DNA

Extinction is a Mistake

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Imagine a universe like ours, except devoid of life. Space, stars, planets, air, ocean and rock. Imagine our Earth, with waves on the beach, wind blown sand, lava, floating ice cap, canyons and waterfalls, spinning each day, heating or cooling each month, year after year, for eons. Structurally, very similar, but empty, without any living things, anywhere.

Nobody would explore it. None would appreciate its beauty, and no one could try to divine its purpose. Without any living creatures to inhabit it, and without us, such a world would be meaningless, neither studied, understood nor experienced. Without life, there is no knowledge.

Without knowledge, there is no life. Every living thing contains within it a recipe, the ingredients and the drive to cheat death. The recipe is our genetic code, passed down from our ancestors. Every living cell in our bodies carries this knowledge, which includes hidden traits and alternate characteristics for future generations, a master cookbook of the adaptations our successful ancestors employed to live, including our survival instinct. All living things carry such ancestral knowledge. Life began when some tiny process replicated itself in a repeatable way—an accident, a trick or a miracle. Life began when the knowledge of that trick was passed on to create the next generation. Life is that knowledge, plus every other trick that worked to keep life going for generations, in all forms, through billions of years of evolution.

Some such knowledge may be useless, dangerous or doomed to fail. In nature, failed ways of life die out, and such mistakes are forgotten. But species that have survived many times longer than mere humanity, have proven their success far longer than we have proven ours. Their lineage is noble, deserving of a place among earth’s great tapestry of living creatures. Our more recent genealogy is dubious, as we have used our supposed ‘superiority’ to create both weapons and pollution that could extinguish most life on earth, including ourselves. In our arrogance, we dismiss all wild species for not having adapted to us, when in truth we should adapt ourselves to sharing this earth with them. The mistake is ours, not theirs.

Life is knowledge. Many living things have learned to communicate, to call for help, to warn, locate and comfort each other. The tactics learned by observation, communication and mimicry become living knowledge of ways to outwit death, shared in community and thus kept alive for the next generation. Our species created written records as yet another path, besides our genetic code and our learned behavior. Some trivial knowledge may offer only a scant promise to enhance some future life with a minor convenience or comfort, while other knowledge may redesign human civilization, if we have the wisdom to discern it. We pursue knowledge to survive, to improve life and to pass it on. Because knowledge is life.

So extinction is the permanent loss of the secrets of life, both the code and the living behaviors. Most species have carried that knowledge for millions of years, long before humans evolved. We have learned from many species, observing how they act, adopting their tactics, and we have used tens of thousands of species to make medicines. We neither know the present value nor can estimate the future value of this accumulated knowledge.

Prematurely and unnaturally extinguishing masses of species, is far worse than simply killing. We do not know which species’ removal will affect other species’ survival in the indirectly connected, mutually evolved web of life. Extinction is the permanent end of life, and the erasure of all the accumulated knowledge used to create, to sustain both that life and the other species that depend on it, and to evolve further into some unrealized beautiful future. It is the silencing of tongues we do not understand, before we could learn what they were trying to tell us. And it is permanent. Forever. Never to be seen or heard again, despite eons of outwitting death. Extinction is the loss of what was, what is and what could have been. Artificial extinction is the ultimate betrayal of life.

By recklessly causing extinctions, we are like barbarians burning down the only ancient library of a lost civilization, full of wonderful ideas, miraculous cures, and priceless books, before we learn to read. E. O. Wilson, Harvard professor of evolutionary biology, once said, “destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”

The world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, is being cut down for logging and ranching. We are literally destroying rainforest for hamburgers. Besides the direct extinction of species, we are tipping this critical ecosystem towards desertification, releasing more carbon, raising temperatures, increasing fires, and changing our global climate. There is no wisdom in this course of action, no moral justification, no long-term net economic gain, no rational reason to give up so much for so little gain, no scientific approval, and no appreciation of the beauty of so many forms of life lost forever. And apparently, there is insufficient concern among people today to stop making this colossal mistake.

Fort Caroline National Memorial

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The French settled on the Atlantic coast of Florida in 1564, a year before the Spanish established the Castillo de San Marco in St Augustine. The French built a fort, but their settlement had fewer soldiers and more crafts people, as they intended to trade with the natives, rather than conquer them. Their relations with the Timucuan people were peaceful and friendly.

But the French intended to stamp out the Spanish newcomers, and the fort sent its troops by sea to take St Augustine. That didn’t end well: see Matanzas. Even worse for the French, the Spanish had the same idea and attacked Fort Catherine while its troops were away. The Spanish sacked the fort, killing 140 civilians and taking over the settlement. Only a few French survivors were spared to serve the Spanish.

The natives didn’t intervene when the Spanish attacked, but when another French force arrived for revenge three years later, the natives sided with the French. In the fighting, Fort Catherine burned down. The current fort is a replica created from old plans, drawings and descriptions, but roughly 1/3 the original’s size. The French lost their foothold in Florida to the Spanish.

In settling colonial claims at the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the Spanish traded Florida to the British for the return of Cuba and the Philippines. With American independence, Florida reverted to Spain, before eventually becoming a US territory in 1821, a state in 1845, then seceding in 1861, and then re-joining the Union in 1868. Florida was part of Spain longer than it has been part of the USA.

My eyes used to glaze over in history class, especially with all the dates, places and people long ago. But now, when I think about how the French differed from the Spanish and British, I realize how those battles centuries ago determined who lived & died, who survived and who thrived. I wonder what could our history have been, if only our ancestors had cooperated peacefully, instead of fighting.

For example, the Timucuan natives were wiped out within 150 years or so, some because the Spanish took revenge on them, some by disease, some who joined neighboring tribes and some who were converted and perhaps assimilated. My DNA is 5% Neanderthal, and I’m glad some of the natives survived somehow and assimilated, rather than disappearing without any trace.