Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Chapter 7

WHEN FIRE WAS NEW

1. Fragment 118 in Herakleitos and Diogenes, Guy Davenport, translator (Bolinas, CA: Grey Fox Press, 1979).2. Jonathan Barnes, editor, Early Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 104.3. Wen-Hsiung Li and Dan Graur, Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1991), pp. 10–12.4. B. Widegren, U. Arnason, and G. Akusjarvi, “Characteristics of Conserved 1,579-bp High Repetitive Component in the Killer Whale, Orcinus orea,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 2 (1985), pp. 411–419 (bp is an abbrevation for nucleotide basepairs, the letters in the genetic sequences).5. It can be very serious on the human level. For example, on Chromosome 19 most people have a sequence of nucleotides that goes CTGCTGCTGCTGCTG, a five-fold repeat. But some have hundreds or even thousands of consecutive CTG sequences, and they suffer in consequence from a grave disease called myotonic dystrophy. Some other genetic diseases may have a similar cause.6. M. Herdman, “The Evolution of Bacterial Genomes,” In The Evolution of Genome Size, T. Cavalier-Smith, ed. (New York: Wiley, 1985), pp. 37–68.7. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1986), pp. 46–49.8. J. W. Schopf, private communication, 1991; Andrew W. Knoll, “The Early Evolution of Eukaryotes: A Geological Perspective,” Science 256 (1992), pp. 622–627.9. Philip W. Signor, “The Geologic History of Diversity,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 21 (1990), pp. 509–539.10. Sewall Wright, Evolution and the Genetics of Populations: A Treatise in Four Volumes, Volume 4, Variability Within and Among Natural Populations (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 525.11. Sewall Wright, “Surfaces of Selective Value Revisited,” The American Naturalist 131 (1) (January 1988), p. 122. This article was written when the pioneering population geneticist was ninety-eight.12. Cf. Ilkka Hanski and Yves Cambefort, editors, Dung Beetle Ecology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Natalie Angier, “In Recycling Waste, the Noble Scarab Is Peerless,” New York Times, December 19, 1991.13. Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, quoted in John L. Harper, “A Darwinian Plant Ecology,” in D. S. Bendall, editor, Evolution from Molecules to Men (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 323.14. Clair Folsome, “Microbes,” in T. P. Snyder, editor, The Biosphere Catalogue (Fort Worth, TX: Synergetic Press, 1985), quoted in Dorion Sagan, Biospheres: Metamorphosis of Planet Earth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990), p. 69.

Chapter 8

SEX AND DEATH