Human Beings are Complex Colonies of Individual Cells [View all]
Billions upon billions of them. Each cell has evolved to perform a specialized function. At one time, all life on earth consisted only of individual cells. It wasn't long, though, before individual cells got attached to each other. The evolution game began.
Billions of cells, and many of them that keep us alive are not even human cells. We're also host to a vast, vast arrays of other lifeforms, most of them living in our digestive tract. They're responsible for turning the junk food we eat into nutrients. We don't think about them. They evolved to perform those functions, while living their lives inside the cell colonies that we are. It's pretty freaking amazing, really.
And the whole shebang started with single-celled organisms. Every year, we understand more and more about how our enormously complex collection of cells evolved. It's amazing. Far more amazing, I think, than a few words in a book that dates back a few thousand years and offers no details. Our history really dates back 4 billion years or so, long before deities were invented by clever cell colonies.
Science is teaching us about the cell colony each of us is. If we are interested, we can learn. If we aren't interested, we can read Genesis. I'm interested. I've been interested all my life.
How about you?
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