— A meditation on the forces that shape our planet and where man’s search for meaning fits within the cosmos

Last night I watched the final episode of the fascinating BBC Earth series presented by Chris Packham, which chronicles our planet’s history over some 4.54 billion years, according to the latest scientific findings. These are based on the geologic records found in exposed strata of rock layers, which reveal earlier epochs where life in some form – whether simple bacteria or single-celled structures, early plants and animals, even early hominids/hominins – thrived on the planet prior to five pivotal cataclysmic events that wiped out all life on Earth, including the first Earth-generated global warming event.

Yet eventually life on our planet revived, either through internal processes (eg volcanic eruptions and shifting molten rock masses, which eventually formed into our present tectonic plates) or external ones (eg the impact of asteroids colliding with Earth’s surface, releasing new chemicals and minerals such as sulphur, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, platinum and rhodium), the latter being described as an ‘extraterrestrial rain’.

As news headlines constantly remind us, we are presently veering towards exceeding the tipping points that maintain the planet’s hard-won polar equilibrium necessary for life – or at least, of the present mammalian and human variety – to flourish. Indeed, along with the present extreme hot weather experienced in Southern Europe, North America and China, we are also seeing rapid glacier melt and, with it, a shift in Earth’s axis – the very mechanism that controls the seasons, otherwise referred to as Milankovitch cycles (periodic changes in the orbital characteristics of a planet, affecting its climate, as in the image below [credit: NASA]).

How much of human-generated global warming built up through the proliferation of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions is contributing to this polar wobble versus other internal processes over which humans have zero control, such as mantle convection, is hard to say, but it is clear the conditions of our planet are changing rapidly. Whether our efforts – that is, presuming our leaders or mankind in general can get its act together – can actually avert another catastrophic extinction event remains to be seen. We may have time to learn a lot more about the processes that govern Earth’s polar extremes, but will we have enough time to do anything about it should another major extinction event be on the near horizon?

Life: a cosmic rock dance?

According to the science informing this series, Earth’s climate – once it had one, as initially there was no sky or ozone layer/atmosphere above it; it was merely a swirling ball of gases that ultimately morphed into lifeless rock – has altered from one extreme to another over its quadruple-billion-year existence.

At one point, the fossil record indicates that the early ancestors of crocodiles and palm trees flourished in the northern and southern poles, while at another, ice extended over all the land masses, even those around the equator. Earth has alternately been a blazing fireball or a whited-out snowball, each time obliterating whatever life forms had evolved between these epochs. Yet without the external impacts of giant rocks from space, life could not have resumed, and we would not be here at all to ask questions or wonder at such findings.

Of course, this is an entirely evolutionary view of how life came to exist on our planet. It precludes any reference to a Creator or Intelligent Designer, or even to input from advanced extraterrestrials, but instead grants such intelligence to the single entity, the primal force of Life (perhaps what poet Dylan Thomas meant when he wrote ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’).

And yet there are many things within our human nature and existence that cannot be explained purely as the result of a cosmic dance of rocks. Even our earliest human ancestors, as Packham (below, in a still from the series [credit: BBC]) so enthusiastically points out at the beginning of the ultimate episode, ‘Human’ when confronting the evidence from inside the Niaux cave in southern France (which was recently predated by an even earlier find in Sulawesi, Indonesia, as well as other recent rock art finds in Spain’s La Pasiega caves, or Blombos cave in South Africa), revealed an instinct for communication, a craving for connection, a desire for art and beauty, a reaching out for meaning and cosmic significance beyond the immediate physical needs of survival. Mankind has constantly looked up to the stars, questioning our place in the universe, and our ultimate meaning or purpose.

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It is this trait that most marks our species out as differing from other forms of life on the planet. While other species communicate to each other, humans are still looking outwards and upwards – even beyond our own planet – to connect with other forms of ‘intelligent’ extraterrestrial life (although as my husband quipped after the programme finished, ‘You have to question how intelligent humans actually are, since we appear to be the only species actively attempting to annihilate itself’, whether through continuing to burn fossil fuels, creating nuclear bombs or even through creating AI, which supposedly has the potential to wipe out most human creativity as well as jobs). And even if there is a genuine extraterrestrial signal such as the recent simulated alien message from the Trace Gas Orbiter on Mars, SETI scientists are divided as to how – or even if – to respond to it. What if the aliens are hostile? They might simply view humans as a tasty snack!*

So where did this innately human desire for communication and connection come from? How did languages – pictorial and verbal – come into existence? Where did music come from? Where did human emotions such as love come from? Where and how did we acquire a love of beauty and a desire to mimic or recreate it through art? Or were these qualities somehow embedded like minerals in asteroid remnants as some form of cosmic DNA strands, eventually emerging throughout the 7-million-year evolution of hominins or the 1.5-million-year evolution of Homo sapiens? Are human souls really just a random collection cosmic dust and debris, sparked through multiple asteroid collisions? Are all our most significant human qualities and achievements ultimately the result of a cosmic rock dance?

Surely these human qualities – especially being that they are not particularly crucial to our survival as a species and therefore seemingly distinct from any scientific evolutionary processes – speak of another extant force or being within the universe.

Whether you attribute the emergence of these qualities to earlier extraterrestrial implantation on our planet or to the presence of an actual loving Creator who designed these events so as to reach a pinnacle with the arrival of the final evolutionary apex of Homo sapiens ultimately depends on which ‘fairytale’ you find most acceptable – ultimately, we have no hard evidence of where and how life in all its forms originated, apart from the stories our planet’s rocks tell. Everything else is either scientific speculation or faith – which really aren’t as much of a polar opposite as some may think.

Genesis and rocks

There is actually much in the first two chapters of Genesis that conforms to the evolutionary models of Earth’s history Chris Packham articulates in the series, presuming of course you accept Biblical ‘days’ as corresponding to epochs lasting millions of years. (I realise the following may be contentious for both scientists and people of faith, yet I hope all who read this will allow me this space to speculate.)

A cursory re-read of Genesis 1 shows the Earth as initially ‘without form and void of life’ (Gen 1:2) – eg a mass of gases and rocks spinning around the sun. At this point (4.5 billion years ago), there was still no atmosphere encircling Earth; its nascent surface was far too hot and dry for water for water to reach it. Its atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour.

However, as these gases and rocks ultimately amassed into a planet, it eventually obtained the essential ingredient for life – water – as seen in episode 4, ‘Atmosphere’. Whereas Gen 1:2 says, ‘and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters’, the BBC programme notes describe an ‘an ocean of water suspended in the atmosphere’ that eventually fell on the planet as rain circa 4 billion years ago. At this point, sunlight was already reaching the planet (‘Let there be light’, Gen 1:3) and the Earth’s axial rotation meant there were periods of darkness alternating with periods of light (or the creation of day and night, Gen 1:5).

Another split occurred as sunlight divided the water vapour into oxygen and hydrogen, yet because of the ways these reacted with methane, oxygen was locked into the Earth’s crust. Yet the emergence some 2.7 billion years ago of microscopic organisms in the oceans, a kind of blue-green algae known as cyanobacteria, initiated the process of photosynthesis, raising the levels of oxygen to create an oxygen-rich atmosphere. This corresponds to the Creator’s command ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water’, which he then called ‘sky’ in Gen 1:6, aka the planet’s azure-hued atmosphere – created ca. 2 billion years ago when oxygen ultimately subdued methane.  

Next was the appearance of dry land following multiple volcanic eruptions from within the Earth, which scientists inform us was initially all one massive supercontinent, Pangaea before forces under the Earth broke these up (‘And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let dry ground appear. And God called the dry ground ‘land’ and the waters around it ‘seas’.”’ [Gen 1: 9]). Although Genesis mentions nothing about asteroid impacts or the eventual formation of earlier continents up to our present configuration due to shifting tectonic plates, the series attributes this process of plate formation to asteroids bombarding the Earth some 3.2 billion years ago.

Once the atmosphere, the seas and the dry ground were in place, the stage was set for plants, trees and other vegetation to appear (‘plants bearing seeds according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seeds in it according to their kinds’, Gen 1:12). Eventually the hard rock was broken up and became soil, allowing plants to grow and cover the ground. Some of these first plants were giant fungi known as prototaxites, which dominated the land. The fungi had a symbiotic relationship with other plant species, and together these helped to lock away carbon in the form of coal over the 60-million-year Carboniferous period. Ironically, these very substances created in this period that allowed life on Earth to flourish is exactly what we are digging up and burning now.  

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With plants and vegetation came creatures, starting – according to evolutionary theory – around 538.8 million years ago during the ‘Biological Big Bang’ of the Cambrian explosion. Although scientists cannot agree exactly on the facts and timelines concerning earlier multicelled organisms of the Ediacaran Period (600 million years ago) or what triggered their sudden dying off, the fossil record clearly shows their replacement by the ‘sudden radiation of complex life’, a diversifying of biological life. No asteroids have been linked to this sudden explosion of diverse life forms, yet according to evolutionary theory, these simpler Eukaryotic marine invertebrate organisms eventually developed vertebrae and became fishes, which then evolved into amphibians and reptiles and then to winged birds, as per the fossil records.

Yet where scientists yet have no clear answers as to how this sudden explosion of life happened, Genesis states that in a single three-stage act, these appeared when God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the Earth and across the expanse of the sky. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.’ (Gen 1: 20–21).

I don’t think it is purely poetic licence to take ‘great creatures of the sea’ to describe the giant sea reptiles such as Icthyosaurus and Pleiosaurus of the Mezozoic period, which followed what is billed as the ‘largest extinction ever in the history of Earth’, the Permian Extinction of 252 million years ago. This wiped out much of that biological diversity that had exploded previously, and resulted in a planet ruled by giant dinosaurs on land, sea and in the skies, the Earth’s first megafauna. They were indeed fruitful and increased in number, filling the seas and skies, until another major extinction event – the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) or Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) Extinction – was caused when a massive 6–9-mile asteroid hit the Earth.

Yet this complete wipe-out of all non-avian dinosaurs at least paved the way for the next stage (day) of life on the planet: the extension of mammals from earlier, rodent-like versions such as Brasilodon and Morganucodon from the late Triassic period ca. 225 million years ago to other creatures that then diversified and filled the land, seas and skies. As it says in Genesis, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.’ (Gen 1:24).

From this major extinction event also arose, according to the fossil record, the ancestors of our own species, the hominids and hominins (primates) – ape-like creatures that were bipedal (walked on two feet). Variable dates are given for the appearance of these species, diverging from a Human–Chimpanzee Last Common Ancestor (HC-LCA) roughly 6–7 million years ago during the Miocene epoch (24 million years ago to about 5.3 million years ago).

At this stage, Earth was warmer, and two major ecosystems, grasslands and kelp forests, came into being. Much of the flora (up to 95%) and fauna, climate and even the basic continental configurations we have today were birthed in this period. As this epoch included the proto-creation of the first humans or human-like creatures, it makes sense that it is also included within the sixth ‘day’ of God’s creation as effectively part of the mammalian spread across the Earth.

According to the fossil records, it is still unclear when exactly our modern human ancestors first appeared following an initial Africa-based relative, Homo erectus, 1 million years ago, but it is thought to have been between 200,000–315,000 years ago – some even suggest it is more like 400,000 years ago. What is clear is that the modern humans, Neanderthals (archaic humans that lived in Europe and Western Asia, but were wiped out about 40,000 years ago) and Denisovans (early humans that lived in Asia and were distantly related to Neanderthals, and became extinct around the same time, hypothetically due either to climactic changes caused by the last Ice Age or to competition with Homo sapiens’ more advanced tool use) interbred at multiple periods, as is evident in small percentages of contemporary humans’ DNA.

Therefore, it seems quite a credible explanation – at least to anyone else who does not regard geologic evidence of earlier life forms and/or evolution as a ‘polar’ opposite of the record of the Earth’s and man’s creation in Genesis – that this is how Cain got his wife (Gen 4:17). The image below, from an article on Sapiens.org, compares a fossilised Neanderthal skull to the skull of a Homo sapiens.)

Humans and the search for connection, meaning

The final creation of Homo sapiens is referred to in Genesis as a distinct stage of creation, the seventh ‘day’, when God formed man (as distinct from earlier hominin/hominoid species created on the sixth ‘day’, as above). The main distinguishing characteristic of H. sapiens is a larger, supposedly more creative brain, capable of creating advanced tools, instituting farming practices (as suggested by the fossil records, beginning roughly 11,700 years ago), creating early forms of music and communicating through symbolic figures in abstract markings in cave art, which has recently been posited as linked to the creation of language. The activities of H. sapiens in tilling and working the lands correspond to the Biblical command in Genesis 2:15 to work and take care of the Earth.

The abilities of this new human species, according to Genesis, included an ability to speak, to communicate with God, to use language to observe differences between plant and animal species and name these. It also meant a shift to a consciousness of being alone, and of a need for connection and for love – hence God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone’ and created a ‘helper’ (Eve) for him.

Humans at this stage had an evolved consciousness or intelligence, but not any moral or ethical awareness, or ability to discern ‘good’ from ‘evil’. There is no fossil record of any kind tree containing special properties able to impart these, however in Genesis the evidence of its existence or any ‘path’ or trace to it is hidden, guarded by angelic beings. Evolutionists suggest that concepts of human morality evolved as humans developed ideas such as respect and other forms of socially acceptable behaviour as a result of living and hunting collectively; presumably this also included feelings of shame or guilt through being ostracised from the social group; but what of the sense of either being in harmony or favour with, or being alienated from or displeasing to God and needing to engage in acts of propitiatory sacrifice to rekindle that?

There is debate concerning whether earlier hominins/hominoids had the cognitive complexity for spiritual belief and practice, or whether Neanderthal death and burial rites constitute any kind of early belief system or prehistoric religion. Some scholars posit the existence of early ritual or shamanic practices between 300,000–50,000 years ago, with sparse or controversial evidence from the Middle Paleolithic and more from the Upper Paleolithic eras. These took on a more established form with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period, the period in which Stonehenge and other monumental stone structures were built.

While it is likely these earlier ritual or shamanic practices signified some form of early religion, gradually developing more distinct or complex forms of meaning as humans collectively multiplied and spread across the Earth and developed their storytelling capacities, they are all in the realm of prohistory – before any written records – and therefore what we know of any prehistoric beliefs or practices is purely speculative. However, once humans developed writing – evolving from early neolithic symbols such as those found in Jiahu, China, to various cuneiform and hieroglyphic scripts (as below from Abydos, ca. 3,400–3,200BC [Credit: Wikipedia]) – they were able to record the myths and beliefs about their existence and the spiritual beings that created them, which previously only existing as oral tradition.

For example, in the late Neolithic period (ca. 4,500–2,500 BC), a hypothetical common linguistic (see Gen 11:1) and mythological parent group, Proto-Indo-European (PIE), spread from an origin point in the Pontic-Caspian steppe to cover most of Europe, Russia and India. Genesis itself was supposedly written down only 3,500 years ago, therefore oral storytelling must have continued for thousands of years before it was recorded.  

Although the BBC Earth series does not refer to the cataclysmic flood described in Genesis as one of our planet’s major extinction events – presumably because it did not destroy all life on the planet in the same way earlier extinction events did – virtually every culture and continent has an oral or written flood mythology, barring Japan and supposedly Egypt (although there is one strand of flood myth where Ra sends Sekhmet to destroy part of humanity because of their wickedness and unfaithfulness), there must be an explanation for such widespread records of catastrophic flooding events.

While scientists generally consider the Genesis story of a worldwide flood to be unsupported by the geologic evidence, the recent carbon-dating of shells in sediment in the Black Sea area between 18,000 and 8,600 years ago has been mooted by some as a potentially credible source of this story. By comparison, Plato’s lost civilisation of Atlantis – which most people now believe refers to a major volcanic eruption of Thera on the island of Santorini ca 1,600 BC that destroyed the mysterious and highly advanced ancient Minoan peoples – was oddly not recorded by any other civilisation, despite that eruption purportedly being one of the largest volcanic events in human history; it unleashed 10 million tonnes of ash, gas and rock, unleashing a powerful tsunami.

Nevertheless, being that most written records of major catastrophes that destroyed earlier civilisations align human mortality with morality (as in, a punishment unleashed on mankind by God or gods on errant humans), it seems an awareness of our own fragility and mortality on an unpredictable planet is what prompts our desire for supernatural connection and meaning beyond our mere day-to-day survival. According to the Bible, since the time of Adam’s grandson Enosh’s [meaning mortal man, mankind] existence, men began to call on the name of the Lord (Gen 4:46, Amplified version); even then, man’s awareness of his mortality drives his search for God. The decrease in human lifespans of 970 years to 120 years from the pre-flood era to now, as recorded in Gen 6:3 and Gen 11:10–23, also seems to have triggered a quest for immortality – if not of a physical kind, of a lasting legacy through either genetic descendants or human achievements such as art, music, literature, and scientific or technological advances.

Human storytelling is modelled on our consciousness of our own finitude or mortality; knowing that there is an end to all things, we are prompted to find some way to make our lives meaningful.

While other species aren’t troubled by existential crises, humans are constantly speculating about the end of life on Earth as we know it, with many dramatic theories – both scientific and scriptural – as to the potential causes and effects of a global apocalypse. Considering we dwell on top of a fairly thin, semi-stable crust under which is a constantly moving flow of molten mass marked by violent eruptions, we would be foolish not to be aware of our potential annihilation as a species.

Indeed, human storytelling is modelled on our consciousness of our own finitude or mortality; knowing that there is an end to all things, we are prompted to find some way to make our lives meaningful. In every story, the beginning must follow through to a satisfying transformative conclusion or resolution where boy gets girl, good triumphs over evil, wrongs righted and wisdom gained. Without any significant supernatural or spiritual breakthrough, we seem incapable of simply revelling in existing in the moment, without fear of death or trauma. We find it difficult to consider or emulate plant forms like lilies and simply glory in our uniqueness in creation, as Jesus urged us to do.

Fragile beings on a fragile planet

As seen from space, our planet must seem not only small in comparison to other planets, but also incredibly vulnerable. Apparently, Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut who flew around the Moon as Neil Armstrong landed on its surface, described his experience of seeing the Earth this way:

“The thing that really surprised me was that it projected an air of fragility. And why, I don’t know. I don’t know to this day. I had a feeling it’s tiny, it’s shiny, it’s beautiful, it’s home, and it’s fragile”. —Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut

But it is not only the molten strata beneath our feet that makes us vulnerable. We are now living in the Anthropocene age – a period in our planet’s existence where human activity is competing with the underlying geology in shaping the Earth. According to the Earth series programme notes, human population on Earth has accelerated rapidly, from just one billion 220 years ago to now 8 billion, which has had a horrific knock-on effect on the rest of the planet’s species, as now only 4% of mammals alive today are wild animals; 96% are either humans, their pets or domestic farm animals. And the destruction of our planet’s ecosystems and natural resources is rendering an increasingly uninhabitable future.

Yet man’s time on Earth’s 4.5-billion-year existence is very short – only 0.007%. And if our planet’s geologic history tells us anything, it is that even if we seem to be doing our best to annihilate ourselves by continuing to burn fossil fuels at exponential rates, the Earth is fully capable of both destroying and renewing itself, with or without us. Should another major extinction event occur, the Earth will surely survive, along with some form of life; whether or not this will contain humans is another matter – perhaps when Jesus said, ‘the meek will inherit the Earth’, he was speaking of single-celled amoeba or our planet’s first life form, cyanobacteria?

For example, if a major supervolcano eruption event were to take place, which NASA researcher Brian Wilcox says is substantially more likely than an asteroid or meteor hit, the initial effects would be local incineration and a global ash cloud that would block out the sun’s light, releasing toxic gases (hydrogen sulphide, sulphur dioxide, methane and carbon dioxide) that could plunge Earth’s climate into a nuclear winter lasting decades or longer.

Yet these same forces that have the ability to obliterate life also contain the elements necessary for new life to emerge, creating new, biodiverse-rich ecosystems. As in the example of the Mt St Helen’s 5.2-magnitude eruption in 1980, the lava contained mineral- and nutrient-rich ingredients nourishing plant life such as mosses that helped break down rock and pave the way for a superabundance of new flora and fauna, some of which emerged as soon as a year later.  

Considering we dwell on top of a fairly thin, semi-stable crust under which is a constantly moving flow of molten mass marked by violent eruptions, we would be foolish not to be aware of our potential annihilation as a species.

Therefore, if we humans are sleepwalking into another major extinction event – what some are referring to as a sixth mass extinction, as signalled by the present loss of biodiversity and numbers of critically endangered species – and the Earth is shifting towards becoming a less-habitable or life-hospitable planet, we can take heart from both the geologic record and the scriptures that life on our planet may be destroyed, it will eventually be replaced by a new Earth**.

As for me, when I consider my own fragile existence on this planet, I am grateful and filled with wonder at the multiple processes that took place to contribute to my own physical and spiritual existence. I have no doubt of the existence of a benign Creator who somehow encoded my cosmic and physical dust with the DNA of his handprint. I find the conflicting forces within our planet fascinating yet somehow remarkably similar to the forces that govern my own human story, the very paradoxes – or polar extremes, if you like – that make me who I am. I believe the English metaphysical poet John Donne expressed it best in the lines of Holy Sonnet V:

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betray’d to endless night

My world’s both parts, and on both parts must die.

You which beyond that is most high

Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might

Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,

Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.

But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire

Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,

And made it fouler; let their flames retire,

And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal,

Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

*Note: This article was also inspired through transcribing interviews with SETI scientists regarding the existence of extraterrestrials, included in the latest (Aether) edition of Wild Alchemy Journal. You can learn more and purchase this intriguing collection of scientific and esoteric essays and UX materials using this link: https://www.wildalchemylab.com/ar-journal

**(Isaiah 24:1, 3–6,19-21, 34:4 and 65:17; Jeremiah 51:25; Zephaniah 1:18, Micah 1:4; Malachi 4:1; Matthew 24:35; 1 Corinthians 3:13; 2 Peter 3:6–13, Revelation 21:1).