The stromatolites gave rise to life on Earth, then became a food themselves and were eaten out of existence.
Western Australia has some 7,800 miles of coastline and about three dozen coastal communities.
The coastline of WA north of Perth is pristine and untouched by development.
Beyond Karbarri (a little fishermen town built on a long sheltered bay) there is not a single turn fro some 200 miles to Carnavon and just one side road to the sea.
This is the road less travelled, the road to my destination: Shark Bay Road. In the middle of a featureless nowhere I came to the turnoff to Hamelin Pool.
When I stopped, it was amazingly hot, a breeze from the sea brought just more heat. In front of me, a sunny bay, flat, calm and very special.
Across the water a long sandbar, a thirty mile long dune barrier nearly enclosed the bay with warm, shallow and very saline waters that once prevailed across the planet.
"We talk about 3.1 billion years ago," a fellow traveller, geologist Ben reminded me. "Stromatolites are like corals, all of their life is on the surface. "
We watched tiny bubbles of oxygen rising continuously up. "They are produced by algae-like micro-organism living on the surface of the rocks, about 3 billion of them to the square yard." I looked at Ben in a sheer wonderment.
"Each of them capturing a molecule of carbon dioxide and a tiny beat of energy from the sun and combining them to fuel its unimaginably modest ambition to exist, to live just like us." He smiled at me.
"But they are more important than us, aren't they?" I smiled back. "Yep, they produce the puff of oxygen. For two billion years this is all the life there was on earth."
"So what is so special about those nearly invisible corals?" I tried hard to recognize theirs shapes in the water. "They are the first building block of life, the stromatolites raised the oxygen level in the atmosphere to 20 per."
"I see, enough to allow the development of other, more complex life forms," I added hustily.
"Exactly,' he nodded satisfied, that I understood finally: " The world as we recognize it now started right there, they created me and you among other things."
There we were, halfway up the West Australian Coast on the very edge of the world in a humble 'thank you pose' to those shapeless rocks under water.
On the way back to Perth he winked at me: "Do you know that stromatolites don't exist elsewhere anymore, you saw something that majority people will not."
"Is that so, why?" I looked at him surprised. "All other stromatolites all around the world were washed away by stronger tides and eaten..."
"Isn't that the same old story, being destroyed by those you helped created?" I sighed sadly. "But not in our inhospitable state," he laughed: "Here nothing else can survive the bitter salt waters...just them, lucky for us."
"Thanks for sharing your knowledge of stromatolites with me," I sqeezed his hand, while he replied: "Knowledge is a basic liberty and a right, not a private good like most academic publishers, IP lawyers and universities would like us to think."
"This is what you protested against in February, is it, the big journals monopolising, profiteering and imposing large fees and restrictions on public access to the science." I remembered suddenly.
"More than 8,000 scientists were there, not only me," he smiled back: "More than three quarters of the world's science is funded by the general public, via taxes and with the intention of public benefit."
"But academic publishers and universities claim that giving them private control of knowledge allow them to see it commercialised and applied." I added.
"More than anything else, knowledge defines the prosperity and progress of society," he argued with me...
"Free and widespread access to scientific knowledge via the Internet will generate greater economic, social and environmental benefits...
...especially in poorer countries, for all of humankind and the planet we inhabit." He finished truimphantly on a high note and I couldn't do anything just to agree.
We both know, for the sake of humanity facing a challenging and dangerous future, we need to change...
and yet 'superior few' decide for all of us what change is needed...
SUPERIORITY BY FORCE
on that little rock of ours,
everything here knows its place:
the animals,
the birds,
the trees,
moss
and rocks,
everything
but us...
The evolution of where
I can be talking to you
right now
from me
being a piece of carbon
three billions years ago.
70,000 years
is an amazing path,
the movement from all fours,
to ape,
to hominid,
to standing
to loosing our hair,
to caveman who burns fire,
then realises a dead entelope
tastes better cooked,
and from that meat comes grease
from which
once he makes a candle,
but not yet....
In the flickering light
I see
the shadow of a man
waiting for his son
to be born.
He looks at the limestone roof
of his cave,
a bit dirty
with the fire at night
to keep his family warm,
and then
picking up a lump of charcoal
he starts to draw
to kill the time,
the walls are filled
with outlines of animals,
he hunts to survive,
for his newborn son to see.
Then he outlines
his body shape
and asks himself:
"Who created me?"
A baby's cry
breaks the silence of the cave
His name is 'Burning light'
a tiny,
sickly looking
the 'runt of the litter.'
The ninth child
his mother has carried.
It is a hard world that he has been born into,
his father stops drawing
and picks up a wooden club.
There is a sudden rush,
an intruder in their cave
and burning light is out.
The father is killed
and the intruder takes his place.
He asks his new wife to collect sticks
so he can start the fire again.
The mother goes out
with her dead newborn
in her arms,
her children following her,
they know what to do,
it happened before,
back in the cave,
the makeover takes place,
black ashes are used
to cover pictures on the walls,
the question of creation
is replaced with the preservation
of self
and your genes
by any means.
Superiority by force
used in different ways,
patterns are changing
over centuries.
People used religion
as an excuse to kill.
Massacres of colonisation,
in just over one hundred years
nearly wiped out
all indigenous populations
over the world,
their survivors
still struggling
to find out how to live.
Politics
ideology
and race
are behind
the modern days
killing and violence.
And yet the motivation
behind brutal acts,
the universal nature
of aggression
bloodshed,
the fascinating topic
of violence
is a part and parcel
of the way
we represent the world around us.
The message we convey today
didn't change from the caveman's day:
'It is acceptible to use force
if you have means and power to do so.'
Living on the third rock from the sun,
from the day one,
we have tried
and keep competing
for the better spot,
for the opportunity to shine
in the warm, life-giving rays
that formed 5 billion years ago.
The first stars formed
out of the sea
of hydrogen and helium
created just after the Big Bang.
If the universe began with a bang,
how will it end?
We will never know,
not being there at the start,
or being part of its creation
neither we are creators of life,
that comes from stars.
3.1 billions of years ago
our own Earth
cooled down
cooled down
and the first life
appeared in ocean
every 12 millions years
new species doubled
leading to us,
at the end of that long,
long line,
and we keep asking,
just like once,
a caveman did,
'Who created us?'
Our universe is expanding
quickly over time
soon the light from our nearby galaxies
will not be able to reach us,
we will be more lonely,
than ever before,
and yet
in spite of the world wide web
we keep distance
from each other
just like before...
There are about a billion stars
in the Milky Way,
that is just one
of billions upon billions
of other galaxies
in the universe.
Some people keep asking:
"If there is intelligent life on other planets,
why haven't we heard from them?"
They don't seem to comprehend,
how insignificant we really are,
we would not be able
to easily realise
our own existence
on even the closest of stars.
Our universe is made
of more that 70 per cent
of mysterious stuff
that we know nothing about.
It causes gravity to push
causing the universe to expand forever.
The concept, most of us
can not even comprehend,
so we don't even try,
instead
we keep fighting
our own little wars.
The Universe is seen
as an inseparable reality
always in a state of change
always in motion
interactive organic
spiritual and material.
Everything is inextricably linked.
On our planet
life is constantly evolving
occurences continually
alter the environment,
the altered environenment in turn
modifies the potential realities
and challenges that life presents.
Get away from force
step away from that superficial,
superior self.
Emerge yourself back
into the natural world,
and try to understand it
through science and philosophy
and then
by using law of the natural world
with the principles
of vibration
and interaction
you can alter the environment
and support positive change
in every area of your life
and lives of others.
Replace your superiority with knowledge,
knowledge was never a matter of geography,
it overflows all maps that exist,
then you will not need force any more,
just your imagination...
I wish to say, there is a way out,
but there is not...
And yet the superior few
have exlusive control over new knowledge
and everyone else must pay them
to see or use it.
Knowledge vitally needed
by human society
to deal with disease,
climage change
and poverty,
that could save billions of lives,
accelerate global economic growth
and enhance sustainability
is being locked up
privately exploited
and much of it being wasted.
Superiority by force
in new age
a minority against majority
a fresh case of private greed
triumphing
over public good.
No comments:
Post a Comment