About 4.5 billion years ago the planet Earth was formed from gas and dust in the early solar system. After a collision with a smaller planet the moon was formed as well which stabilises Earth’s axis.
The formation of the ocean and the subsequent development of life in it occurred during the first billion years of Earth’s history. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity.
It involved the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis and the emergence of cell membranes.
The planet is habitable due to its atmosphere and the presence of water, mostly in large oceans, which is why Earth can be called the blue planet. This is where life began, and after billions of years of single cells the first multicellular organisms began to appear about 1.7 billion years ago. 538.8 million years ago the Cambrian explosion brought more complex life forms, eventually fishes and the first amphibians which went on land, where evolution also brought reptiles, birds and mammals.
Earth has gone through several eras of global cooling and global warming, but life always found a way to adapt. There were several mass extinction events, caused for example by volcanic eruptions, and most well-known the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago when the impact of an asteroid at the Yucatan Peninsula caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. Those who could fly evolved into birds.
This gave mammals the chance to evolve into many different species. Eventually apes evolved into a species called Australopithecus, and then Homo habilis, the able man. Those were the first humans. We can thank India for our existence, when tectonic plate movement connected India with Eurasia the currents changed in the Indian Ocean, made the climate of East Africa drier, trees disappeared, and Homo erectus evolved, the upright man.
That made its way already outside of Africa, but it was Homo sapiens, the wise man, who successfully conquered all continents. The invention of agriculture caused the emergence of first settlements. Sophisticated cultures developed in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, the Indus Valley, the Yellow River in China, and Central America. Soon different nations existed that started to have conflicts among each other. Unequal developments lead to colonialism by countries that saw themselves as superior. This kind of egoism is it that leads to wars, including propaganda to display the opponent as bad, and staging of events to justify certain actions including declaring wars as necessary.
The question is how humanity will develop, whether it will find a way out of that pattern of egoism. We are living at the beginning of a new era, after a bipolar and a unipolar world with only two or one major power the multipolar world is emerging now, where nations are rising up to demand independence, to repel the imperialists of the west and support those who are supporting them. This could lead to more equality. There is hope.
The planet Earth has survived a lot, life has survived several mass extinction events, and nations have survived conflicts. We only need to start trying to understand others, trying to see the other side, both sides. And we have to avoid extremes, communism and capitalism are two extremes. Equality can be an extreme like when life consisted only of single-cell organisms, but there is too less equality nowadays. At least there should be equal opportunities. Then life has a chance on this blue planet or anywhere in this enormous universe.
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