The Mineral Eaters: Evolution Its Amazing Truths and Neglected Mysteries

By Beck Anamin

One could think of The Mineral Eaters as a mosaic of the knowledge in books separately portraying the evolutions of the universe, the planet, life, and our species. While portraying evolution from the moment the universe seed opened, the author depicts major mysteries, and points to unresolved issues.
The first chapter begins with a personal perspective on competing scientific 'encampments,' truth seeking, and the equivalence of the 'God' of religions, the 'Absolute' of philosophers, the 'Quantum Vacuum' of scientists, and the 'emptiness' of others; from there, the book represents all such concepts with the symbol Õ.
An evolution timeline that begins with the emergence of the universe from the Õ existence is a major theme. It proceeds to steps leading to the Big Bang, formation of space and matter, and the assembling of the cosmos. Next, is the evolution of our planet and its hosting of life. The development of simple and then complex life forms from the early population of bacteria becomes a fascinating story.
The timeline winds through many species to the eventual arrival of the apes, hominoids, hominids, and the Homo toolmakers. Observing this period of evolution brought a new understanding of a wondrous, awe inspiring 5-step cyclic process of evolution that continually repeats (stabilizationthreat interbreeding mosaic offspringconsolidation to speciescontraction of speciesstabilization).
The spectacular worldwide spread of Homo erectus (dubbed as Nomad), leads to the suddenness of a common body frame in all mosaics (dubbed as Anatomics). Anatomics quietly become defacto Homo sapiens (dubbed as Eden People). It does not take long for the species to become the "Mineral Eaters."
A surprising revelation came about during a summation: the evolution of new forms of life has steadily accelerated over its billions of years. That pace could lead to a next step in the near future; projection into the future identifies the threat that could trigger it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543950670

Book preview

© 2018 Beck Anamin All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-54395-066-3 ebook 978-1-54395-067-0

To all members of the species of which I am part, acting as one, creating its future.

PREFACE

About the Author

These two excerpts from page 1, will give you the flavor of the author’s quest:

Perhaps in 1936 a virus entered an embryo sack, the laws of karma came into play, or a mother-to-be drank or smoked something insidious. … Whatever the reason, … something shanghaied a still-forming mind before age eight. It put a … compulsion into its psyche … and a seared thought into its consciousness. Truth exists. … sometime after five decades of living, something anchored one foot of that mind on each side of the Science/Faith fence, and repeated the message. Truth exists."

*

"Paths take you where they will: this one wove its way into No One’s Land, where bullets kept the air hot, and bombs pockmarked the circumference. The lone occupant of that unenvied space was not under attack, a participant in the wars, nor a spy for any of the warring groups. As a free-lance reporter without nation or allegiance, searching for the reality beyond the spoken bullets and written bombs, he chose to be there in the ‘Field of Truth.’ … Contrary to our perception of the quiet reasoned nobility of science and the serenity of faith, the well-armed combatants claimed baseline loyalty to the Science Sapiens Empire or the Faith Sapiens Empire.

Although the author had pertinent science education, he recognized his incompatibility with scientific culture and academia: he never became a scientist. Yet, the undeniable Drive for Truth held through the many decades of marriage, children, work, divorce, retirement and the rest of living. Three interweaving Truth books emerged from No One’s Land.

The Book

The aim of The Mineral Eaters is to display evolution as it actually happened from the instant of universe birth to today, with as much Truth as currently possible. It traces the symbiotic evolutions of the cosmos, the planet, planetary life from bacteria through the major kingdoms, and the beings on the path from apes to today’s Homo sapiens (‘Eden People’).

Fact and Belief - Truth and Untruth

A Call to Scientists

As the author’s searching for knowledge and answers pressed forward, it became mandatory to clearly discriminate between scientific belief and fact, which is not an easy job. That hard won discrimination between truth and untruth caused the book to include calls for scientists to enter many explorations not yet attempted. He saw that their existing beliefs, structures, loyalties, and even their choice of words block their escape from their organized encampments and the wars with other encampments. It is not a deliberate, intended, or adversarial call: it just happened as the book developed. As an example, one questionable belief is that the universe and every event in its creation and evolution were nothing but statistically random uncaused ‘accidents.’ From the author’s point of view, that would be a good thing for them to believe. At least as a personal theory of the moment, accidental happenings cannot trigger hostile thoughts against a statistically random author chosen by mathematics to deliver a message. Reality is not as kind as theory is.

Integrate Beliefs

A Call to Religionists

The book also carries a call to religionists to enter a new integrative frame of mind. They, of course, will not accept the viewpoint describing an accidental universe, with accidental creations. Claiming that writing the book was a random accident, would not give the author much protection from their hostility. Yet, they too could recognize the writing as a no-fault situation, seeing that their version of God made it happen through this author, who is just a delivery vehicle. That is another good lesson in the difference between theory and reality.

The spontaneously developing call to them suggests that they consider that the wondrous and very real God, by any of the hundreds of names religious people use to represent it, and war over, is wondrously capable of having very intricate Laws and processes by which it creates things; that it underlies everything that the scientists study. Why not accept that scientists spend their lives studying how God does things, even if the rules of the science-clan do not allow them to call it that.

It may be that religionists need to escape from their bondage of perceiving God in human form, with human qualities rather than in god form with god qualities: a god is so much more capable than a human is. It may be time for scientists to consider that before there was the universe there was already Drive to create it, and that they do not have to, and should not, call that Drive ‘God,’ because it may be totally different than any concept of God anyone has.

The Unsolved and Largely Ignored Mysteries

During its explorations, the book opens to view the major mysteries of all time, mysteries that have been exempt from serious and committed scientific study, as if forbidden subjects:

The non-universe ‘nothing that is something’ that was present when there was no universe, which scientists call the Quantum Vacuum or ‘field of potential energy,’ is real: it exists and has characteristics.

An unknown process exists by which ‘nothing that is something’ transforms some of its nature to universe seeds.

A highly complex, fully developed original Life form suddenly came about when the planet was ready to sustain it.

Consciousness clearly exists beyond the brain, perhaps in everything.

Causation exists: even the scientists’ mathematics that drives ‘random accidental happenings’ is causation.

The ‘nothing that is something’ is causative or we would not exist.

Drive to move forward exists in every part and aspect of the cosmos.

Underlying Principles

The author suggests that certain underlying principles are beyond debate:

The nothing that is something exists, without beginning or end.

Everything that has a beginning and end derives from the nothing that is something. It is the eternal source.

The nothing that is something contains the ‘raw stuff’ for making everything in the universe.

The nothing that is somethingis the eternal gods, goddesses, and God by many names of the religious minded.

The nothing that is somethingis the eternal presence, godness, and Absolute of the spiritually minded.

If Mathematics created everything in the universe, as scientists suggest, the nothing that is somethingis the Laws of Mathematics, mathematical probability causation, and their infinite field of potential energy.

Nothing that is Something

Before the beginning of the universe, there was beginningless, endless, eternal nothing that is something. Scientists tell us that the context from which the universe birthed was and is a ‘field of potential energy’ or the ‘Quantum Vacuum’ (emptiness). They never take it any further than that, to try to understand what is truly there. They do not see how much their wording limits their exploration of what it is. They do not publicly reflect on what it could be, or on the many implications of their pointing to it as if it were something real, while at the same time ignoring its reality. Perhaps they would ruminate that it may not be ‘potential energy,’ that it may be real energy of a different type, or a pre-energy form of existence, nothing that is truly something in a way they do not know. Their Quantum Vacuum wording limits them to thinking that only two things can exist, the material stuff they call quanta (particles) in our universe, and emptiness. Dismissing what is ’out there’ as ‘empty’ or ’potential’ and walking away without further consideration blocks them from scientific explorations. With that blocking in place, they are a long way from considering what they will someday consider, that the nothing that is something has qualities. Perhaps they could even now accept that seemingly empty nothingness as pure and untainted existence itself, the source from which all types of existence descend. Perhaps one day they will consider that it has, and maybe even is, consciousness. Maybe they will eventually see a quality of creative Drive everywhere they look, and follow that observation to suggest that the baseline existence as nothing that is something has a quality of Drive.

The Universe Seed

Then there was a ‘universe seed.’ Other than the belief in an accidental, statistically random, ‘bubbling up’ from the ‘vast field of potential energy’ (‘Quantum Vacuum’), not even the best of the scientists explore or suggest how potential energy or a vacuum converts to something that occupied a seed for a universe. Further, there is little agreement as to the contents of the seed. Although they are probably correct when they state their belief that Time is a quality of the universe and does not exist in the potential energy Quantum Vacuum state, none say that the seed has the quality of Time. Their belief systems typically have Time start with the Big Bang, treating that as the beginning of the universe. That cannot be correct, though, because the seed would be a sequential step between the nothingness and the primal universe: the Big Bang would be a sequential step that occurs after the seed, the birthing of the universe, and other rapid-fire interim steps. No sequential step can happen without the presence of Time.

Since sequential steps occurred before the presence of particles, their belief that Time is one of the eleven dimensions of physical particles may be wrong. There is room to explore whether it could be a more abstract dimension, not associated with physical particles. They could also open an exploration of whether a seed needed a gravitational force as the container for the fledgling universe. Whether a seed was a container filled with pure universe energy or two-dimensional particles as some suggest - or even both in sequential steps, the idea of gravity being present at that point is contrary to all current guesses/theories about what gravity is. Proper full and scientific exploration of that could lead them to question all the existing theories of gravity, since all of them require particles or spacetime to provide gravity: neither was present at seed time, according to their theories so far. The seed provides unending opportunities for new exploration.

The Big Bang

Then there was the bangless Big Bang, after the seed popped open, bringing space into existence as a home for future particles, with the shape and size of space controlled by gravity. Since Time and gravity existed, but particles did not yet exist to occupy the home, some of the current beliefs about Time and gravity again become questionable. Whether it began at universe seeding or the Big Bang, Time certainly existed, giving the universe a beginning and potential end, and allowing sequential things to happen between those birth and death bookends.

Scientists have beliefs about what space is, but they do not truly know what space is, any more than they know what gravity is. They know nothing factually solid about either. Their beliefs are simply local beliefs, established as neither fact nor truth: they vary from one encampment of scientists to another. There is much room for exploration there, by anyone who has the courage to step past the currently sanctioned beliefs.

Particles of Matter

Then there was matter, primal simplex particles for making increasingly complex things. In scientific belief when the universe creates particles, it creates them in pairs with an anti-particle always accompanying the particle. They are so certain that, perhaps arrogantly and unjustifiably, they deem it a Law. Some encampments of scientists swear to a mathematically inspired belief that a Law breaking event happened in which a universe creation accident produced more particles than antiparticles: they say that all the pairs disappeared through mutual annihilation, leaving only the unpaired particles for construction of the universe. It is a theory much like the factual happening that fish and turtles make far more offspring than they need to preserve their species, because most of them will become food. So why not make billions upon billions of particles for universe construction and then self-devour them. There is room to explore other possibilities. Some scientists might get interested in the idea that the universe created antiparticles for a reason other than mutual annihilation, and they are out there somewhere doing what they are supposed to be doing - maybe even being the propelling central force for cosmic expansion. Supporting the theoretical concept that the universe is shaped like a thin-skinned balloon, they might even see the antiparticles as analogous to the ‘helium’ filling a birthday balloon. That could be one exciting exploration.

Matter Becomes More Complex

The Mystery of ‘Dark Energy’

Then there were particles and forces of many types, elements, stars, galaxies, and all sorts of things. Scientists know a huge amount of factually correct stuff about that, but the avenues of new exploration are unending. Take the subject of dark energy, for example, which they see as something akin to an antigravity force that causes the universe to expand. They believe that dark energy accounts for 68.3% of the weight of the universe, a seemingly strange role for ‘energy’ to perform. Maybe they were just not careful in naming whatever it is, but some actually say it is not matter, without explaining how it could have weight if it is not matter. Others say that it is the energy of particles and antiparticles, which continually seethe in and out of space. Perhaps they are referring to the average weight, but they do not say whether it is average or constant. In another search for definition, one group simply says that it is ‘a property of empty space that produces repulsive gravity,’ without explaining how a property of emptiness can have weight – unless, of course, they mean that space itself provides the weight. They do not say or imply that.

They do not know what it is, its characteristics, or anything about it, including whether it is energy, particles, antiparticles, or something different. They have calculated the dark energy weight from what they believe the weight of everything else is, subtracted it from what they believe the weight of the whole universe has to be, and then concluded that dark energy must account for the rest of the weight. Yet, they have no idea what other unseen things may exist in the universe, and do not guess at the total weights of the long sought gravitons, spacetime particles, antiparticles of many types, Higgs bosons, or other hidden entities. In short, they really do not know what to put in the scales, but they do have some well-respected and broadly communicated beliefs, many of which could generate wonderful explorations, if minds opened to them. Their belief in spacetime particles, for example, has never gone to the exploratory steps. Why are they invisible? How much does one weigh? Considering that there are billions more of them than of matter particles, could their weight be close to that of the proposed invisible dark energy? In 2017 science has convincingly shown that things passing through the sea of spacetime particles create waves. They call them ‘gravitation waves,’ seemingly under the peer pressure of scientific politics to honor Albert Einstein’s unproven and increasingly doubtful theory of gravity. Considering the number of things continually passing through spacetime, is the sea of particles in constant turbulence? So far, experiments have proven that spacetime is real and has substance. Looking for effects predicted in Einstein’s theory of relativity, two results have come from a NASA probe. First, it verified that spacetime bends around Earth, in the manner that a bowling ball would bend a trampoline. Second it showed that Earth’s rotation slightly drags spacetime with it. But there has never been a serious scientific quest to isolate and examine a spacetime particle.

Earth

Then in the Milky Way Galaxy there was the planet Earth. As if it were following the Laws to establish a proper environment for Life, the barren, hot, featureless, mostly molten planet began an evolution story; full of fascination, drama, mystery, and beauty for the observer. As it cooled, Earth rapidly developed three planet-wide recycling systems. Without them, food and waste could not be distributed, life could not spread, and the planet would be geologically, atmospherically, and chemically static.

The first recycling system is our planet’s rock zone, the ‘lithosphere.’ Molten rock (magma) continuously rises from the core of Earth, cools, and sinks again. The early internal roiling mixed all the materials of Earth, and then separated them to form the eventual layers. As they cooled and a crust formed, the underlying roiling pushed the evolving continents across the surface, and it is still doing it today.

The second is the hydrosphere. A cycle of activity takes place throughout the vast supply of water whose original source on Earth is still unknown and disputed. The cycle begins with steam released from magma, and evaporation of pooled water. That atmospheric reservoir releases precipitation when the planet is at the right temperature. The rain, ice, and snow produces rivulets, streams, and rivers that erode, distribute, and fertilize. The rivulets, streams, and rivers flow into oceans that in turn have huge effects on the planet’s geology and acted as the birthplace for original Life, and now warehouse planetary Life and energy.

Third is the atmosphere. The early atmosphere of Earth was extremely hot and consisted mainly of methane, ammonia, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. When Earth passed the flash point for Life, its geologic processes gradually moved the atmosphere toward the carbon dioxide and oxygen mix that would be necessary to support it.

Earth Life

Then, with mystifying suddenness, Life appeared. Scientists do a good job at describing the origins of the planet and its atmosphere, but how Life came about still escapes them. Their hypotheses and theories most often focus on potential magic chemical reactions that brought Life about; they will probably be successful in finding that such reactions were part of the preparation for Life’s occupation of the planet, but not for generation of Life itself. They will learn interesting things, about RNA’s self-manufacturing and self-modification for example, but they must also explore the nonchemical component. Life is an actuated intent for the planet’s evolution, not an accident, having characteristics similar to a force. It has special qualities that scientists have yet to generate an interest in looking for. Scientific American has quoted renowned biochemist Christian de Duve as calling Life a cosmic imperative that will arise in any hospitable place in the universe. The article further expresses the opinion of astrobiologists that the universe is teeming with life and that it is written into the laws of nature. There is miraculous unnoticed beauty in its occurring only once on this planet, a single local event presaging all other Life. An accidental random event would have repeated many times in many places, producing varying results and multiple Life hierarchies.

After billions of years of Earth’s physical evolution, something was suddenly looking for food energy, processing it, metabolizing, excreting wastes, and reproducing. Instantly complex with no known build-up, Life, even first Life was far too complex for accidental happening: built from a large number of parts no engineer could construct, and seemingly responding to Drive that will not quit, it required all of its starting parts to be present at one time. We see no signs of evolution of basic parts. Scientists may have to change the entire structure of their thinking to approach that one. What would happen if someone got excited about exploring some seemingly ridiculous ideas? Hey, maybe there was Life potential from the start, carried in particles, energy, or some more subtle process or force, waiting for the right time to follow the Laws into activation. What would those Laws be? Mmmmmmm. Could Life be a dimension that must activate to complete a universe? Are there less ridiculous-seeming questions we could ask and pursue? Can you imagine what an exploration it would be if they made a committed effort to break through scientific cultural barriers to pursue such questions? Wow! someone might muse, How could Life potential be innate to a universe? What could be the mechanism? However, they would have to give up some beliefs to do that, such as the beliefs that Life is chemical or produced by accident.

Opportunities for Scientists

It would be necessary to write a squeezed version of the entire book to go on with the story in this way, but the opportunities for scientists to jettison beliefs and enter new thinking and exploration are unending. Here are some:

Experiments conducted by scientists have shown that there is instant communication between physical particles hugely distant from each other: it can only be ‘consciousness,’ but they cannot call it that.

There are marvelous varied, technical, and intricate theories, speculations, mathematical analyses, and guesses about what science names as the ‘inflation’ phase of the universe, with little settled agreement. They have failed to ask the key questions and search for answers that would solve the dilemma. Mathematical models examining the varying depictions of the universe ‘seed’ might provide undreamed of answers. The seed could contain pure energy, two dimension particles, with neither requiring gravity, or three dimension particles under great gravitational containment. The dynamics of expansion after seed bursting would be different for each assumption. Modeling might show effects similar to ‘inflation.’ Modeling of a wave of spacetime particles immediately followed by a wave of primal matter particles might be particularly interesting. Could it be as simple as instant emergence of spacetime particles causing the expansion to the minimum size for a spacetime universe?

There is an endless search for missing evolutionary ‘links,’ following the belief that all Life is chain-link evolution. The book discusses the scientific explorations that compete with those beliefs: it suggests reconsideration in the light of the process of evolution, and that a whole new wing of science is needed, to study the workings of evolution itself and provide a skeleton on which to hang pieces of evolutionary discoveries.

An imbedded belief of tremendous power is that evolution is the result of ‘accidental genetic mutations.’ Accidental mutations clearly play only a minor role. The book explores the work that geneticists have done to uncover the power and complexity that the structure and regulation of genes have to create change, without accidents, and suggests that a new approach would integrate the work of those independent geneticist studies.

If a sincere and rigorous study of process came about, scientists might recognize that evolutionary steps come about through a ‘change-plateau’ mist of variable interbreeding mosaics, not the chain links they expect and never find.

Study of Evolution" as a science in its own right would certainly show how evolution has dramatically accelerated, in the manner shown at the end of Chapter 22.

Accepting the theory of many (of course not all) that the universe is not a ball, but a balloon with a hollow middle, raises many questions that no one has asked. What fills the hollow? Is it the nothing that is something? Antiparticles? Something unknown? Does the balloon fabric (like the rubber or plastic of a balloon) itself stretch with expansion as some suggest it does, or does a mechanism for supplying additional spacetime particles enable its growth? What happens at the inner and outer boundaries of the balloon fabric? Are they impervious? If not, can light and other high-energy particles escape the universe, reducing its mass? Do the boundaries have something analogous to surface tension?

If the current idea is correct that the universe will expand forever, eventually falling apart, will the particles of the dead universe have a way to return to the nothing that is something, energy reverting to potential energy?

A Need for a New Breed of Explorers

The world needs to add a new type of explorer to the vast numbers of truth seekers within religion and science. Scientists need to set aside the human tendency toward adversarial behavior and warring, so that they can integrate views of internal competitors and external religionists, recognizing that sometimes more than one viewpoint can be simultaneously true. The book shows that the scientific war between the ‘Out of Africa’ and ‘Spontaneous Generation’ anthropologists who study ‘human’ (a loose undefined term) evolution is a prime example of easy integration to mutual truth.

Scientists and religionists can both benefit by mutual integration of the principles and views they espouse, but they each have to give up something. Scientists do not have to give up their pledge to be a-theist, but they need to reexamine what is theist and what is not, so that they can explore what underlies things in a very real way: there is no necessity to give ’potential energy’ a god or goddess name or assign traditional theist god qualities such as ‘omnipotent.’ They just need to openly look for what is there, and try to understand its true qualities. There is clearly some unknown force at work. The world will be a better place when they accept its presence and study it.

Religionists do not have to give up their pledge to be a-science, but they need to reexamine what is science and what is reality, so that they can understand what underlies things in a very real way. If they are to make progress toward such integration, they will have to give up the idea that a god finger-snaps creations and events into place: they will need to understand in their hearts that any god, by any name, is not like a human: it is a very high being/existence that causes things through eternal Laws. The results of actions under the Laws are the intricate things that scientists study. They will need to see ‘evolution’ as ‘God at work’ not an imaginative creation by evil scientists.

The Process of Evolution

There is no true scientific discipline called "Evolution.’ If there were such a field of study, it would undoubtedly have a strong focus on the ‘process.’ The author believes that if it did it would validate the cyclical process as suggested here:

Stability of a species or kind

Threat to future survival

Breakup of stability through genetic adaptation

Mosaic seeding

Consolidation of mosaic parts into species

Contraction to fewer species or kind

Scientists have shown that needs or threats can cause genetic changes. The organisms then create varied offspring with varying genetic mosaics having directional evolutionary thrust. Through interbreeding of mosaics over long periods, a consolidation comes about, producing consistent types (in bacteria) or species (in more complex organisms). One or more of them will stabilize for a long period. During the next crisis, pressure, or extreme need, a stabilized entity will produce a new batch of mosaics during a period the book terms a ‘change-plateau.’ These complex mosaic changes are clearly not the work of mutation, which may play a minor role, but of complex genetic processes.

There is strong similarity to previously proposed, but not widely followed, Pagoda Tree and Punctuated Equilibrium theories.

The Mineral Eaters

During the early phases of life on the planet, when bacteria saturated the oceans, many of them did what was necessary to their survival. They ingested mineral compounds as the only available food, metabolized them, and deposited wastes of purified residual minerals: some deposits accumulated in huge sea-floor plateaus valuable to the current world.

The book suggests that the evolution of toolmakers was largely the evolution of genetics that produced programmed beings that had no ability to create or change, much like builders of bird’s nests, and hunters of prey who do exactly the same thing in the same way for thousands or millions of generations, not ingenious new behavior. Perhaps as recently as 10,000 years ago, a ‘soft evolution’ (non-skeletal) came about that unleashed the species to its current creative existence. We Eden People Homo sapiens began to use minerals. As the new consumer of minerals on the planet, the only nonbacterial one that ever existed, we are placing our species in grave danger. There is not much left and more and more of us want it. The book suggests that the approaching exhaustion of mineral resources will be the crisis trigger for the next wave of evolution. It suggests that governments and businesses have projected the remaining life of nearly depleted minerals and are necessarily planning and maneuvering to gain control of what is left.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

PERSPECTIVE - PERSONAL

CHAPTER TWO

PERSPECTIVE - SCIENCE AND RELIGION

CHAPTER THREE

PERSPECTIVE - OUR UNIVERSE

CHAPTER FOUR

PERSPECTIVE - EVOLUTION

CHAPTER FIVE

CREATION’S EDGE

CHAPTER SIX

A 4D UNIVERSE EMERGES

CHAPTER SEVEN

MATTER

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE UNIVERSE TAKES SHAPE

CHAPTER NINE

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

CHAPTER TEN

LIFE GAMES

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FIRST LIFE

CHAPTER TWELVE

HUGE CHANGES TO BACTERIA

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PROFOUND CELL CHANGE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ANIMAL LIFE EXPLOSION

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

REPTILES, MAMMALS, AND MORE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SOME THINGS ABOUT EVOLUTION

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE HOMO VECTOR

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TOOLMAKER HOMO

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE BIG MIGRATION

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘MODERN’ HOMOS

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SAPIENS

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EDEN PEOPLE

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

THE MINERAL EATERS

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

AT THE END OF THE STORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES

APPENDIX ONE - EDEN PEOPLE FUTURE

CHAPTER ONE

PERSPECTIVE - PERSONAL

PERSPECTIVE

Encampments and the No One’s Land Traveler

Perhaps in 1936 a virus entered an embryo sack, the laws of karma came into play, a mother-to-be drank or smoked something insidious, or parents began to tell a child too many obvious lies. Whatever the reason, while traveling on the path leading to a momentary place called Now, something shanghaied a still-forming mind before age eight. It put a lantern in the hand of the mind’s body, a compulsion in its psyche, and a seared thought into its mind. ‘Truth exists.’ At age ten, it seared a book title into that consciousness, "The Mineral Eaters." At age forty-eight, following sporadic searching, that mind learned that the book did not exist, that it was writing it, or at least putting the words in their relative places. Still on the way to Now, sometime after five decades of living, something anchored one foot of that mind on each side of the Science/Faith fence, and repeated the message. ‘Truth exists.’ It was a time at which it became clear that will, desire, and free choice are weak forces in the presence of Drive.

Paths take you where they will: this one wove its way into No One’s Land, where bullets kept the air hot, and bombs pockmarked the circumference. The lone occupant of that unenvied space was not under attack, a participant in the wars, nor a spy for any of the warring groups. As a free-lance reporter without nation or allegiance, searching for the reality beyond the spoken bullets and written bombs, he chose to be there in the ‘Field of Truth.’ He entered the opposing camps in succession, wanting the thoughts and knowledge of their various groups, carefully tilting his head in humility and submission, avoiding agreement. Sometimes the lure to choose one or another encampment as a home was potent: they each offered protection, comradeship, security, and other good stuff, but they asked absolute loyalty and acceptance of their belief in return. Fear of loss, passion for mind freedom, and resistance to control by others continually brought him back to the uninhabited space.

The encamped adversaries were not revolutionaries, nationalists, warlords, ethnic cleansers, nor nations. Contrary to our perception of the quiet reasoned nobility of science and the serenity of faith, the well-armed combatants claimed baseline loyalty to the Science Sapiens Empire or the Faith Sapiens Empire. The uncivil passions of Civil Wars between clans within the Faith and Science empires further poisoned the air with smoke and vitriol. Within each of the Empires, the various bands of Faith and Science folks propelled grenades, arrows, rockets, and smoke bombs at each other, seeking dominance for their beliefs.

Being a lone traveler in a disarmed zone of existence requires continual caution and attention. You are no one’s friend and everyone’s potential enemy. Invisibility is the best strategy, because everyone believes a uniform, flag, or a permanent tattoo proclaiming group loyalty hides beneath your carefully unstated attire. The warning cry of the once President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, quoting countless other adversaries through the ages, arose from all sides. ‘If you are not our friend, you are our enemy.’

Disencampment

This is an unusual way to start a serious and careful book about evolution, but it seems wise to put the issue of camp loyalty up front, in the long-shot hope that clarification of loyalties will reduce the accusations of ‘antiscience,’ ‘antifaith,’ ‘unscientific,’ or ‘heretic,’ thereby making the book more broadly useful. The nature of this book requires that it not be adversarial, which is nearly as significant a challenge as finding Truth.

The book could not be what it needs to be if tainted by loyalty to any encampment, not even blind allegiance to the personal thoughts and beliefs born in that solitary tent in No One’s Land. It is not a-faith, a-science, pro-faith, or pro-science. The book is a-encampment. The loyalty is to pro-reality, pro-integration, and pro-Truth. Since parts of Truth are on each side of the wall, the book invites lowering of the wall, so that hands can reach across to join in partnership. It invites blunting the edge, so that the fence can be a comfortable place to sit for viewing in all directions. It encourages evolving the wall toward porosity, like a cell wall that selectively allows nutrient flow in order to keep things in proper balance for good health. Establishing porosity requires a strong detergent to rid the pore-clogging guilt, shame, fear, and other emotions. Porosity opens the natural flow for healthy integration of the products from the right and left sides of our brains. Yet, this book offers no magic words of reconciliation. It offers only an opportunity to reflect upon a viewpoint owned by no one.

Reality, Truth, and the Book

A writer, any writer, cannot avoid flavoring his or her writings with ‘personal reality.’ Every person has a storehouse of it. Some of it is close to matching the external impersonal reality. Some of it is far from it. Some of it parrots others. Some of it is self-defined. We have each developed a philosophy that results from personal reality. A philosophy is a set of beliefs about truth, existence, reality, and living a life. We communicate our philosophy, our beliefs, in everything we say and do. Our stories are vehicles for portraying it.

Sapiens - the only storytellers created on Earth - seem to have an innate understanding that our Universe is a creation that had a beginning. Every culture has a ‘starting point story,’ often mythical, that describes the creation in some way. As with those stories, this evolution story has a starting point. It is not mythical. Yet, it might as well be mythical, because it has no basis in factual knowledge. The story begins with transformation of what appears to be nothingness to two-dimensional somethingness. Two-dimension somethingness then becomes four-dimension somethingness coming about at the Big Bang, which folks erroneously say started our Universe, ignoring what came before. From the point of the Big Bang onward, the story becomes increasingly, but only partly, factual. The truth-claiming descriptions emanating from encampments regarding nothingness, the first somethingness, the Big Bang, and the times immediately following it vary greatly.

Personal reality will be a thread in the tapestry of the story, because it has to be. The story would not be the same without that flavoring, but the meat of the story is from reporting, interpreting, and integrating the teachings of others in the scientific world. Those teachings are from very bright people, scarily brighter than most can imagine, people who have spent their lifetimes responding to an internal drive to understand things. Perhaps Destiny gave them no choice, creating them with a singular drive to understand those things, or perhaps, as some scientists say, Destiny is not a reality.

Our scientific world has become a world of intense specialization, where each researcher intimately understands a piece of a huge puzzle of many dimensions. Science has developed little momentum toward holistically fitting the pieces together. There is no scientific specialty entitled ‘piece fitting.’ No Divinity has whispered the answers in scientific ears. They have just worked hard and stretched their minds as far as their individually unique mind structures allow, moving ever closer to Truth. They have studied, researched, interpreted, and mind-stretched their way through extremely difficult subjects. As sapiens, they have squabbled, argued, attacked, defended, spit and sputtered, and sometimes strayed from truth to support their beliefs. Yet, they lead us millimeter by millimeter closer to that line of ultimate Truth, closer to knowing the Reality of everything.

There is no need for you to accept the reality described in this book as your reality. You may want to look at parts of it as fantasy, a good fictional framework for a wondrous story, possible truth worth thinking about, a reasonable theory, or nonsense. In the end you will certainly look at it in a way that makes sense to you, consistent with the belief structures you had before exposure to this. However you look at it, it will leave seeds. The choices about nurturing seeds are always yours.



(The happy Buddha face invites you to pause for

a mind soak. Absorb. Play.)

Finding Truth

Some will read this book as containing claims of unassailable Truths. Some that see that it does not match their existing stance on a Truth will attack it. That is the way it should be. Challenging and testing claims of Truth is the way to sort Truth from falsity and illusion. Please be clear, and hold that clarity, that this book does not deliver anything ‘god-given.’ No divinity has magically whispered the answers for any of the timeless questions in these ears. It is safe to guess that during the thousands of years that billions of Eden People Earthlings - the currently most advanced version of the sapiens species - have perceived divinity whispers, some real and some imagined, none have revealed such answers.

Pieces of this book are one person’s current understanding of Truth: That one individual has done what we so often choicelessly do, unknowingly riding the push of Drive to the assigned quest. The book combines a questing being’s insights, education (which sometimes provided factual truth and sometimes falsity and illusion), experience, observation, and interpretation with the continually converging truths and beliefs as proposed and tested by others. Those specialized jigsaw pieces from others often mimic the proverbial sightless people describing the elephant by feel, each examining a different part. It is necessary to read many individual descriptions before the whole begins to come together. Even then, some personal flash of insight may be necessary for arriving at a holistic viewpoint.

This book is from an explorer of encampments, piecing together the pieces of knowledge from the blind elephant-feelers. That piecing together has yielded some progress toward better understanding of the elephant named ‘Evolution.’ It is nothing more than that. There are too many types of evolution elephant-feelers to document: they include astronomers, physicists, quantum physicists, biologists, microbiologists, geneticists, paleontologists, geologists, anthropologists, mathematicians, mystics, philosophers, atheists, and religionists.

During the time that passed from start to finish of the book, the understanding of truth sometimes changed for the elephant-feelers, those who wrote about their personal truths, and then for this author. By the time that you read this, that understanding will have continued to change in unpredictable ways. The future will show that some of the current perceptions were wrong, some right, and some askew. It matters little. The book depicts the best possible current moment perception from many caring, hard-working, people, some with intelligence and insight beyond our imagination, most having immense goodwill and hope for the betterment of the world.

We do our best to understand Truth and put our discoveries out for challenge, which is always amply available. Truth-seekers use the responding challenges to test what they have come to believe, and refine it when necessary. To fail to do that is to stagnate in falsity and illusion. Going on from considering those challenges, a new proposal sometimes emerges and the ‘propose and challenge’ cycle begins anew. Some say that ‘Divinity’ built us; others say mathematics, a god, eternal consciousness, a random accident, our souls, or any of many other things, built us. Whatever built us, built us to do it that way. Divinity, by the way, is a dangerous word to use - because it sounds theist to many - and it will disappear from this book after placing a few more ideas before you. Although our creator, by whatever characterization, did not intend us to know everything, it surely did intend us to quest for it, which we do. It is among our best design features.

Truth is elusive. We keep on working toward it, but never quite get there. The distance continually decreases, but there is always a remaining degree of separation. It is akin to the adage of ‘You will never run out of butter if you never take more than half of what is left.’ We will never run out of Truth butter to split. Our knife is questions.

Current and Future Truths

The entire storyline description of evolution within a universe provides things to disagree with, while other parts are unchallengeable. Over time, we sapiens will come to agree to some of the currently challengeable parts as factual Truth. We will agree that other parts are not Truth. Some parts will always remain a mystery, because they are neither provable nor disprovable, and possibly unknowable. The nature and composition of space particles (spacetime particles to scientists) is one current unknowable that may maintain that status.

While trying to show what is fact and what is not, this book explores a broad range of available information. Attempting to come somewhat closer to Truth than is usual, it pieces together scientific information arrived at by others throughout many scientific realms. It also introduces some new thinking, but it does not propose that the new things it places on the table for consideration are undeniable Truths. Future exploration will reveal new Truths that will change this portrayal, but that is just how the world works. We can only look at what is now available.

Please keep in mind that from this No One’s Land viewpoint of evolution the momentum toward our species began when the external nothingness that is somethingness seeded our universe not at the later Big Bang, and not when the first Life appeared billions of years later. This author believes that seeding the universe initiated the Drive toward Life forms. That is a huge difference from the common perspective. That is, of course, a belief that cannot be tested or substantiated.



How Do You Name a God?

It is not possible, and would not be right, to provide a book about evolution while ignoring the overreaching universally acknowledged - even if science only acknowledges it as ‘potential energy’ - eternal Presence that supersedes the realm of our universe, for which no name or description has ever stuck. In one way or another, it looms there for scientists, philosophers, the religiously faithful, and huge numbers who are in none of those groups. The struggle to name it is ancient and ongoing, unavoidably affecting this book just as it affects all attempts to represent its existence. Using any one name from the collection of names - God, Allah, the Tao, Yahweh, Siva, El, Gitche Manitou, Bhagwaan, Hu, Baha, Embu, Ahura Mazda, or any of hundreds - would offend not only those who do not choose a name, but those whose god name was not the one chosen for the book. After many experiments and attempts, Eternal Presence came closer to the idea that flavors this book than other words could. Yet, even it carries enough baggage that people of varying persuasions could see it as theist, antitheist, antiscience, or one of many other ‘not good’ things as defined by their particular encampment. Some would certainly interpret it as a flag signifying a hidden allegiance.

Because of their emotional and interpretive load, names are like Judas goats, leading the herd to a corral. Whether the name is Presence or anything else, any initial understanding that sapiens reach about it, no matter how real and true that understanding is, attracts rapid corruption. Yet, we need to be careful even with the emotional load of the word ‘corruption.’ The purest sense of the word is simply that something changes into something other than what it originally was. Any of the names for a god, goddess, group of gods, or idealistic viewpoint will carry forward the long-accumulated changes, resentments, emotions, variable meanings, and miscellaneous baggage. To solve that problem this book uses a meaningless symbol, Õ, to represent the root eternal existence from which everything derives. The reader is free to substitute (plug-in) whatever name, designation, or symbol best fits his or her understanding of things. No matter what that is, it will change nothing about the story of evolution.

There is no intention in this book to diminish anyone’s view of Õ. Õ could be statistical probability, the Laws of Mathematics, the Laws of Nature, a god, a goddess, the Absolute, or ‘The Force,’ without changing anything. There is no wish in this to invent yet another name for what we call God, Allah, Tao, Yahweh, and so on, or to convey any new religious insight or idealism. Too many names and idealisms exist already. A bonfire of all copies of this book with this author in the middle of the flames, lightning bolts, or stoning would be appropriate punishment for attempting that sin.

The Õ Factor

In the mind that is bringing this book to paper, all religious and philosophical concepts are compatible with all Truths about evolution. The symbol Õ is an It, not a He, a She, a god, or a goddess, yet the symbol encompasses all names and characterizations. In the view of this author, Õ not only has consciousness, it is consciousness, all consciousness, and it is also all Divinity, Drive, Laws, Mathematics, and the Source of everything. Õ is also the nonphysical potential energy - the nothing that is something from which the universe transmuted - that the scientists tell us is ‘out there’ in the ‘Quantum Vacuum’ (eternal emptiness beyond cosmic space). It also is the Quantum Vacuum and is the ‘out there.’ It is the long pondered Timeless, dimensionless, beginningless, endless, source of all energies and of all things.

As paradoxical as it seems, Laws constrain that ultimate existence. The Laws of mathematics, Laws of universe building, and Laws of creation of Life are obvious constraints on Õ, even if we do not know, comprehend, sense, or accept them. We cannot begin to imagine what other Laws may be ‘out there,’ or ‘in here.’ That obviously opens a question of, ‘What imposes that constraint?’ When we begin to explore that question, our thinking capability will yield an unending cascade of questions until we accept an article of faith - religious, scientific, or philosophical - that is nearly impossible to accept. If Õ is eternal, the Laws could not precede it. Yet, it could not create the Laws that govern it, because it could then freely change them. The Laws, then, must be innate characteristics of Õ, as eternally beginningless and endless as it is. They have always existed as an integral trait of that Timeless existence. It could not be otherwise.

Perhaps at some future time, some scientist will earn a Nobel Prize by proving that consciousness - which is not awareness, intellect, mind, or thinking - exists in everything, as a few present day scientists already courageously and carefully suggest. Perhaps that scientist will see that it is integral to the mechanical processes that so many have documented so well. Perhaps then the Science Sapiens Empire will deal with the subject of consciousness as reality, an object for further study, not as theism. If they accomplish that, they will be able to unlock many secrets of the cosmos that they cannot conceive of today. Perhaps once they have dealt with the subject of a consciousness that is not in the mind or brain as a subject for pure scientific study, they will be able to see something else. Consciousness is a native characteristic of Õ the creator, which had no other ‘substance’ than itself (the ‘potential energy’) available as a ‘potter’s clay’ for forming a universe. Everything created, therefore, must carry the characteristics of Õ, including its consciousness.



How Do You Properly Name Us?

In the mind of many, we share the scientific species name, Homo sapiens, with a variety of evolutionary stepping-stones along a 100,000-year path on the way to us. The many fossils of that period were similar, but were enough different from each other to show that genetics had not settled into speciation. The Neanderthal species was still present and different, but it would die about by 30,000 years ago. Homo erectus populations had dwindled to near non-existence. The remaining populations were not converging into separate species, becoming increasingly similar to each other. Scientists who had depended on sudden and dramatic changes in tools and cultural behavior to point to new species did not find sufficient signals within this anatomically cohesive population. Yet, at 10,000 years ago the changes in behavior, culture, ability to invent, ability to create, and use metals became dramatic. Except for the missing ingredient of anatomy change, every reason for declaring that a new and settled species was present. All of the predecessors were greatly different from us, and were significantly lesser forms of being. The real differences lie in behavior, but no one uses behavior alone to classify species.

It is not possible to meaningfully explore evolution without giving our species a name that differentiates it from the many types of quasi-species, and unclassifiables that carry a common name, even if it is only for the purposes of telling this story. That is a huge problem for even the scientists who admit to and even laud the changes of 10,000 years ago. They usually avoid the naming problem by using informal, meaningless, and loose designators such as ‘Modern Man’ or ‘Modern sapiens.’ Some imply a difference from the preceding species by loosely naming them all as ‘Anatomically Modern Man.’ Some used the name of a local variety called Cro Magnon Man, a controversial naming that sounds scientific and species-like, but is not. It refers only to one example from among members of the Anatomically Modern Man grouping.

For a long time the formal scientific name for our tribe of seven billion individuals was ‘Homo sapiens sapiens.’ Homo is our ‘genus.’ It translates to ‘Man,’ while the first of the two ‘sapiens’ was the species name and the second one the subspecies name. The powers that name things saw us as the subspecies ‘sapiens,’ of the species ‘sapiens,’ of the genus Homo. That differentiated us from the subspecies Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. When they assigned the name ‘Homo sapiens sapiens’ to us, it was not Truth; it was convention, not different from naming any other animal that scientists place in a classification bucket. The bucket names are of our making, not whispered by Divinity. As knowledge of our evolutionary status grew in recent years, most - but not all - scientists came to accept that Neanderthals and our species had been equal Homo beings, not two subspecies. When eventually renamed as a species, we became just ‘Homo sapiens’ and our then extinct sibling species became Homo neanderthalensis.

This book follows the lead of many scientists that use the single word, ‘sapiens’ as both a sidestepping of the classification issue and as a shorthand name for us. Yet, there is a huge problem with using ‘sapiens.’ The classification is broadly inclusive and is not definitive. It accurately refers to a variety of earlier evolutionary versions of sapiens, as well as today’s version, versions that were hugely less evolved than our people and were not part of a species. Because science has not been able to define an acceptable breaking point for our advanced version, they have not given a stamp of approval to us Homo sapiens as members of a 10,000-year old species in its own right.

Just as they have not given us a name to differentiate us from earlier versions that they loosely referred to by our name, they have not given us a species birth date. Even among those who rave at our wonderful and sudden enhancement then, no scientist will tell you when we became what we are. There are well-known scientists who emote about the huge and dramatic change in behavior at 10,000 years ago, as if we became a different being then, but they do not take the next step of saying that our species evolved then. That sudden blossoming is just one of the many subjects scientists prefer to ignore and leave unexplored.

To ease the burden, this book uses the name ‘Eden People ‘for our clearly different advanced version of the sapiens species, because the story cannot take proper shape without separating us 10 millennium folks from the others. The use of that name - here only - signals that this book, proudly, is not a science book. No formal science book could assign such a name, because no physically identifiable traits separate us. Any scientist that named us definitively and separately as a species, would have to sell and defend it based on behavior, document when and