|
Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
|
|
Join Writer Development Section Writer Development Member Section
This Day in Alternate History Blog
|
A
Very Puzzling
Matter By Rodlox. Evolution, as we know it, was formulated
by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid-1800s.
There were other theories of evolution, some (such as the
non-stereotypical version of Lamarck’s theory) being quite close to being
right. But these theories were all in the
1800s, save for a rare few, such as Buffon, who earned praise from Tsarina
Catherine the Great, for his theory that all life originated at the poles (as
the early Earth cooled down, having started as a molten ball of iron), expanding
from there, and that civilization therefore began on the pole, spreading
southwards. Another theory, believed even by Charles
Darwin himself, was that traits of the body – as expressed and enhanced or
unused in the body’s lifetime, would be passed on to the offspring – what
modern society calls “Lamarckism.” But why is all of that?
What sparked this intellectual shift?
Certainly it couldn’t be because of European society suddenly coming
upon animals unlike anything that fits neatly into their worldview. After all, in the 1500s, Europe was
exposed to all the oddities of the Americas.
Not just llamas and tapirs, jaguars and maned wolves, but also marsupials
– which were known from nowhere else on Earth!
The Virginia Oppossum was pouched, as was its southern cousin the Yapok,
which was a river-dwelling oppossum which was able to seal its pouch
closed at will. As if that weren’t enough, in 1515, a
prince in India sent a live rhino to the king of Portugal.
This was the first time any European had ever seen a rhino, dead or
alive. (the white rhino would only
be known to Europeans in 1817). In the 1600s, Europe was exposed to more
than just ideas from Galileo; for example, 1699 marked the first dissection of a
chimpanzee. The duck-billed platypus was first made
known to European naturalists (or natural philosophisers) in the late
1790s, not even a full decade after the description and shipping of kangaroos to
Europe. Was the platypus and
echidna the spark for the evolutionary fire?
(debates through the 19th Century raged over whether evolution
was reptile->-platypus->-mammal
or if it was bird->-platypus->-mammal). What do you think? ~~ Sources: ‘Platypus’ by Ann
Moyal. ‘The Boilerplate Rhino’ by
David Quammen.
|
