Explorers

Humans first evolved in Africa some 4-5 billion years ago.  Our evolution was a result of necessity.  The ancient jungles of africa were disappearing; giving way to the great sun baked planes we know today.  Our ancient ancestors where forced to leave the trees and adapt to the new environment.  But even our incredible adaptions to bipedal running and walking seemed to not be enough, the newly fledged human race was fast approaching extinction, biologists believe the total population of humanity dropped a low as 6000.  And yet we survived, a group of humans made a great exodus from the plains of africa, crossing deserts to reach the fertile crescent of the modern day middle east; and from there humans spread out, sailing on rafts or crossing mountains to populate nearly every piece of land on earth (the only exception being Antarctica) and all this before the discovery of steam power.  Of course those humans that chose to remain in africa did pull through and survived and flourished on the african plains but that does not distract from the incredible journey those that left undertook.

What stories and fables there must be.  Untold and long forgotten journeys and adventures of men and women who set out to cross seas and deserts; oceans.  They possessed no knowledge of what they would find, they must have known there chances of ever returning; or even living to see what, if anything, they would find, was extremely remote.

Yet they went, out of bravery or desperation we cannot know, perhaps they are one in the same.  Perhaps they went for the same reason we went to the moon, and now talk of Mars, that reason is perhaps the most attractive of all; because it was there, and because no human had ever been there before.  This spirit of adventure seems to infect the human race, it is an addiction.  Once caught, one can never be rid of it.  It is the reason humans risk there lives to climb great mountains, or dive to the depths of the oceans, there is something intrinsically within us that drives us to this path.

Yet recently we seem to have stopped, many humans still climb mountains and dive the depths of the oceans.  Yet is seems the majority of us are content to sit and hide comfortably in our small bubbles of awareness.  What malady has stolen our spirit of adventure?  It is the very core of what makes us human; without it we are little better than apes, surely not worthy of the stars we seem not to lust for as we once did.

Yet there is hope MARS-1 is without a doubt the greatest undertaking of an age they aim not only to send some of the remaining explorers to the Red Planet, but they also aim to inspire the masses.  MARS-1 may be like a shot of adrenalin to a dying man;  perhaps it will be enough to wake us from this slumber and send us toward the stars once again.

Below is a message to the first human explorers of Mars from the late Carl Sagan. 

Aware

Self awareness is an incredible thing; that atoms and molecules can come together in such a way as to suddenly become aware of there existence and then go further still and look out into the world and across the cosmos and wonder at it intricacies and ask questions about what all this is and where it all came from.  And THEN STILL to begin to explore and answer those questions through genorations of organisms each passing the collective revelations and achievements of all pervious on to the next; so that we as a species might stand on each others shoulders, growing taller and taller with each passing genoration.  In this way we have a form of immortality, not of ourselves but of our awareness.

It is truly mind boggling to consider the shear number of events that had to unfold in perfect order and perfect harmony for us to even exist as a species let alone for you and me to exist as individuals here and now and in this state. For the laws of the universe to permite matter and complex molecules, for that matter to come together in stars and eventually planets and create lifeforms.  For the lifeforms on one particular chuck of drifting rock to evolve into primates and evolve intelligence.  NOW consider the number of humans to have lived on this planet and the number of events that had to take place, going back to the dawn of man, in order for each pair of your ancestors to meet and raise each consecutive ancestor.  A million million people had to shape there lives the way they did for you great great grandparents to have any shot at existence, and that chain of history had to sit just that way for you to be born as you are in this time, for you would not be you under any other set of circumstances.

This is one of my favourite quotes by Richard Dawkins, a well known evolutionary biologist with some outstanding writings.