Some old things just persist. Equisetum, for example, is an example of a “living fossil.” Commonly called horsetail, the plant’s ancestors were abundant more than 250 million years ago. Some of its predecessors, unlike their living counterpart, grew as tall as an oak tree.
There are other “living fossils.” The horseshoe crab (no relation to either the horsetail or horses, but related to spiders) has also been around in different forms for a very long time, about 450 million years, give or take a week. Then there is Latimeria, or the Coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish that has connections to those creatures that first emerged from the sea to occupy the land. This almost two-meter-long fish was thought to be extinct until some fishermen pulled one up from the deep.
It’s tough to stay around for a long time on a changing planet. Continents move, seafloors form, spread, and dive to destruction in the mantle, proportions of atmospheric components vary, and ocean chemistry changes. Surviving for millions of years is quite a feat for any group of organisms.
Humans have not been around for as long as horsetails, horseshoe crabs, or coelacanths, but we have a couple of hundred thousand years under our belts. In that time we have established another kind of fossil record that has its own “living fossils”: A set of understandings on how the world works. Our philosophical, psychological, and social ideas are, in fact, just more of the same, rebirths or rediscoveries in different times. Okay, there are slight variations on themes, but, like the horsetails, horseshoe crabs, and coelacanths, the underlying structures are remarkably similar to those of the ancestors. How different from our predecessors are we? In fact, we are intellectual fossils. Want a different society? Think things will be egalitarian? Want peace and prosperity to prevail? Want your perception of the world to reflect “truth”? Think you have a handle of the meaning of life? Look around. There appear to be a few “families” of thought, each having spawned half dozen or so genera of ideas and a limited number of idea species. Worldviews come and go. For every generation they seem new; for the ensuing generations they seem old. Some worldviews become ostensibly extinct until they are rediscovered like the Coelacanth in 1938.
Think of your worldview as an organism. What are its ancestors? How does its present structure differ from its predecessor forms? How is it the same? I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you are a living fossil.
There are other “living fossils.” The horseshoe crab (no relation to either the horsetail or horses, but related to spiders) has also been around in different forms for a very long time, about 450 million years, give or take a week. Then there is Latimeria, or the Coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish that has connections to those creatures that first emerged from the sea to occupy the land. This almost two-meter-long fish was thought to be extinct until some fishermen pulled one up from the deep.
It’s tough to stay around for a long time on a changing planet. Continents move, seafloors form, spread, and dive to destruction in the mantle, proportions of atmospheric components vary, and ocean chemistry changes. Surviving for millions of years is quite a feat for any group of organisms.
Humans have not been around for as long as horsetails, horseshoe crabs, or coelacanths, but we have a couple of hundred thousand years under our belts. In that time we have established another kind of fossil record that has its own “living fossils”: A set of understandings on how the world works. Our philosophical, psychological, and social ideas are, in fact, just more of the same, rebirths or rediscoveries in different times. Okay, there are slight variations on themes, but, like the horsetails, horseshoe crabs, and coelacanths, the underlying structures are remarkably similar to those of the ancestors. How different from our predecessors are we? In fact, we are intellectual fossils. Want a different society? Think things will be egalitarian? Want peace and prosperity to prevail? Want your perception of the world to reflect “truth”? Think you have a handle of the meaning of life? Look around. There appear to be a few “families” of thought, each having spawned half dozen or so genera of ideas and a limited number of idea species. Worldviews come and go. For every generation they seem new; for the ensuing generations they seem old. Some worldviews become ostensibly extinct until they are rediscovered like the Coelacanth in 1938.
Think of your worldview as an organism. What are its ancestors? How does its present structure differ from its predecessor forms? How is it the same? I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you are a living fossil.
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