John M. SAUL

HOW ANCIENT EVENTS HAVE SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD

These essays touch on the great questions of Origins.
The human adventure began when people first started to share complex ideas.

A very early set of shared ideas provided a reasoned scheme that was both religious and scientific that would enable souls to take the Milky Way to the domain of the immortal gods.

Other essays present cancer as originating when damaged tissues lose control over individual cells. Liberated cells multiply and may vary in ways that are incompatible with the functioning of multi-celled crea tures, of humans in particular.

Cancer first emerged during the Cam brian Explosion itself. Four essays discuss the survival of deep terrestrial impact-scars akin to those on the Moon, but far less easy to see. Such scars provide our planet’s initial conditions.

Fractures on the rim-zones of the scars guide plate tectonics and the deposition of minerals, and are implicated in at least one mass extinction. T his book touches on little-discussed aspects of prehistory, history, the explosion of life during the late Precambrian, cancer research, and regional geology.