The Drunkard's Walk

The Drunkard's Walk

The above evolutionary tree is copied from  http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/overview-of-hominin-evolution-89010983

My Just pretending to think blog will just be random thoughts with a stream of consciousness organization on whatever I happen to be contemplating, reading, or dreaming about at any moment.  

Who am I? Like all of us I am a product of the universe's proverbial drunkard's walk - (recommended reading: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow). A big bang about 13.7 billion years ago , inflation, quark-gluon plasma, hydrogen, helium and lithium, the formation of stars, fusion creating all elements heavier than H, He and Li - such as C and O, the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago, a cooling period,  organic molecules,  self-replicating organic molecules (RNA, DNA), the still unexplained genesis of life around 3 billion and half years ago (God of the Gaps begone), a few billion years of evolution leading to me and you, Homo sapiens that we are. Our direct ancestors evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and almost became extinct 150,000 years ago (genetic researchers estimate the breeding population may have dipped to as few as  2,000 breeding pairs). We began spreading  into Eurasia between 125,000  and 50,000 years ago ( yeah, I know 75,000 years is a wide range, but I was just playing it safe, as the dates are anything but easy to clarify, though we learn more each and every day), and we haven't stopped moving and expanding ever since.   Is this knowledge written in stone? No, but the expanding knowledge of our past is a work in progress that will continue to be refined as we learn more via paleontology and human genetics, though as we do not have time machines we will never know exactly what happened. Sooner or later I will pay my money and take an inner cheek swab and send it off to be analyzed - to add my personal genetic data to the Genographic Project (see : https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com)
However, if it makes you feel good,  you can have faith in any number of  creation fairy tales invented by us before we stumbled upon science.


We are all descendants of survivors. Duh, as the kids say in the modern vernacular.  Genghis Khan survived to procreate and it has been claimed based on genetic studies that 1 in 200 of all living males have Y chromosomal genes passed down for 750 years from this famous marauder, who was  responsible for the ruthless slaughter of somewhere between 10 and 50 million human beings, plus the rape of who knows how many. If you are into podcasts, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History's Wrath of the Khans I-V. Given  an average of 20 to 25 year generations more or less then there would be between 30 to 35 or so direct male forbears of a present day descendant of this illustrious being. If you were a descendant by rape or otherwise, would  this be something to be proud of as many Mongolians are, or is it just another happenstance? Knowing about his very successful genocides, would you feel guilty if you happened to be related to Genghis? You should not really, as in the long run back in time all of us Homo sapiens are really very, very closely related. We are all members of the same species. A moment of silence please for the great-great-great ...grandmother of all living Homo sapiens, known as Mitochondrial Eve (Google it , and please forget the biblical crap), whoever she may have been.
Also, how lucky are we really to be descendants of survivors?  It seems that we had a very close call, and unfortunately for the rest of the species on this planet close does not count.

Speaking of close calls: 

My maternal grandfather, Wilhelm Herrmann 1914

The Herrmann family 1943 -my Mom, Oma, Opa, Onkle Fritz, Onkel Richard, Tante Gertrude

Onkel Willy - Tante Gertrude's husband

  The first picture above is of my maternal grandfather, Wilhelm Herrmann,  in 1914 just before he marched off to invade France, where it seems his closest call was being hit over the head with a loaf of heavy rye bread upon entering a French bakery - so the family legend goes. Had that surreal blow been fatal, yours truly would not exist. In the Herrmann family photo  from left to right are of my mother, grandmother, grandfather, Uncle Fritz, Uncle Richard, and Aunt Gertrude (all deceased, but all lived more than long enough to have descendants). This "happy" family photo was take in a studio in Ludwigsburg, Germany in 1943 when my two uncles happened to be on leave at the same time. The randomness that ruled their lives ensured that they all survived WWII. My mother lost her best childhood friend in a bombing raid. Had the bomb fallen two houses to the left, and /or had my mother not been in the cellar, her body parts would have been scattered and splattered about , so  she would not have met my biological father and given birth to me a scant 3 years after the end of the war (500,000 estimated deaths due to "strategic" bombing of civilians  in Germany ). Moreover, in another close call my mother while cycling home was also strafed by an American fighter plane, but  saved by an old man who pulled her under a railway overpass. Also, if my biological father had not caught malaria in Italy and been sent back to Germany to recuperate, he could have been killed in action (as were well over 1.5 million German combatants). All  of my uncles, including my aunt's husband, Willy, survived to pass on their genes. Drunkard's walks galore: Uncle Richard had his orders changed from being posted to the Bismark to serving on a U-Boot in the North Sea; both Uncle Fritz and Willy survived the the Russian front; Willy was wounded, lost an eye, and part of his stomach, recuperated , was sent back and ended up at the siege of Stalingrad and very improbably survived.  There are no pictures of my  also deceased biological father's family, as all contact with him was broken off when I was only 7. 

We are all descendants of survivors, against crazily improbable odds