Summary of Chapter 15 – “Who Is the Earth?”

Similar to life in the ocean, life on the land has gone through a succession of larger ecological forms. The first of these five stages was described in the last chapter. The next three are described in this chapter. The stage we are in today will be looked at in the...

Summary of Chapter 14 – “Who Is the Earth?”

About 400 million years ago a single celled algae began to cooperate with others of its kind to create larger, multicellular forms. Using the bacterial invention of cellulose for structure, the red, brown and green seaweeds evolved. They are not plants because they...

Summary of Chapter 13 – “Who Is the Earth?”

Life came to the land as an extension of the cooperative community in the ocean. This community may have lived in the water between grains of decomposed rock, as the first soil; or it may have lived as the hardy symbiosis between fungus, algae and bacteria that is...

Summary of Chapter 12 – “Who Is the Earth?”

The new cooperatively formed eukaryotic cells began themselves to cooperate fairly quickly. Evidence of chains of algae cells goes back almost to the beginnings of these cells themselves. The road to the next cooperative organism ends in multi-cellular creatures...

Summary of Chapter 11 – “Who Is the Earth?”

About 1.2 billion years ago a new kind of cell arose. From the work of Lynn Margulis, it is now accepted that this came about through symbiotic cooperation between several kinds of bacteria. A kind of bacteria came to produce the cellular energy exchange medium, ATP. ...

Summary of Chapter 10 – “Who Is the Earth?”

We pause on the path of the unfolding of life and take a step back to take in the whole, both as it has been seen so far, and how it will develop. Several characteristics of the journey can be seen from this point of view. Life is a journey in discrete stages. The...