The Sixth Extinction Reflection 5

Neanderthals are possibly humanities closest cousin. However, it’s unfortunate that we drove them to extinction. This is terrible to me. As a species, we actually tracked and hunted a creature that was just like us. They say that if you were to shave a Neanderthal and put him in a suit, then he wouldn’t even stick out on a city street. They were that similar to us and we hunted them. That’s just disgusting.

Today, Neanderthal bones are sought after by scientists who are attempting to create an entire Neanderthal genome. To do this, they extract fragments of DNA (that haven’t yet decomposed) and string these fragments together, just like the scientists in Jurassic Park. The whole idea is mindblowing to me. For one, the DNA fragments survived forty thousand years. It’s hard to even imagine such a time scale. That’s four hundred times a your lifespan, if you live to be a hundred (which is quite generous). Now, that is persistence. The other thing that surprises me is that scientists can actually determine where each of the little fragments go by looking at other species. There are billions of these little fragments in the genome, none of which say where they have to go. That would be like putting a puzzle together where all the pieces are solid black. Oh yeah, and there are a billion pieces. The entire reason for this project was to identify the difference in the genome that makes Homo Sapiens different than all other species. This slight difference in sequence, if discovered, is responsible for all the damage humans have made to the biosphere. This is yet another thing that baffles me. In the billions of nucleotide bases that make up the human genome, a difference that’s probably a mere five bases, is responsible for everything humanity has done and created. Without this slight variation there would be no buildings, no written language, no electricity, no pollution, no rapid global warming, and no sixth extinction. This is one of those moments when I sit back and admire nature because it is simply amazing.

That was a very minor difference that had such drastic effects. It shows you just how sensitive nature is to change. Now, think of all the things we’ve done and imagine how big of an effect we will have on the world. After all, we may have just started a Sixth Mass Extinction.