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Evolutionary history
Previous history BC
In 312 the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity after a dream that he would be victorious in battle, if he painted a cross on the shields of his soldiers. After his decree of 313 allowing freedom of worship, many Christian zealots destroyed many ancient temples and rebuilt Christian churches. Some ancient cults like the grove sacred to Apollo survived until 530. Christian zealots waged war against the Roman and Greek gods of the past, but the Roman empire was weak and on the verge of a collapse.
410 A.D. St. Augustine Bishop of Hippo in Nth Africa, wrote a model for a good life De Civitate Dei. "The City of God" as Rome was being sacked by Alaric the Goth (Germanic). St. Augustine sensed the end of large scale organised Christian civilisation, but his book became a guide for isolated religious communities to preserve the faith through hundreds of years. Also important as a source of information were the standard texts on school curriculum written by proconsul Martinus Capella. Capella's subjects included rhetoric, grammar and argument, music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy. His texts were used as standard curriculum for 6 hundred years.
St Augustine's writings were influential in the church for many centuries. He claimed that humans were the only animal to have sex for pleasure, but he is entirely wrong in attributing a special God made quality to humans. Chimpanzees have testicles 10 times the size of a human and they have sex for many reasons unrelated to procreation. The most promiscuous award goes to the bonobo monkeys who have sex at the drop of a hat and much of it homosexual. Dolphins are another example. The religious view of St. Augustine gave Christians a feeling of superiority over other animals.
Charlemagne became a powerful King of the Franks (modern France) and established schools utilizing Capella's texts. He standardised writing "Carolingian miniscule" and made attempts to increase literacy levels, but chaos reined supreme after his death.
After the fall of Rome, Monks had kept alive knowledge of the past by hand-crafting copies of the works of Greek and Roman authors. Many of these books became available to scholars during the crusades when many manuscripts were captured by the Christians in the libraries Cordoba and Toledo.The crusaders were surprised to find the sophisticated society they encountered with superior knowledge to their own in many areas. When El Cid took Toledo scholars followed and translated Elucid's Geometry, Aristotle's philosophy and other works from the Arab translations.The wealth of material on philosophy from the Greek philosophers was a challenge to the Catholic Church (as Greek philosophy contained questioning and doubt Sic et Non Abelard until this time there had been no questioning of the church.
By the 12th Century A.D. Legal Universities were first set up in Bologna far away from the Church's immediate influence. The universities were run by the students who hired the teachers. Because books were still relatively scarce (everyone hand written) memory was regarded as being more important than it is now. Students rote learnt whole books and to pass had to read a subject, a entire book from memory.They used elaborate mental imagery to help their memory in fine detail. Stories abound of scholars remembering word perfect whole slabs of text shouted at them once. One of the most popular subjects studied was of course Aristotle which was studied everywhere except France where it was banned. in 1210.
Pope Gregory published a decree that heretics who refused to repent would be executed. Rather than have the regular church prosecute heresies the Dominican order was put in charge of prosecutions. The accused was afforded none of the modern western legal notions of natural justice. They could not be represented, they could not question their accuser or the integrity of witnesses giving evidence against them. There was no appeal process. Within a hundred years torture was commonly used to extract confessions. It was no surprise that the church also had an economic interest in prosecuting heretics, a guilty finding meant the church would take all the heretic's possessions.
Abuses by inquisitors led to some regulation from Rome, but in Spain under the authority of Ferdinand and Isabel the Inquisition became independent of Rome. "No body expects the Spanish Inquisition." These murderous villains in the name of Christ later travelled to the Americas and pillaged and destroyed everything they found of the Azetc and Inca cultures.
Thomas Aquinas argued that the Church need not fear Greek philosophy. He made it appear acceptable to the Church by having a double standard, that the natural world might be subject to reason, but divine truth was given by revelation and not subject to reason criticism or argument. Philosophical application was to practical realities not to God and Aristotle was thereafter allowed on the school curriculum.
In 1347, the Black death arrived at the Sicilian port of Messina, in 20 years half of Europe is dead, it took until the 18th
Century for population levels to recover. Labour became scarce. On the 23rd June 1348 on the fertility festival, a ship's crew infected with "the pestilence"
infected the population; a third of England died, swellings in the armpit, apple like lumps, boils, seething and burning.
For the suspected major plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, to survive, required only a creature to transmit it from host to host, usually the flea. Bubonic plague, the most common plague, was thought to be spread by the fleas on rats which were regarded with unnecessary horror, it may be that a different virus was the major killer, haemorrhagic plague, highly infectious and deadly, but unrelated to transmission by fleas. A new analysis of more than 100 plague epidemics which swept Europe for hundreds of years concludes that it was not spread by rodents running between villages and towns but by man himself, usually travellers unaware of their infection who moved between communities in search of work. With jet travel and some possible threatening mutations of a bird virus in humans, transmission between distant populations of deadly virus could now be within a day, we are not much better prepared for a rapid global pandemic than our ancestors were for a much slower transmission of a virus.
Death followed in a few days, symptoms were, chills, weakness, fever, lymph nodes swelling, myalgia and black spots on the body. Haemmorages and gangrene are thought to be the origin of the term "Black Death". King Phillip of France was told that God intended it as divine retribution. English monks blamed the decline of morals. Edward III's daughter was struck down. The plague returned to England many times in the next century and bathing was thought to be unhealthy and let the disease into your skin if the water was hot.
There are some people descended from survivors of the plague, perhaps 10% of Europeans, who will never catch AIDS, because their ancestors conferred on them a genetic immunity by surviving the plague; 700 hundreds years ago, they have some immunological protection through having the CCR5 Delta 32- mutation. This genetic immunity only occurs in people with an ancestor from a population devastated by the Bubonic plague. The incidence of this mutation is only 2% in central Asia. The mutation is completely absent among East Asians, Africans, and American Indians.
We are like the bacteria that colonise our bodies, kill off even 99% of us and those left will have children who survive and pass on the recipe to beat a virus to their children, a Darwinian localised environmental sieve that killed off a third of us. Some conspiracy arguments believe that AIDs was designed to kill certain races who do not have this mutation. A murder plot to kill of the children of one of the ancient clan mothers! What might become of the descendants of the survivors of the Chernobyl radiation disaster, where cancer rates are very high and cell mutation rates are speeded up through radiation injury. Stressed systems can cause more rapid changes in DNA than static ones.
In 1397 The Medici family in Florence recover quickest from the effects of the plague and begin international money lending with double entry book keeping After a brief bloom culminating in a Florentine interest in Greek and Roman history Florence declines under the weight of its own beurocracy.
In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg, who may have got the idea from the Korean type casters first made movable metal typeface
enabling multiple copy printing. When he presented identical Bibles to the Church for their inspection, they accused him of
being a devil, because every book until then was uniquely hand written. Printing shops became the intellectual centres for
the exchange of books on the natural sciences and how to books.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1492 - 1519) produced many naturalistic life like anatomical drawings departing from Galen's descriptions. He appears to have dissected human bodies which was an illegal taboo and was not even practiced by the ancient Roman Surgeon Galen. Leonardo was the first to declare that the heart was the principal muscle with respect to force. Da Vinci may have also produced the Tourin Shroud as a medieval prank to ridicule religion.
In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus giving the inquisition more powers, ruling that witchcraft was a heresy. Torture had been used to extract confessions since an earlier decree of Pope Innocent IV in 1252. Many of these witches may have just been women skilled with medicines and herbal remedies. In many cases church authorities could profit from taking the land and possessions of the accused.
Martin Luther 1483 - 1546
Luther in 1517 was a beneficiary and productive user of the printing press.
Luther had 94 grievances against church authorities, especially papal indulgences (The rich could pay for their sins in advance) an unscrupulous method to raise money for church authorities.
Luther was considered a heretic in his day rebelling against papal church authority, but he was still a staunch believer in the bible. No doubt the church at the time was corrupt with financial interests, Luther was almost unique in his ability to force change and separation from papal decree in his time, people were still being burnt at the stake for being heretics 50 years later. Perhaps it was also the Germanic Protestant ethic and resentment of the Italian Pope, which allowed his movement to thrive? He probably could not have got away with his protests if he was living in Rome.
His protest was more effective because the leaflets he printed were widely distributed very quickly, nailed to the doors of many churches. The support Luther received from the population would have been almost impossible before the printing press.
Martin Luther had four witches burnt to death at Wittenberg
Before the time of Copernicus, it was generally held that a learned man should ground himself in the learning of ancient Greeks and Romans. In medicine, the Roman Galen (AD 129 - 99) was the authority and in philosophy Aristotle's quantitative theory of crystal spheres around an immovable earth was the considered authority. The hero of the renaissance however became Plato, whose influence was more towards using mathematics and geometry to provide evidence of truth rather than accepting some authority alone. Others also took up different perspectives of other formally neglected ancient authorities such as the Atomism of Epicurus and Lucretius. Copernicus discovered in Plutarch's writing that some ancient Greeks like, Philolaus, Heraclides and Ecphantus has suggested that the earth moved.
In 1514 Nicholas Copernicus first suggested a heliocentric solar model (Sun centered system) to explain celestial movements which removed humans from the ego-centric Ptolemy view that the universe revolved around the earth in crystal spheres. Copernicus published his great work which he had nursed for 40 years on his death bed De Revolutionsibus Orbium Coelestium, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Orb which was a philosophical and technical mathematical description of planetary movements in 1543.
After 1543, Ptolemy's text Almagest with an ancient earth centred solar system ceased to have any effect compared to the more powerful mathematical model of Copernicus. Copernicus had disguised his heliocentric model so that it appeared as an elegant but implausible mathematical model.
The Roman Galen had used many practical treatments and surgery, rather than appeals to the Gods. His teachings were held to be unquestionable by the surgeons who came after him even though many of them were inaccurate. Galen had been the surgeon at the Roman Gladitorial games and became physician to the Emperor and the wealthy. He had very fine steel medical surgical instruments made for him.
In the same year 1543, a great medical text was also published by Andreas Vesalius De Huma Corpis Fabrica, On the Fabric of the Human Body. Versalius produced a more realistic human anatomy text in which he respected ancient authority but stated that the Roman Galen had only dissected Apes and even called Galen an "imbicile". Galen had stated that the great central vein of the body came from the liver. Galen's ideas about philosophical rather than practical or experimental ideas about medicine still held sway for many years and the London College of Physicians ordered the trail of a doctor John Geynes in 1559 who had insisted that Galen had erred on a number of points. It was a successor to Vesalius, Harvey who correctly described the circulation of the blood in 1628.
Link to Copernicus science discoveries
In 1531 Henry VIII separated the English Church from Rome and by now the Portuguese had circumnavigated the globe and even common sailors were refuting the Church's teaching which could not explain the discovery of America in 1492. By the beginning of the 15th century the Julian calendar was clearly 11 days out but the Church had adopted Aristotle's cosmology of unchanging crystal spheres and did not reconcile the calender problem until 1582.
In 1536 Paracelsus (1493-1541) publishes The Great Surgery Book. He was "the precursor of chemical pharmacology and therapeutics and the most original medical thinker of the sixteenth century."
He travelled in Germany after Luther and was called "the Luther of physicians," a heretic who made many enemies, because he denounced antiquated medical ideas of the Roman, Galen. He used opium and alcohol as sedatives during surgery and used mercury as a cure for syphallis.
Paracelsus pursued his own treatments rather than following Galen's ideas. Paracelsus is credited with the modern introduction of opium as a sedative and mercury.
Paracelsus, the Swiss chemist and physician who founded modern chemical treatment methods stated that, "It was only the dose that determined whether a substance acts as a remedy or as a poison."
In 1572 a supernova explosion in the constellation Cassiopa burned for two years in evidence that the spheres were not unchanging. For about two weeks the star was so bright that could be seen in daylight. List of Stellar Supernova Events
In 1573 Tycho Brahe published Stella Nova, The New Star and made more accurate star maps. In 1577 Another comet disturbs the crystal spheres. Tycho said the "crystal" spheres could not be crystalline solid objects as Aristotle stated. Tycho calculated that the star must be beyond the orbit of the moon.
Between 1590 and 1597 approximately 1,500 Scots, mainly women are burnt to death at the stake for being witches. After the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, James 1 of England personally interrogated many suspected witches to see if they were in league with the Catholic conspiracy against him.
In 1602 Galileo Galilei a maths teacher and scientific entrepreneur contradicts the traditional teaching of Aristotle's
crystal spheres. Galileo (the "wrangler") claims to have discovered many of the scientific achievements of the day
such as his famous leaning Tower demonstration that different weights fall at the same rate
Aristotle believed a 20Kg weight would fall 20 times faster than a 1KG weight)
A proof of this was first published by Jan deGroot in 1586.
Galileo's claims that he invented the telescope are challenged by Johannes Lippershy in 1600 and Giovanni Battista in 1598. One source states that Galileo was nicknamed "The Wrangler" in his own time. He seems more able than others to maximise discoveries for commercial profit.
Newton said "If I have seen far, It is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants," he was referring to Galileo, Kepler and Copernicus. Galileo discovered the laws of amplitude and the first proof that the earth rotates from watching a lantern swing in the leaning tower of Pisa. He is also the first observer of sunspots, a pioneer in optical astronomy the discoverer of Jupiter's 4 largest moons. He is regarded as the father of modern science for the experimental methods he adopted in making and recording his observations.
On November 5th, 1605 Guy Fawkes was discovered with a load of gunpowder under the English parliament, ready to try and blow up James 1. The "recursants" were Catholics, who believed that violent action was the only way for English Catholics to seize power. This attitude is of course completely the opposite of the peaceful teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. The majority of Catholics did not support the attempted uprising. The plot was discovered and Guy Fawkes was hung, drawn and quartered. His death is celebrated by the British who "burn guys" (effigies of Guy Fawkes) to celebrate this date. Following Guy Fawkes, James 1 of England, burnt many innocents as witches, thinking they might be associated with the Catholic plot.
In 1610 Galileo publishes The Starry Messenger. He stuns the church and other astronomers
by claiming a series of discoveries:
Sun-spots (First described by Christopher Scheiner)
Four major satellites of Jupiter (Simon Mayr)
Andromeda Spiral Galaxy (von Greenhausen)
Venus phases (Predicted by Castelli)
In 1616 the Roman Curia defiantly declared that the earth was immobile.
Galileo's observations contradicted Aristotle's unchanging crystal spheres.Galileo realised that a heliocentric system such as Copernicus' could resolve observations. In 1610 his book The Starry Messenger challenged Aristotle. The inquisitor who had Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for heresy was to put Galileo on trial. He recanted his heresy, but is supposed to have muttered under his breath "E pour si muove...." that the earth did move around the sun. He promised not to teach Copernican theory. In 1623 his second book written with papal permission which was to confine itself to theory of Copernicus not its religious implications aroused more anger than his first book. Galileo was put on trial by the inquisition. Galileo's trial
In 1633 Galileo unlike Bruno recanted his belief in Copernicus, but was found guilty of herecy, put under house arrest and died in 1642, his writings and schetches were prohibited reading until 1835 and he was only pardoned by the Church in 1992.
In 1638 Galileo published Dialogues on two new sciences.
In 1637 Rene Descartes Discourse on method described a mechanical universe with objects represented in 3 Dimensional space by their X and Y axis. In 1660 The Royal Society for improving natural knowledge formed and exchanges of scientific information especially astronomy. 1663 Spinoza's natural laws.
The inventor of the reflecting telescope. In 1687 Newton's theories explain local gravity, the attraction of bodies and opened up mathematical
analysis of integers and calculus, though Leibniz who was probably shown a manuscript on Newton's fluxions, Leibniz had a superior
notation for practical calculations. Newton was a heretic, he had to receive a royal dispensation to avoid being ordained an Anglican priest
as was expected for someone in his position as a fellow at Trinity college.
An example of the convergence of ideas, Newton and Leibniz, working on similar problems at the same time.
Newton was also famous in his own lifetime for being tempremental. He could not stand any criticism of his work and he had an irrational hatred of his rivals such as Leibniz and Robert Hooke. In September 1693 he wrote to a friend Samel Pepys that he never wanted to see him or any of his friends ever again. Newton's physical symptoms were insomnia, loss of appetite with mental problems of delusions of persecution and memory loss. Hair samples from Trinity college showed that Newton had a mercury level of 197 ppm and a lead level of 191 ppm which suggests that he suffered from chronic lead and mercury poisoning. Common symptoms of mercury poisoning are irritability, depression and paranoid beliefs of persecution. His poisoning may be the result of his alchemical experiments vaporizing lead, mercury, arsenic and antimony or it may in part be due to his desire to be surrounded by the colour red, his room were painted with red vermillion made from mercury.
On his death bed he refused the last rites after keeping his view that, Jesus could not be the son of God secret for years. He did not believe in Christianity. After a split with his friend and mathematical groupie of four years duration, Nicholas Dullier and not long after publishing Principia, he suffered a breakdown and was given a post at the Royal Mint by an ex-student. He managed to protect the coin of the realm, by sending 28 counterfeiters to the gallows.
In 1692 The Salem Witch hunt begins in Massachusetts, New England. Probably the result of ergot infected rye or barley. Around 1720 a mini ice age often called the maunder minim ended, agriculture prospered leading to fencing acts to regulate pastures.
From 1788 Science Institutes flourished Fellows of Royal Society formed a laboratory.
In 1795 France establishes the Ecole Polytechnique.
In 1798 Malthus predicted that arithmetic population growth would outstrip linear growth in food supply.
In 1829 The causes and origins of contaminated water causing Cholera epidemics were discovered by statistics.
1844 Charles Darwin began his 5 year voyage on the Beagle preserving specimens from different areas, and taking copious notes
which suggested that species were changing and did not remain the same. Darwin had originally trained for religious orders
and took 15 years to crystalize ideas into the Origin of the Species, and then his notes were only to be published after his
death, but due to another academic Wallace proposing a similar theory Darwin published, but was afraid of persecution. Before
Darwin, Lamark had suggested that traits passed on to offspring were dependant on the life experiences of the parent.
Darwin showed that it was the cruelty of nature in culling out unadaptive forms which decided which life forms would live.
In 1847 Yale University was established.
In 1847 Chloroform was used as an anesthetic.
Outbreak of revolutions in the 1850s. The Australian rebellion The Eureka Stockade
Emigration to Australia for the Gold Rushes
Catherine Bentley's Eureka Stockade Incident Saga 1854-2007
Catholics at the Eureka Stockade
150th Anniversary of the Eureka Stockade
Michael Tuohy Found NOT GUILTY of treason
Eureka Stockade Some of the characters
1859 Darwin published Origin of the Species outlining his theory of evolution which was to be sold out in the first printing to receive high praise. A topical debate at the time between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley concluded that the academic value of the theory was more important than the ridicule of the Church. When asked whether he was related to monkeys on his mother or father's side Huxley replied that he would rather be related to a monkey than the church who would introduce ridicule into a debate as evidence.
In 1863 the Michigan Institute of Technology opens.
From 1915 to 1926 Encephalitis lethargica affected millions of people, characterised by drowsiness and lethargy. Oliver Sacks, was later to revive some victims to their former waking states with dopamine, but they relapsed after some time. What new epidemics or pandemics might we encounter in the first few decades on the next century? Bacteria who have survived the onslaught of antibiotics which no longer kill them. We are creating superbugs, but then some of us will always have the right mutations to survive, hopefully almost all of us. Tenacious species we seem to be.
In 1925 The Scopes trial, of a teacher charged with teaching evolution, which was outlawed in Tennessee until 1967. In some US states, the generation over 60 years of age, has had no education about the theory of evolution at all! How can they work towards world peace with other religions if they bring religious prejudice to the table? The same can be said for Islam, education would enable reconciliation, without education, religious based prejudice and conflict will always reign.
Evolutionary history
Previous history BC
John Emsley
The Elements of Murder.
Oxford University Press.2005 ISBN 0-19-280600-9
Where Did Modern Humans Originate.
Scientific American April 1992.
Genes Language and People
Scientific American November 1991
Jared Diamond.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee
Vintage edition 1992.
John Allegro.
The Mushroom and the Cross
