Why Is It?

[Meem]

... after billions of years of evolution, we can currently observe millions of living species (and suppose millions of other through fossil records) of animals and insects that have brains, eyes, mouths, feelers, antenna, ears, sonar, etc (and the ability to move as animals and insects do) ... but out of the billions of species of plants flora and fona ... there are no "humans, neandrathals, monkies ..." Why do they not advance to more complexity after billions of years?

I know it could be said to be sort of a dumb question, I thought it was at first when I asked myself, but then I kept thinking about. Why are plants the same, minus a leaf or two? Will grass ever have a brain and walk around to find the perfect sun spot, or cool creek for a drink of water?

[SteveA]

There might be things that have evolved more complex than us. Would we recognize them if they did?

For example, if we assume that humanity would be largely space borne within 1,000 years, then this might the figurative "end of the road" when it comes to leaving behind fossil records here or it's hard to say what other technology might come around. Considering how little time, in an evolutionary sense, it took from using primitive tools to being on the verge of heading into space, other than technological remains, we might end up leaving little behind (well maybe we could add another pyramid to the collection, just to leave a mark for a while ... I'm kidding to an extent, but who knows).

So if we were going around finding fossils on Earth of things that occurred over billions of species and millions of years, the might not be much evidence of a few thousand year technological change in one species that might be elsewhere now.

At least that's not impossible. I tend to think that more realistically that we could be the most "evolved", in some senses, species on Earth, but there could already be other very complex forms of life that we don't intuitively recognize, just like a plant or insect would likely not recognize human interactions or technology coherently, but those might not be the results of evolution on Earth and some things might even preexist life on Earth. For example, the Earth itself might even be seen as something alive (it's certainly complex enough to warrant the possibility of something of at least human intelligence, but if it did have an intelligence, it would probably be very much beyond our understanding).

So basically, I assume there does exist more complex forms of life but that we tend to just understand the components that appear simpler and this gives a biased view.

[labelwench]

... after billions of years of evolution, we can currently observe millions of living species (and suppose millions of other through fossil records) of animals and insects that have brains, eyes, mouths, feelers, antenna, ears, sonar, etc (and the ability to move as animals and insects do) ... but out of the billions of species of plants flora and fona ... there are no "humans, neandrathals, monkies ..." Why do they not advance to more complexity after billions of years?

I know it could be said to be sort of a dumb question, I thought it was at first when I asked myself, but then I kept thinking about. Why are plants the same, minus a leaf or two? Will grass ever have a brain and walk around to find the perfect sun spot, or cool creek for a drink of water?

You ask why there are no records of the evolution of plants, as compared to other species.

I would say that there is, when deep core samples are taken and analyzed. As for fossil remains, here is some recent work, at this link.

http://www.b14643.de/Sahara/Fossil%20plants/index.htm

As a gardener, I observe that we are continually breeding and developing new varieties of plants, particularly color and petal variants in flowers, and color and productivity in fruits and vegetables.

That plants have perhaps changed less than fauna may be in large part to their ability to derive the energy they need from the sun and weather, and we may well observe considerable change and possible extinctions of plants in response to recent global climactic variance, because, as you point out, plants have not evolved the ability to 'just walk away.'

[Mikal]

there are no "humans, neandrathals, monkies ..." Why do they not advance to more complexity after billions of years?—Quote by Meem


Maybe we lost some of our information????

Lost city 'could rewrite history'
January 19, 2002, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history. Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 meters (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old. The vast city - which is five miles long and two miles wide - is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years. Debris recovered from the site - including construction material, pottery, sections of walls, beads, sculpture and human bones and teeth has been carbon dated and found to be nearly 9,500 years old. The city is believed to be even older than the ancient Harappan civilization, which dates back around 4,000 years. Author and film-maker Graham Hancock - who has written extensively on the uncovering of ancient civilizations [said,] "Cities on this scale are not known in the archaeological record until roughly 4,500 years ago when the first big cities begin to appear in Mesopotamia. Nothing else on the scale of the underwater cities of Cambay is known. There's a huge chronological problem in this discovery. It means that the whole model of the origins of civilization with which archaeologists have been working will have to be remade from scratch," he said.
'Lost city' found beneath Cuban waters
December 7, 2001, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1697038.stm
A team of explorers working off the western coast of Cuba say they have discovered what they think are the ruins of a submerged city built thousands of years ago. Researchers from ... Canadian company [Advanced Digital Communications] used sophisticated sonar equipment to find and film stone structures more than 2,000 feet (650 metres) below the sea's surface. The explorers first spotted the underwater city last year, when scanning equipment started to produce images of symmetrically organized stone structures reminiscent of an urban development. In July, the researchers returned to the site with an explorative robot device capable of highly advanced underwater filming work. The images the robot brought back confirmed the presence of huge, smooth blocks with the appearance of cut granite. They believe these formations could have been built more than 6,000 years ago, a date which precedes the great pyramids of Egypt by 1,500 years. "It's a really wonderful structure which really looks like it could have been a large urban centre," ADC explorer Paulina Zelitsky told the Reuters news agency.

Indian seabed hides ancient remains
May 22, 2001, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1345150.stm
Marine experts have discovered a clump of archaeological structures deep beneath the sea off India's western coast. Although the discovery has not yet been accurately dated, the structures are said to resemble archeological sites belonging to the Harappan civilization, dating back more than 4,000 years. This is the first time man-made structures have been found in this part of the Arabian Sea which is known as the Gulf of Cambay. The images gathered over the past six months led to a surprising discovery - a series of well-defined geometric formations were clearly seen, spread irregularly across a nine-kilometer (five-mile) stretch, a little beneath the sea bed. Some of them closely resemble an acropolis - or great bath - known to be characteristic of the Harappan civilization. A leading marine archeologist says that far more detailed investigations need to be done to confirm the exact date of the structures.

Tsunami throws up India relics
February 11, 2005, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4257181.stm
Archaeologists say they have discovered some stone remains from the coast close to India's famous beachfront Mahabalipuram temple in Tamil Nadu state following the 26 December tsunami. They believe that the "structures" could be the remains of an ancient and once-flourishing port city in the area housing the famous 1200-year-old rock-hewn temple. Archaeologists say they had done underwater surveys 1 km into the sea from the temple and found some undersea remains. "They could be part of the small seaport city which existed here before water engulfed them." says T Sathiamoorthy of Archaeological Survey of India. Archaeologists say that the stone remains date back to 7th Century AD. They have elaborate engravings of the kind that are found in the Mahabalipuram temple. The temple, which is a World Heritage site, represents some of the earliest-known examples of Dravidian architecture dating back to 7th Century AD. The myths of Mahabalipuram were first set down in writing by British traveler J Goldingham ... in 1798, at which time it was known to sailors as the Seven Pagodas. The myths speak of six temples submerged beneath the waves with the seventh temple still standing on the seashore. The myths also state that a large city which once stood on the site was so beautiful the gods became jealous and sent a flood that swallowed it up entirely in a single day.


Regards Mikal

[RascalPuff]

... after billions of years of evolution, we can currently observe millions of living species (and suppose millions of other through fossil records) of animals and insects that have brains, eyes, mouths, feelers, antenna, ears, sonar, etc (and the ability to move as animals and insects do) ... but out of the billions of species of plants flora and fona ... there are no "humans, neandrathals, monkies ..." Why do they not advance to more complexity after billions of years?

I know it could be said to be sort of a dumb question, I thought it was at first when I asked myself, but then I kept thinking about. Why are plants the same, minus a leaf or two? Will grass ever have a brain and walk around to find the perfect sun spot, or cool creek for a drink of water?

"Once upon a time, there were no flowers".
- Loren Eiseley, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY

The Evolutionary Arrival of Grass

(Excerpted from 'Nomads, Civilization & War: The Hinges of History, by K. B. Robertson)

The only green on the fairly cooled and stabilized planet was lichens, algae, ferns and certain kinds of trees. None of these have seeds and must be rooted in or near water, regenerating only by way of spores. Whereupon the existing trees created the first grass seed.


The Original Dragon’s Egg

An armorized casing, containing an already fertilized living embryo. The first ‘space ship’, enveloping and transporting its own moisture within its protected, dormantly waiting contents - a portable dragon-sprout carrying its own wet canteen, from which emerges:


Grass, The Planet’s First Living Nomad



The Grass Routes of Civilization

The ensuing abundance of nutritional food for the reptiles resulted in the evolutionary emergence of all warm blooded - mammal - creatures, eventually including of course, the horse and humankind. A drop of wheatgrass juice is - of the 6000 evolved varieties of grass, including corn, barley and bamboo - the molecularly qualified mother of all red mammalian blood. Quite literally - hemoglobin is nearly the same molecule as grass chlorophyl. That is to say, grass begat blood - warm, liquid animal tissue. Not to forget in this consideration, the direct parallel of ocean kelp and terrestrial grasses; certainly including the more than coincidental fact that the salinity (salt content) of the world’s oceans is the same percentage of salt dissolved in the human bloodstream.
Unprecedented grass abundances marching all over the continental conduit, far beyond lakes, ponds, rivers and streams; far beyond any other kind of vegetation previously confined to being in or near large sources of ground water. Grass seeds and their contents stoked far flung, unprecedented biological fires - providing a widely ranging salad for the grass eaters, and for all the predators who likewise, provisionally feed upon the grass eaters. Hence, a single blade of grass or bamboo shoot or sprig of wheat, is conceptualized more as a constituent of a unit of a collective organism, rather than an autonomously independent entity.


Citizens of civilization do not customarily dwell in the wilderness. Wilderness dwelling is tribal. When a tribe wanders it is said to be a pastorally nomadic, traveling people. When they are keepers and breeders of migratory animals, the people follow the animals, the animals follow the grass, and the grass follows the seasons. If ever was an original rennaissance - and universal history waxes and wanes with such 'beginnings' and 'endings' - it was in the consequential wake of the profound and botanically revolutionary appearance of grass.

No warm blooded quadruped ( four footed) animals would have come into being, had the grass not designed them. The grass in turn having been designed by the preceding trees, which take their turn out of having been designed by lichens, algae and ferns. Grass began to find a way beyond trees, because trees found a way to become grass.
"Pine and spruce tree spores found a way to become primitive vehicles containing some nourishment for the young plant. Once fertilization was no longer dependent upon exterior water, the march over drier regions could be extended." - Loren Eiseley, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, p. 66

SECURING AN ECOLOGICAL PERIMETER
The emergence of grass permitted the evolutionary passage of all mammals including human kind. There were some warm blooded walking and flying reptiles, but the quadrupeds became warm blooded - permitting a gray matter capacity and metabolism to accomodate 'though computation far beyond instinct', as an exclusive and remarkable result of the development and proliferation of wheatgrass, oats, barley, corn and bambu for example. Foundationalizing an anciently many vectored wellspring of ecological networks supporting and sustaining a plethora of botanical and herbologically based biological life forms, including aphids, butterflys, bees, dragonflys, wolverines, horses, cattle, and then of course there's people...

The grass began to happen round about the era of the declining reptiles, two hundred fifty or so million years ago. The mammals amounted to a limited variety of mouse sized varmints staying out from under the enormous reptilian threats to rat like vermin living underground much of the time and in what few bushes and trees there were to take cover in. The mammals had to stay small simply because there wasn't all that much for them to eat; being mostly vegetarian and close to the bottom of the heavyweight reptilian pecking order. Birds had the same limitations at this time for what amounted to the same nutritionally conservative reasons.

250 MILLION YEARS - Or So - Ago
The Creteceus times were then what scientists call them now: the early moment, just prior to the arrival of grass and flowers, respectively. Neither four footed animals nor birds would know tha their forthcoming sudden successes - otherwise showing little promise - would be ushered in by the tree's issuances of the seeds, and the seed's consequential issuance of the flowers. A highway of, by and for mortal life. Grass is the miraculous answer to an otherwise denied request - or hope - for a free lunch. God presented the Green Goddess, and She introduced this record to the EuroAsian Continental Green Grass River Valley Dragon - Keeper of Knowledge and Life. Sentinel of Civilization. Crucible of War and Peace.

Long before he characteristically stood upon his hind legs, humandkind had experimented witht standing up to see over the prarie-tundra grasslands - to see who was departing or approaching his hole in the ground. The little animal was about the size of a house cat, who couldn't make up his mind whether to continue as a grass eater, or, as and animal who preyed upon grass eaters - this creature wound up evolving into what people are.
He settled for a pair of omnivorous choppers - a combination of vegetarianism and carnivourism- and this wasn't the easy way is what is even more remarkable. The usual decisive shortcuts to vegetarianims or carnivourism were cast aside and the entire feeder and processor beneath and at teh service of the entire cranial vault - the mouth parts - got smaller and less powerful. So that the cranial vault and it's contents could grow and enable more self awareness, which was an othewise completely expendable quality as far as evolutionary standards were traditionally concerned.
The nutrient rich provisional grasses made this cerebral vault and the required enlargement of its contents possible. Using all that grass derived energy to develop brain power was very unusual in Mother Nature's survival workshop. Sacrificing food processing equipment and efficiency was a highly unusual gambit - a different direction - for Mother Nature to have embarked upon.
Whenever a modern day person is at odds with whether or not to patronize McDonalds, for a burger, recall the same self-doubt of the high plains drifting hole in the ground dweller who was having the same kind of trouble deciding which end of the available menu he was going to be on. The sesame seed sprinkled wheat bread on each side of the beef patty fairly sums up the omnivorous solution (so rare?).

Grass revolutionized plant life by traveling in its moisturized armorized seeed casing, to places and environments unknown previously to the experiential evolution of all preceding life forms of green vegeration; being of limited variety and proliferating n a limited space - until trees decided to evolve into what became:

Leaves of grass photosynthsizing light from the nearest Hydrogen star, converting solar into mechanical energy via chemical solutions in water; combinant soil nutrients processed into chlorophyl, allowing food for the development and passage of other life forms, where no such evolution was otherwise possible. If the earth is indeed the mother patroness of humanity, then grasses are the mammalian reproductive organs of that same maternal issue.

(To be continued.)

[RascalPuff]

Slim Pickens At The Old General Store

Ferns, algae, lichens and trees were not much of a global salad for the earth's limited animal population, until grass found a method of making vegetable life a self contained protoplasmic material able to distance itself from a sustaining large body of water. Grass invented a portable package for its own procreation: a hard-skinned canteen for its own soft and moist - already fertilized - procreated self, able to travel long distances as they never had before.
Grass nutrients enabled formerly cold blooded life forms to seek out and becme new, warm blooded life forums: having stable metabolism independent of environmental variances, especially temperature. A corporeal independence - a liberty - allowing space itself to become life's final frontier.
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The Greening of Eurasia
The entire 6,000 variations of grass began with a single method - a revolutionary method - for depending on aqueous solution; that new method of vegetable regeneration and proliferation was to take the water with it wherever it traveled. Grass was the first truly nomadic plant life; therefore the first living planetary nomad - mothe of all seeds and flowers. The original planetary dragon's egg. Predecessor to every form of mammalian fertilization, gestation and reproductive process. The Earth Goddesse's Green Grass Riverdragon.
The revolutionary seed casing and its already fertilized contents carried all of the necessary embryonic ingredients of its parent derivation to repeat the creative role of the proto-plasmatic system that produced it: to produce in turn regenerative tissue of its own regenerated self, extrapolated in a progressively geometric, logarithmic value of square....

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The Itinerant Angiosperm
Another name for the subjected mobile canteen of moisture laden living protoplasm, able to leap vast, arid distances and start a colony of itself elsewhere, is, 'angiosperm'. The traveling genetic code - the nomadic genetic code by any other name; having both female and male qualities. The grass goddess of earth. Soon - in geologice time - to explosively emerge in thousands of variations as 'the grasslands', extending far beyond the banks of rivers and streams - where lichens, algae, ferns and trees were formerly restricted. Along with all the othe living creatures who were previously confined to depending upon them.
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Original Field Infantry & Parade Grounds
Trees root deeply into the ground , one at a time, while grass marches over the surface of the earthly maternal host. In plnat life the tree is the noun that the grass verbiage springs out of and moves away from. Grass empowered primitive plant life to move much more quickly over greater distances, evolving in many more ways under a much wider influence of environmental conditions.
Trees especially were based on large amounts of silicates, to build correspondingly massive groups of constructive cell walls, holding minimal quantities of moisture and what biologically translates as 'animal nutrients'. The evolving tree extended itself to become grass, whereupon the latter inevitably began to experiment with its ever increasing new environments and conditions.
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Different climates, temperatures and soils - all determined by the molten, churning geological masses before there was 'steam' anywhere on the isoprotoplasmic planetoid; derived from the sun, galaxy and heavens. All of these interactive dependencies - these innumerably covariant events - unfolding precisely into the ever culminating present.
The earlier grasses begat an abundance of previously non existent flowers, betting insect forms who in turn provided a host of newly evolved birds and small mammals who fed upon grass and its seeds, who were in turn fed upon by carnivorous predators. Having effected these living variations of insects and mammals, the latter in turn lived to further effect the grass, which became more plentiful than before there had been any indigenous, grass dependent insects and mammals and so on. The deadly - spiralling - feast. The fertilized ability to flower being the sexually bi-polar, grassily extrapolized power.
________________________________
The Original Space-Ship and it's Earthly Orbits
Now that I, the tree, have experimentally become the grass, and now that I the grass have experimentally produced this little furry critter that evolved into being by eating my shoots, roots and seeds, and thereby further fertilizing the earth that I sustain my grassily evolving self upon, I shall innovate what would have been a leaf, for a shell encasement containing the usual genetic code, moisture and chemicals.
But, this time the outside casing will not be smooth and featureless. No. Indeed, it shall be designed to take hold of the coat of another form of life that travels even further - and much more quickly - than my own vegetable based kind. Yes. I, the grass created a vehicle designed to hitch hike upon and be transported by another species. Did I think about it, you may ask... Yes. I did think about it. For a long time. I, the humble grass, magnificently circumspected the entire ecologically rounded gestaldt.

Ground Control, We Have Contact and Lift Off.
I the lowly grass, directed, produced and cast this space ship, right here upon and from the earth, over the grassy plains of this planet. Willed a space ship to make contact with and be transported by another species. One small step for a botanically flowering, nomadically inclined angiiosperm, one giant leap portending all of civilization. By way of the nomadically extrapolating history of grass, flowers, and the mammalian-human family.
The First Extra-Vehicular Ride
The compact, mammal riding seed casing with its humidified, incubated coil of tap root was headed for parts unknown. Very often to be scratched or nipped from its involuntary carrier onto an unlivable landscape or into an equally unaccomodating quagmire. There are only 6,000 presently manifest types of grass, and that is out of untold zillions of lost, expeditionary failures on the parts of these individually space traveling seed casings with their colonizing contents.
Angiosperm did - and failed to do - all of the above. Not to forget the latest emergence of energy pods whipping up all twenty six letters of the Arabic invented English alphabet like this. Without grass and its flowers, none of this highly questionable writing and reading activity would or possibly could unfold. All about the readably legible powers of the grassy flowers.
Grass went places no other preceding vegetation had gone before, creatively seeking out new life forms and avenues of gastronomical endeavor that had never before existed or been so nutritiously or abundantly sustained at such great distances from landlocked sources of water. Part of its quarter million year mission. obviously, was to create a language and an alphabet, in order to write, distribute and read this report on itself.
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Constructive Co-dependence and Original Symbiosis
Bees had a lot to do with several kinds of grass that didn't exist before earlier kinds of grass designed the ever cross-pollinating bees. And so on. Flower arranging may not only be adventuresome fun, it can also be eco-biologically fateful.
From the trees the grassy revolution burst. From the grass emerged with ever more astonishing swiftness, the mammals and especially human kind: the crown - and shame - of consciously living creation. An unexplained morphological island of mysteriouslsy marooned, warm, wet, sentiently conscious, biologically hummming, electrochemically stimulated, cellular containers of water based protoplasm; hard and soft tissue.
This Loren Eisely (The Immense Journey) inspired record can peripherally reflect what it does about this subject; very little else is understood by anyone, about why grass, the horse, man or mastadon evolved and came into being the way they certainly have; toward what such life-forms are becoming still. Perhaps they always will... Although it fairly appears that grass - like the shark and the cockroach - has arrived in stasis at its evolutionary niche, as a nutritional liaison for the evolving ecological heirarchy which developmentally depends on it.

Best regards,
- RP

[austintorn@aol.com]

Our DNA, I think, is still about 15% the same as a grain of wheat.