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Spontaneous generation, the first naturalistic theory of abiogenesis, goes back to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy, and continued to have support in Western scholarship until the 19th century. [15] The theory held that "lower" animals are generated by decaying organic substances.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
Evolutionary thought, the recognition that species change over time and the perceived understanding of how such processes work, has roots in antiquity. With the beginnings of modern biological taxonomy in the late 17th century, two opposed ideas influenced Western biological thinking: essentialism, the belief that every species has essential characteristics that are unalterable, a concept ...
The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the evolutionary lineage of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, throughout the history of life, beginning some 4 billion years ago down to recent evolution within H. sapiens during and since the Last Glacial Period.
The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence , mainly fossils .
Creation myths are of central importance for the valuation of the world, for the orientation of humans in the universe, and for the basic patterns of life and culture." [15] "Creation myths tell us how things began. All cultures have creation myths; they are our primary myths, the first stage in what might be called the psychic life of the species.
Fertilization is the fusing of the gametes; a sperm cell and an ovum (egg cell) fuse to form a single-cell zygote.This is the beginning of the diploid phase of the human life cycle after two genetically unique haploid cells created via meiosis and chromosomal translocation combine their DNA and begin to develop into a multi-cellular organism.
Human history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers.They migrated out of Africa during the Last Ice Age and had spread across Earth's continental land except Antarctica by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago.