Evolution and the Human Lifespan

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 Evolution is powerful and continuous process that is happening all around us. Though it seems a mystery and a bit unintuitive for human living in 'urban society', traces of evolution has been all around us. This might be one of the most famous images representing evolution. But this too, is but a restricted view.


 We should remember, evolution is a term, natural selection is the process, hence the common phrase:
"Evolution by natural selection". But the question is, can we humans truly appreciate the beauty of evolution? Sure, there are things around us that undergo evolution on scales that are visible, but as humans, can we truly see changes in ourselves?
Well, I hate to break it to you...but no. We anatomically modern humans, we just came around 80,000 years ago. That is nothing compared to the vast galactic timescales. Considering that an average human lives for around 80 years, the 'MAXIMUM' a person can live for is 0.001% of modern human history. Mind you, we haven't changed one bit for 80,000 years.
Consider the dinosaurs for example. How long do you think they lived for? 100,000 years? 1 million years? 10 million years.....? No. They lived for a whopping 165 million years. An average person lives 0.000004848% of that time. Think of that....let that sink in.

Credit: AmeliAU/Shutterstock

Evolution is slow. Very very slow compared to human lifespans. That is why it took us so long to figure out the process of evolution. All thanks to this big baldy heady of a scientific figure. He , was not looking for fame and recognition, but was a passionate biologist. He took 20 long years to prove and verify his theory before he published his seminal book, 'On the Origin of Species'.

Don't get depressed that you don't get to see some 'live action' , but appreciate the beauty of natural selection. The quotation "In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment." has held true.
Maybe not in the human lifespan, but we see it all around in animals and plants.
It is such a beautiful process to happen and yet we cannot see it in our lifespans I feel lucky to be born a human, the only animal (that we know of) who has self awareness and his ability to contemplate and extradite details from empiric observation. We have a lifespan which is not too long to feel bored, not too short that we cannot observe anything, but just enough to see some changes happening in nature. We might not live long enough for kingdoms to rise and all, nor do we live for a short 10-20 years in which probably nothing changes in a city or a town, but just enough to see the growth of cities and the fall of empires. The grandiose magnanimity of it! The sheer less march of time! All can be experienced by this time blog of carefully interconnected organic dung pile in a hard skull.
Anyways that was it for this post. Ciao!
Oh and yeah....this though process was inspired by this video. If you are interested, give some time for it.




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