Genesis 1:26, the ubiquity of humankind and the resilience of bacteria

I want to take as the subject of today's sermon (LOL) Genesis 1:26 - 'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' (King James Bible) - but before doing so, I'd like to update you on the latest offspring; Fjörgen*. She is doing well, putting on weight and developing nicely as I am sure you will be pleased to know.  We had a 'hairy' moment last week when she wandered a little too far off my feet and a Great Southern Petrel (oh how I hate the bonxies) took an unhealthy, in Fjörgen's case, interest but a few stabs with my bill in his or her head did the trick and he/she has not bothered us since.

But to return to our sheep (revenons à nos moutons), humankind has presumed the Genesis-like 'lordship', whether sanctioned by God or not, ever since the migration out of Africa as Homo sapiens some 40,000 odd years ago. Homo erectus, who migrated 'out of Africa' as much as 100,000 years earlier, was not so much of a danger to native fauna, being smaller in brain size and less capable of making sophisticated weapons, but Homo sapiens sapiens appears to have used their enhanced brains, enhanced tool-making skills and their sophisticated consciousness to assume a quasi-lordship over the fauna and flora of the planet, killing everything in sight because they could; a bit like America today. 

Humans appear to have gone through a catastrophic population crash sometime in the past, but less than 40,000 years ago, when their numbers dropped to as little as, perhaps, 1-2,000 individuals, if the genetic variational evidence can be believed, but once the population began to recover, humankind can be implicated in, if not made largely or exclusively responsible for, the extermination of whole tracts of native megafauna down through the ages up to the present time. 

As far back as 11-12,000 years ago, when 'modern' humans, the 'Clovis people' crossed the Bering strait into Alaska, and subsequently North America due to a lowering of the seas in the wake of the last ice-age, humans have been implicated in the extermination of whole species. When mammoths and mastodons, wooly rhinos, giant ground sloths, horses, camels, giant bears etc, supremely adapted for a cold climate, began to be put under pressure due to the subsequent warming of the planet, the raising of sea levels  and the subsequent isolation of continents and smaller land masses, humans almost undoubtedly put the final nails in their coffins by hunting them to eventual extinction. Even South America was not safe, even if the Panama land bridge was not still extant; humans seem to have a predilection for 'going to sea'.

In general, large continental land masses, with diverse fauna could continue to maintain their diversity in the wake of the coming of 'primitive man' as the islands which make up a major feature of the earth's landscape became isolated. However, once humans decided, were forced, to venture out to sea in, what must must be assumed to be primitive, rafts, these islands were no longer safe for any large, kill-able source of food.

The proto-Polynesians decimated the fauna of the Hawai'ian archipelago, although decimated (killing one in ten, an old Roman punishment for a 'cowardly' legion) in no way begins to encompass the devastation, which accompanied their arrival with the rats and the dogs and the cats. Australia and New Zealand, separated from the former continent of Gondwanaland by millions of years and subject to their own unique development of avian, monotreme and marsupial evolution, could not withstand the onslaught of the aboriginal people from South East Asia, in the former, or the sea-faring Polynesians in the latter (and their parasites). Vast swathes of megafauna were wiped out by the encroaching humans. Giant wombats and giant kangaroos in Australia, the giant Moa birds of New Zealand, they all fell prey to that supreme hunter; man! The only animals to survive were small and largely inconspicuous; not worth the effort for the meagre meal they provided. Although now subject to the instincts of the predators that humans have introduced; with devastating effects.

It would, for humans, I think, be nice to lay this genocidal tendency on 'primitive' man but the trend has continued. Seventeenth century sailors (and beyond) had no compunction in seeing South Pacific giant tortoises as a source of food and thereby exterminating unique island species; the same goes for the hapless, and so trusting, dodo. (The elephant bird of Madagascar was probably reduced, by encroaching humans from Africa, to a non-viable population much earlier.)  The Great Auk, the Huia and the Passenger Pigeon were obliterated (in the nineteenth century, for goodness sake) from the planet by nothing other than pure, human greed. Everywhere that humans go, extinction seems to follow in their wake; even the whales in the sea-borne environment were not safe, and still aren't, despite your self-imposed moratorium!

It seems that Genesis 1:26 only enshrines, and encapsulates, what humans have effectively thought for 40,000 years. Predator/prey relationships are highly complex in the 'natural' world (in the absence of humans) but seem to balance over a precarious, but stable, fulcrum. The evolutionary 'arms-race' which seems to typify the relationship between cheetah and Thompson's gazelle, lion and wildebeest, red-tailed hawk and snow-shoe rabbit, cartilaginous shark and bony fish means that, predominantly, only the weakest, injured or sick succumb; the predator does not ever exhaust its prey leading to its own eventual demise. 

Humans pervert this relationship to a wholly 'unnatural' degree by forcing the 'prey' into an arms race with which it cannot compete. Human development is not constrained by any of the natural genetics of  normal evolution; it relies on culture and knowledge handed down from generation to generation by non-genetic means and so, 'grabs a lever', which is almost unbearable to withstand.

So, is it possible for humans to survive in, even, the short-to-medium term; 1-5,000 years? (The lifespan of most species, according to the fossil record is about 5 million years.) I, as a penguin, seriously doubt it. You, as a species, will so seriously denude the planet of the many species, which you deem to out-compete you, and more besides, which are dependent on those species, that you will so seriously withdraw from the atmosphere the precious oxygen that sustains you (and us) that you will eventually fall into so much dust. However, the bacteria will survive in all of the inconspicuous places; as they always have. They will give rise, once more, to an oxygen-rich environment and they will give rise to another 'Cambrian explosion', as they did before, and 'life', as we know it, will, once more, exist on this planet; the only known (to humans) life-supporting planet in the universe. That alone will sustain me until I die; and beyond.

So, life will go on; as long as the planet survives in its present, moderately-climated and water-filled form. That is both a sobering thought and an immensely hopeful one. Life, an almost inconceivable concatenation of events that it is difficult to believe is possible to achieve by chance but nonetheless happened, will go on; however long the delay. Life began on this planet some 1 billion years after its creation. It took life another 3 billion years to create the eukaryote cell which played the crucial part in complex, and therefore us, penguins and human, organisms. Do you really think that the bacteria, prokaryote cells, can't perform the same trick again, given their awesome reproduction rates?

In any future re-run of the cycle of evolution, humans will not inevitably be the end result. Perhaps hyper-intelligent fish or veliceraptors or even cognoscent insects may be he final result. No-one can predict evolution's progress. But one thing, from the evidence of the past, can be certain; evolution will always propel any organism to a more advanced state; it's why we are here! All it entails is the ability to take advantage of the environment which nature gives.


* I am sorry if I am preoccupied with giving my offspring names from Norse mythology but my own, and Fricka's, love of Wagner and an abiding affection for the Volsung Saga, das Niebelunglied and the Karavala means that I cannot help it. Fjörgen is not a particular well-known, or well-documented, Goddess but she was the mother of Thor; he of the mighty hammer of the Gods, Mjölnir. (Enter the banshee-like wailing and 'We come from the land of ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow' etc.....)