A VISIT TO EARTH. . . This gripping scientific novel recounts the history of Earth and the enigmatic ways of life on that planet. With stunning authenticity, the book depicts the amazing evolutionary saga and continuing journey for Earth's now dominant species, Homo sapiens.
FROM THE NOVEL. . .
WHEN DINOSAURS PERISHED! Right about then, a whistling sound could be heard approaching from the north. Within moments it had become an earsplitting boom. A brilliant light appeared in the sky, slicing violently through the cloud cover, heralding the end of that world. A huge object from space traveling at 12.5 miles a second was about to strike the planet. Exactly at 12:08:02 PM, an enormous fireball brighter than a thousand suns smashed into Earth’s lower atmosphere, releasing more energy upon impact than five billion Hiroshima sized atom bombs...
Everything on the Earth’s surface within a radius of 150 miles from the impact site was vaporized. The pack of hungry velocisauri and the browsing herd of ankylosauri that Mac had been keenly observing only a moment ago were now instantly incinerated. Many trillions of tons of dust, gases, and water vapor spewed into the atmosphere, ushering midnight at noon. Monstrous fires, started by the intense shock wave of the bolide’s impact, propagated rapidly for thousands of miles in all directions. Enormous tsunamis rose from the oceans, causing unimaginable destruction. A chain reaction of earthquakes and erupting volcanoes, compounded by hot, gale-force winds, devastated the face of my host planet. When it was all finally over, fully 85 percent of living species then on Earth had perished.
BEHAVIORAL MODERNITY Behavioral modernity generally refers to a set of traits that distinguishes contemporary humans and their recent ancestors, from all other hominans that ever existed on my host planet. It recognizes that inflexion point when humans began to demonstrate the ability to apply complex symbolic thought and express cultural creativity in their interactions with the environment and each other. These attributes are closely associated with the development of fluent spoken language, the embodiment of symbolism.
The abrupt onset and rapid spread of behavioral modernity at this particular time in human history suggests that a unique genetic mutation, directly affecting the organization of the brain itself, may have been responsible for this extraordinary event. Those newly acquired genes, bestowing great fitness on their owners, would be especially favored by natural selection to spread rapidly across the species, propelled by the emigratory and sexual dynamism of these creatures.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The key manufacturing technology emblematic of the Industrial Revolution was the mass cloning of individual parts which were then assembled to create the final product. Ever since the first stone artifact was fabricated by hominans more than 2 million years ago, and until the dawn of the industrial age, every single finished product had to be painstakingly created, one item at a time, by a skilled artisan working exclusively on its production. No two products were ever identical and their components could not be interchanged. The genius of the Industrial Revolution was the mass duplication of parts by creating lathes and other machine tools that reproduced individual parts in massive quantities and with high precision. These duplicate and interchangeable parts could then be rapidly assembled into large numbers of the finished product. Mass production was the magic formula of the Industrial Revolution, a mantra that worked magnificently.
EMIGRATION Among mammals that have inhabited Earth, hominans are by far the most invasive ones known. Propelled by their powerful emigratory instinct and their prolific sexuality, several species of the genusHomodispersed across the Old World in the last 1.8 million years sinceHomo erectusleft Africa for the first time in the Early Pleistocene.Homo sapiens, the Big Kahuna in the mix, successfully infiltrated and occupied the whole world—both Old and New—in just the past 100,000 years. Most of this occupation in fact was accomplished by this animal in less than 50,000 years, toward the end of that period. This global dispersal of a single, large mammalian species in so short a time has never been witnessed on my host planet before or since. Because of their supremely dominant perch on the global biosphere, no other species could challenge human invasiveness.
THE GREAT TOBA EVENT Mac visited Indonesia at the time of the Toba Event. The few remaining bands of Homo erectus living in the area before the eruption were scattered in small isolated populations tucked around that immense archipelago. These semi-sapient beings who emerged around 2 million years ago, were the first hominans ever to leave Africa and colonize the Old World. They had even shared their planet with Homo sapiens. Now they were close to being gone forever. Though most of these creatures had disappeared from Earth by 143,000 BP, a smattering had stoutly persisted, hidden on verdant islands in Indonesia, much like orangutans are today. These doomed outliers were now finally earmarked for extinction. Nature can often be unfeeling and inscrutable in its ways. From supernovas to supervolcanoes, from black holes to the Black Death, nature is endlessly at work refining the cosmos…]
[…Two of the adult females were squatting and defecating to one side of a pathway. Suddenly, the darkening sky lit up with a surreal green glow and a series of ominous rumbles were heard coming from a westerly direction. The H. erectus group assembled in front of their homecave looked startled and obviously frightened. A piercing cry emanating from the throat of an adult male in the group, rent the air. Such warning signals, identifying danger, are common among cooperative primates. Within minutes, a hot sulfurous wind, gathering speed, whistled past our way. The now terrified hominans began to choke, descending into paroxysms of coughing. A gargantuan plume of volcanic gas trekked east into the troposphere, raining torrents of brimstone, pumice and ash onto the ground below. One by one, coughing and spluttering, the doomed hominans crawled and tumbled into their cave. They were all dead within the hour.
RELIGION It is indeed remarkable to note that the institution of religion is universally present among Homo sapiens wherever that species may reside on their planet. It transcends age, gender, geography, race, ethnicity, and culture, and therefore must have played a critically important role for this species during its evolution. That crucial period may now be ending. Though the practice of religion itself was still widespread among my esteemed human friends during Mac’s mission to their planet, it is quite evident now that religion has been declining in scope and meaning for these people throughout the Late Modern Era. When formal religion was first established in the Late Pleistocene, its hegemony was unquestioningly accepted by all people on Earth. However, in recent Holocene times, beginning just a few hundred years ago, as humans became more informed and sophisticated in their outlook, they began to require less religion to give meaning and purpose to their existence, and sought more authentic ways to resolve the issue of their own mortality.
A PROPHESY FULFILLED More than half century ago in 12 AP, Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist and conservationist, wrote a book called Silent Spring which soon became a classic in its genre. The book carefully documented how the chemical pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals—including humans—and caused genetic damage and malignancies. Carson went on to describe in her book how a single application of DDT to crops killed insects for weeks on end, and not just the targeted ones either, but countless others as well. The toxin remained in the environment for prolonged periods of time, even after dilution by rain water. Pesticides like DDT and its many relatives irrevocably harm animals by poisoning the entire planet’s food supply. In Silent Spring’s most famous first chapter, titled “A Fable for Tomorrow,” Carson portrays a nameless town in America where all life—from fish to apple blossoms to human children—is “silenced” by the toxicity of deadly DDT. Authorities banned the production and use of the chemical after Carson’s book ignited public outrage, but that anger was only temporary and futile. The powerful chemical industry quickly unleashed substitute pesticides like neonicotinoid compounds to replace DDT, some which may be even more toxic.
THE SIXTH GREAT METAZOAN MASS EXTINCTION! Metazoans are animals with a body made of cells differentiated into tissues and organs; they usually possess a digestive cavity lined with specialized cells. Metazoans make up the vast bulk of the animal kingdom. Humans distinguish five major metazoan mass extinctions on their planet in the past 500 million years—that is since the Cambrian Explosion when metazoans became firmly established on my host planet. These five major metazoan extinctions were the Ordovician-Silurian (440–438 million BP), Late Devonian (370–360 million BP), Permian (248 million BP), Triassic-Jurassic (210–208 million BP), and the Cretaceous-Paleogene (66 million BP). Prior to the evolution of multicellular eukaryotic organisms and the first metazoans, there may have been four other mass extinctions on Earth of an unknown number of prokaryotic and unicellular eukaryotic species after visible life first appeared on Earth 3.6 billion years ago in the Archean. Because of their microscopic size, no fossil record was left behind of those Precambrian extinctions. The four Precambrian mass extinctions have been respectively designated the Paleoproterozoic (2.3–1.8 billion BP), Sturtian (725–670 million BP), Marinoan-Gaskiers (640–580 million BP), and Ediacaran (540 million BP). With the exception of the Ediacaran event, these pre-metazoan mass extinctions were related to periods of intense climate change and prolonged glaciation developing over millions of years across the planet. Snowball Earths occurred at that time. The present human-induced mass extinction is the sixth major metazoan mass extinction since multicellular life developed on Earth. Depending on whether resource utilization by humans continues at the current pace, their scientists predict the disappearance of up to two-thirds of all existing species on their planet by the time this terrible catastrophe comes to an end. Extinction, clearly, is a compounding process. As anchoring species perish, many others that were dependent on a common ecosystem will follow suit in an escalating spiral.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. . .
FIL MUNAS, M.D. lives on a farm in the United States of America. Born in Sri Lanka, he studied Medicine & Surgery in India, and trained as a Psychiatrist in America. Dr. Munas is now retired. He is a hobby beekeeper.
BOOK INFORMATION Genre: FICTION / General Publication Dates: Hardcover—October, 2014 Paperback—November, 2014 Kindle—January, 2015 Pages: 527
ORDERING INFORMATION (Please go to the STORE tab to order!) 6 x 9 hardback w/ jacket ISBN: 9780578143347 $31.95 6 x 9 paperback ISBN: 9780578143330 $21.95 Kindle edition $9.95