sanctuary

Friday, January 12, 2007

Gasping For Air

It's easy to believe that the Iraq conflict is "sucking" oxygen from almost everything in the United States at the moment, as well as slowly spreading across the planet, engulfing more and more countries directly or indirectly. Once again I found myself revisiting The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement website. The movement's motto is "May we live long and die out." It is a site everyone should visit at least once.

Scientists have recently reported that they have strong evidence, because of a South African skull apparently some 36,000 years old, that a clear resemblance exists between this skull and the skulls of other humans that were living in Europe, Asia and Australia at the same time. In other words we all looked pretty much the same back then. The original Homo sapiens--our ancestors--were moving out of Africa quite possibly some 65,000 years ago. New technology made it possible to determine the date of this skull with a margin of error of only three thousand years. So here we are in 2007 with ever improving technology and ever increasing knowledge.

I recall reading some time ago that on average a species goes extinct after approximately 1.4 million years. We humans have been around maybe 200,000 years, give or take. Is it possible we'll get anywhere near the average? May we live long and wisely?

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