maintain (not corrupt) the institutions and mechanisms of democracy (the popular will having an influence through voting, the major grievance of Bernie, 3rd party and anybody-but-Clinton voters).

If killing the messenger (Assange, “the Russians,” mystery hackers, or whoever you most want to hate) is your reaction for being shown the truth, then you are condemned to be the victim of your own follies for a long time.

Trump was elected because the public consensus is that voting now has no influence on public policy — so real people can’t get what they need and want from it — but it still can sometimes be used to throw a Molotov-cocktail-by-ballots into the cozy connivances of the Inner Party.

Who is responsible for letting it get to this point? The Russians?

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My view of the significance of President Obama’s administration (2009-20016) to American history is linked below. I wrote it in 2008.

Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/03/20/obama-and-the-psychic-auto-shrink-wrapping-called-race-in-america/

Here is Cornel West’s summation of the Obama Administration:

Pity the sad legacy of Barack Obama
9 January 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/barack-obama-legacy-presidency

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It is as likely that American capitalists will preserve the Social Security Trust Fund and Publicly Funded Education, as that the Chinese will end trading in rhino horn, elephant tusk and bear liver. These are the Golden Cities of Cibola and the Fountains of Youth, which the obsessed conquistadores of temporal power can never refrain from lusting after.

Climate Change is the still wet graffiti of collective world greed pressed within the geological strata of the future.

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Bajo El Sol — Español-English

Bajo El Sol is a song published in 2016 by Diana Gameros, a Mexican woman presently living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, USA. Diana Gameros is an independent musical artist (she produces her own recordings), who accompanies her singing with her classical guitar. This song is a nice example of Diana Gameros’s style of music and performance, which I would classify as trova mexicana (Mexican troubadour). Diana Gameros’s published comments about this song are as follows:

“A love letter to the homeland. A song dedicated to all those who have left their country of origin and who, despite of how dark things can be back home, are counting the days until they can see it again.”

“I miss you. I know your body is gray but I can see the little light that still shines on, my dear and wounded lightning bug. I am coming to you soon and when I do, we will help each other heal our wounds, we will bathe in the sun of your truth”

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Bajo El Sol
Diana Gameros
https://youtu.be/b_VE8N46LC8

entre nosotros hay un río
y novecientos días más
de mi memoria el olvido
quiere arrancarte
pero no podrá
quiere arrancarte
pero no podrá

traigo debajo del brazo
un libro llenito de historias
te las ofrezco toditas, todas!
hoy que la vida no sobra (*)

traigo debajo del brazo
un libro llenito de historias
buenas, malas, largas, cortas
te las ofrezco toditas
gritan mi pena y mi gloria
hoy te las canto toditas, todas!
hoy que la vida nos sobra
bajo el sol de tu verdad

quiero en mis ojos recuerdos
que me hablen de tu querer
mares y valles de sobra
y yo sin poderlos ver

quiero en mi oído un susurro
vientos que vengan de Uxmal
cantos de aves al aire, libres
que no he podido escuchar
bajo el sol de tu verdad

ni todas las flores marchitas
que abundan en tu jardín
ni el rojo de tu piel quemándose viva
harán que me olvide de ti

y aunque tu cuerpo sea gris
mis ojos distinguen tu luz
tierna luciérnaga herida
quiero brillar donde brillas tu

y aunque tu cuerpo sea gris
mis ojos distinguen la luz que te queda
tierna luciérnaga mía
juntas nos curaremos la vida
bajo el sol de tu verdad

bajo el sol de tu verdad
bajo el sol de tu verdad

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(Lyrics above as posted by Diana Gameros on her YouTube page for “Bajo El Sol.”)

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Under Your Sun
(“Bajo el Sol” by Diana Gameros, English translation by MG,Jr.)

A river flows between us two
streaming past nine hundred days
of memories holding you
that forgetfulness wants to yank
but won’t be able,
that forgetfulness wants to yank
but won’t be able.

Beneath my arm I’m bringing you
a book full to brimming with stories.
I offer every one to you, all yours!,
today with no living to spare. (*)

Beneath my arm I’m bringing you
a book full to brimming with stories,
good ones, bad ones, long ones, short ones,
I offer every one to you, all yours!
They cry out my pains and my glories.
Today I will sing them all to you,
today we have living to spare
under the sun of your truth.

In my eyes I want remembrances
that speak to me of your caring
with oceans and valleys to spare
that now I’ll not be seeing.

In my ear I want to have whispers
of breezes that come from Uxmal,
of songs by birds on the wing, and free,
as I’ve not been able to listen
under the sun of your truth.

Neither all of the faded flowers
that mound up in your garden,
nor your reddening skin burning itself alive,
are able to make me forget you.

And even if your body were gray
my eyes could distinguish your light
you tender and wounded firefly.
I want to shine wherever you’re bright.

And even if your body were gray
my eyes could distinguish your light remaining,
my tender firefly, shining.
Together, we’ll cure ourselves living
under the sun of your truth.

Under the sun of your truth,
under the sun of your truth.

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(*) If the “no” in “hoy que la vida no sobra” was actually supposed to be “nos”, then the English translation should read: “today we have living to spare.”

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My Best Friends Are Strangers

My Best Friends Are Strangers

My best friends are strangers
who find my quirks to their taste.
Unknown by me they read my thoughts,
unseen by me they share my visions,
unheard by me they speak my words,
out of time with me they live my lives:
present, past and yet-to-be.
An atomized mass of shared understanding
dispersed irrelevant for evolution,
sunlit grains of sand sinking under
rising seas of cold extinction,
dancing sparkles of consciousness
flickering across the surface ripples
of unknowning, dark and fathomless.

2 January 2016

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