A Book
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

by Emily Dickinson

This is an evolution biologist’s story of planet Earth and its people from origins to a sustainable future. Past patterns of biological evolution offers clues to the natural process of globalization

It’s fascinating the way in which Elisabeth Sahtouris, an evolution biologist and futurist, parallels today’s crisis with the crisis that went through the first forms of life on planet Earth, to conclude that this crisis is biological, and that we have to choose between extinction or cooperation.
She explains that when young all species are competitive and creative, and when growing up they realize that cooperation is more efficient in an energetic level.

So, it all started with bacteria: Part of the evolution happened when there were only bacteria on Earth. Their juvenile phase caused many global problems. They ate all the sugars and the free acids that existed on the planet causing global famine, but with this crisis they became creative, and they created food from the sun, water and minerals, that is, they invented photosynthesis. And they were so successful that caused global pollution, because in the process of photosynthesis a residual gas was expelled: oxygen that contaminated the planet, because oxygen is a lethal gas for the molecules.
At first the land and the oceans absorbed part of that oxygen and the rest went into the atmosphere that is composed of 21% oxygen, but finally everything was balanced, because with a 1 or 2% more oxygen in our atmosphere would have burned everything, and with a 1 or 2% less we could not breathe.
This is the way that they reached that balance: Oxygen was killing many bacteria, so many of them went under the ground to escape and others developed a sort of sun shield and began to use oxygen to crush the food (molecules) to absorb it, and in the process they learned to breathe. Those bacteria were the ones with more energy and more technologically developed, they invented the electric motor.
We humans are more similar to bacteria than any other thing that has existed between them and us. No other natural species has caused so many global problems like them and us.
We are made of them. In our bodies we have ten times more bacteria than cells. One scientist said that perhaps we are just taxis invented by bacteria so they could travel safely through time.
Bacteria are made of 40 different types of molecules, they have all the parts of an engine, much like a human motor but much more efficient. They use it to move quickly. the sperm is a good example. They swim with that engine.

The issue is that the better adapted bacteria, still in its juvenile phase, became imperialist because they had to find more food, so they got into other bacteria, they ate their molecules and reproduced within them to extinction. Then they grew up and stopped that killing. First they began to evolve in the wake of that crisis that led them to famine and pollution, and over time the three types of bacteria began to cooperate. If you look through the microscope to the slime formed by moisture in a sink, you’ll see something similar to New York. These cities became a new kind of cell. And those different types of bacteria began a division of labor: some produced food using the sun, others pushed with their engines the ones producing food…

The cities grew out of cooperation among bacteria, and again these large cells (the cities) were in a juvenile phase. Over billions of years they competed, until they learned it was better to feed the enemy than to fight it. Then, multicellular creatures evolved and reached a mature stage again. And these cities are inside of us.