The Early Earth

Before the story of man can be told it is important to start with a short history of the planet that has given birth to us. Earth is the planet that gave rise to the creature man and it is important to discribe the features of this planet to better explain why man is like man. Because as the arguement goes, "if things were different then things would be different".

Although no life has definitly been found on other planets in our solar system. Various findings by many different space exploration missions as well as the discovery of extremophile bacteria and archaea have hinted that the possibilty of life on other plantes is possible if not probable.

Our Earth however is much more friendly to life. Earth's tempurature, it's oceans, the strength of the magnetic fields and ozone layer all influence the great abundance of life here.

Our planet however was not always as hospitable to life as it is today. Earth is approximatly 4.6 billion years old as determined by the radioactive decay rate of uranium into lead present on earth.

During the Hadean eon, from 4.6 - 3.8 billion years ago, earth came together of the material spiralling around the sun. As the earth grew it is possible that something impacted the earth blowing away much of its early atmosphere forming the moon and setting into motion the volcanic activities present to this day. Life however had not formed on earth at this time.

As early as 4.2 billion years ago the oceans may have begun forming. The was much volcanic activity and the sky was full of ammonia, methane, water vapor, and carbon dioxide (co2). These chemicals reacting with each other in the early earth began to form amino acids and evetually pieces of DNA were formed. With more time some DNA molecules were formed with the ability to reproduce themselves interacting with the various amino acids and early proteins. And Life began.

With every new successful replication of every new kind of DNA new paths were formed. Families of self-replicating molecules developed as these lines grew larger they spread out from their original homes by wind and wave and found new niches to exploit for more chemicals to form even more of these self replicating molecules.

As volcanic activity formed the great ancient supercontinent of pangaea then tore it apart into the 7 continents we know of today, the various fault lines and volcanic hotspots. The families of self-replicating molecules conitnued to expand building itself a cell for protection and gathering those chemicals needed to conintue reproducing. Multi-celled organisms began to appear and finally plants and animals began aquiring the traits we use today to identify them.