For thousands of years, mankind considered itself the pinnacle of life’s creation on a planet sitting in the center of the universe.The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body (2013) The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body. I can imagine few things more beautiful or intellectually profound than finding the basis for our humanity, and remedies for many of the ills we suffer, nestled inside some of the most humble creatures that have ever lived on our planet. What do billions of years of history mean for our lives today? Answers to fundamental questions we face-about the inner workings of our organs and our place in nature-will come from understanding how our bodies and minds have emerged from parts common to other living creatures.Our fish ancestors had internal and external nostrils, too, and to nobody’s surprise these are the same fish that have armbones and other features in common with us.Chapter 7 “Adventures in Bodybuilding” (pp.We, like all the animals and plants that have ever lived, are recent crashers at the party of life on earth. The first animal with a head did not appear until October. Until June, the only organisms were single-celled microbes, such as algae, bacteria, and amoebae. Take the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the present.We are not separate from the rest of the living world we are part of it down to our bones and, as we will see shortly, even our genes. From common parts came a very unique construction. In fact, knowing something about the deep origins of humanity only adds to the remarkable fact of our existence: all of our extraordinary capabilities arose from basic components that evolved in ancient fish and other creatures. Do the facts of our ancient history mean that humans are not special or unique among living creatures? Of course not.Just as Darwin’s theory predicted: at the right time, at the right place, we had found intermediates between two apparently different kinds of animals.Chapter 1 “Finding Your Inner Fish” (p.The order of fossils in the world’s rocks is powerful evidence of our connections to the rest of life.Everything changes when we look at the evidence what looks impossible actually happened.

Quotes Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (2008) Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. 1.2 The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body (2013).1.1 Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (2008).

Finding your inner fish