Mankind Rising - Where do Humans Come From

A Reflection Paper

The video was a documentary about the biological evolution of humans. It illustrated a
great depth of the evolutionary timeline which wouldn’t happen without the existence of water
and showed that we were actually fish at some point in the evolutionary chain. The
documentary also emphasizes then additional elements that have made humanity’s survival
so remarkable such as countless predators and massive natural disasters.
Watching the video, I gained some insights that amaze me until now. One of that is the
knowledge that it took 4 billion years before we, humans or Homo sapiens, were developed
or exist. Having to know that it took such a long time before we emerged on this planet widened
my views of every living and non-living thing. From the video, I must say that luck played a
great role in our emergence in this world. Having been brought by asteroids and comets, being
stuck in the water with chemicals and other compounds, being struck with lightning in order to
form a sequence of genetic material that will soon create the very first cell, undergoing cell
divisions in order to reproduce and survive, and then mutations happened in order to create
different species but only one will be us, were coincidences, an incredible set of
circumstances, that won’t have happened without luck. And with natural selection and more
mutations, we were able to become what we are now.
Our ancestors started as water worms. Sexes were produced through mutations in
order to pass more genes. Natural selection, then, took action and allows more mutations to
refine the cells and helped our ancestors adapt to the environment. As I continued to watch
the video, I can safely say that without natural selection, we won’t exist now. We may have
started through luck, but we won’t survive, regenerate, and developed had it not been because
of natural selection. Our ancestors were able to see because natural selection allowed
mutations to occur in order to provide eyes. And then the brain, nature’s most complex and
mysterious organ, was developed enabling our ancestors to gain sense from what they were
seeing. We were then a fish-like creature called myllokunmingia. But our odds of extinction
are far higher than survival. Over 400 million years ago, our jaws and teeth were formed in
order to withstand our predators. And then, 375 million years ago, we were a footlong armored
fish, but still, we were just mere prey to sea monsters. So, to survive, we emerged to the land,
a brand new, strange place for a creature that has been created and lived in the sea for most
of its life. From there, the story of our reptilian and mammalian ancestors started. A new
journey has been unlocked.
We became an ichthyostega 365 million years ago. A sudden realization kicked into
my mind, we would have been tailed creatures, not two-legged mammals if our ancestors
decided to stay in the shallow waters. We, then, became a reptile, a casineria, and sex started
here, and it has become a great way of increasing genetic variety. And the result was the
masterpiece of evolution, an egg with a tough shell. But the land was still a new environment,
a new hell where countless predators exist. Everywhere was a battlefield. And life hundreds
of millions of years ago was a fight between an ant and a human in today’s world. And then a
volcanic eruption happened that lasted for half a million years, eliminating 95% of all species
on earth, and yet our ancestors prevailed. Luck was, maybe, always on our side for we didn’t
perish along with other species, instead, we became small, shrew-like mammals. But
dinosaurs became rampant, and they ruled the planet. Our ancestors were nothing but tiny
food in their eyes. And then an asteroid hit the earth causing the extinction of the dinosaurs
and the loss of vegetation. Humans’ probability of existence was not even a percent then. Is
it not a wonder how spectacular our journey was? Our ancestors were always at the edge of
their lives and yet they managed to survive.
Their survival leads to the appearance of primates, the greatest turning point in our
evolutionary history. We were, then called, altiatlasius. The biological nature of Earth and its
people underwent yet another transformation during the course of the following ten million
years as a result of temperature changes that reduced the number of forests and affected the
availability of food. Homo erectus, who showed the ability to solve problems, utilize tools,
communicate, and control fire, was made possible by the need to cover greater distances and
gather a wider variety of nutrients. From this point, social constructs like family and rivalry
emerged. And 200,000 years ago, after 3.3 billion years of battle for survival, we arrived as
Homo sapiens.
Our evolutionary journey was not a rollercoaster ride but definitely a constant battle for
survival. We face extinction at every turn, from the water to the land, from a worm to a fish,
and from a reptile to a rodent, we have fought for our existence on this planet. We have
undergone so many mutations for us to adapt but it seems like our environment at that time
was also catching up with all our changes. Maybe, that’s the reason why we, humans, are so
complex and complicated, for we were developed in a very, very tough process. I even
concluded that we were once extraterrestrial creatures for we came from asteroids and
comets. We started as a simple, single cell, then we became sea worms, fish, then a reptile,
rodents, then primates before we arrived as Homo sapiens. We transformed so many times
and we have undergone so many things as we transformed. We mostly experienced being
prey rather than predator and now we are at the top of the food chain. Our existence defied
the law of probability and has always been a great mystery to us. But the most striking idea is,
luck has always been there, even before us, and it is the primary cause of our existence.