Gods, Wasps and Stranglers by Mike Shanahan

Gods, Wasps and Stranglers by Mike Shanahan

Author:Mike Shanahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2016-10-17T15:38:36+00:00


NINE

From Dependence to Domination

Dear Reader: You and I are related, both in blood and through figs. We share ancestors that survived and thrived because they dwelt among Ficus trees and ate often from their ripe crops. Figs helped make us. If we had a time machine, I could show you. The story begins 80 million years ago, when giant dinosaurs still roamed the world. The alliance between fig trees and their wasps had taken root. Our ancestors were small, furry creatures. Their prospects changed 66 million years ago, when the universe propelled an asteroid into the planet. It blasted a new future into being.

The asteroid was at least 10 kilometres wide and travelling 20 kilometres a second when it smashed into the Earth at the edge of what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Shockwaves ripped around the world, sparking volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis that rose hundreds of metres into the air before crashing across coastlines with devastating force. A pall of dust and ash lingered in the atmosphere for years, blocking out sunlight and cooling the planet. Three-quarters of the planet’s animal and plant species went extinct. The giant dinosaurs could not cope with the change. They fell like stones and exist now only as fossils.

For the fig trees, though, it was just the start of a new chapter in an already long story. They and their partner wasps survived the apocalypse. So did the mammals. They diversified into new forms and thousands of species. Figs would feed many of the newcomers, from rats and bats to antelopes and elephants. They became particularly important to the primates: the group whose modern members include monkeys, apes, and you and me.

Figs matter so much and to so many primates today that it seems likely they have been feeding our family for tens of millions of years. Our close relatives, the gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans, all love a meal of figs. So do lemurs and gibbons and dozens of monkey species in Africa, Asia and South America. As our ancestors scampered along branches, then grew bigger and brainier and ultimately descended to walk upright, figs were rarely beyond their reach.

Evidence that figs sustained the ancestors from which humans evolved has emerged from a site called Aramis in the Afar desert, a bleak landscape in Ethiopia’s Middle Awash region. It’s an unforgiving place: hot, dry and largely barren. Any urbanite stranded there today would struggle to survive. But 4.4 million years ago this sandscape was a grassy woodland, green and moist and full of life.

The raucous calls of parrots and peacocks rang out from the woods each day. Porcupines and spiral-horned antelopes foraged in the undergrowth. Monkeys rollicked around in the treetops high above. Fossil evidence shows that fig trees grew in that woodland. Among the species they likely fed was Ardipithecus ramidus, a 1.2-metre-tall primate that may be the ancestor of us all.

Ardipithecus ramidus was not an ape, but a member of the human side of the family tree. It had a small head, long arms and very long fingers.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.