Hacking Darwin

Scientists and theologians can debate whether the first spark of life on our planet sprang from thermal vents on the ocean floor or divine inspiration (or both), but most everyone who believes in science recognizes that around 3.8 billion years ago the first single-cell organisms emerged. These microorganisms would have died after one generation if they couldn’t find a way to reproduce. But life found a way, and the microbes that started dividing were the ones able to keep their little microbial families going. If each division of these early cells had been an exact copy of the parent, our world would still be occupied solely by these single-cell creatures.

But that’s not what happened.

The history of our species is the story of little errors and other changes that kept popping up in the reproduction process.

After a billion years of these small variations created a vast number of slightly different models, one or more of them transformed into simple, multicellular organisms. Still not much by today’s standards, these organisms had the