The Earth Before Humans

It is no secret that Nature in general makes things rounded or elliptical such as the planets and their orbits while humans create things that are mostly straight, square, or rectangular. Sure, humans create round things like plates and rockets but those are the exceptions. It is also true that Nature creates jagged things like rocks but those are on their way to becoming smooth and round again thanks to rolling and tumbling due to weather, volcanic activity, or earthquakes. So, it should not be surprising that the following discussion revolves around cyclical concepts. First, we will discuss the cyclical nature of inanimate entities on Earth and then move on to the flora and fauna of this beautiful planet describing their interdependent cycles.

Earth’s Cyclical Nature

Earth is a self-contained system. Hardly anything comes into it from outside, except for sunlight and the occasional meteor; rarely anything leaves the Earth except for a little reflected sunlight and an occasional molecule of air floating into outer space.

What is the general logic of Earth’s cycles? They help us explain how an atom or a chemical compound moves through its environment, starting in one part and moving to another, only to return to where it started with no or very little accumulation. There is an endless number of cycles taking place on and within the Earth right now.

The cycle that can be perceived most readily is the water cycle which begins in the oceans, lakes, rivers, and on land — as water vapor ascends through the air forming clouds. These clouds will, in turn, drift along until the moment they give in and fall in the form of rain, snow, or ice onto land to form streams, creeks, and rivers eventually emptying into lakes and oceans or else are absorbed by the land.

The water cycle takes a year or more to reach completion and other cycles may take less time or much longer. For example, Earth’s crust consists of tectonic plates of rock, sand, and mud moving very slowly and colliding with one another. Science tells us that at their collision points one plate with all its mud and sand can slip under another, producing extreme pressure and heat. This results in volcanic activity that throws molten rock from deep beneath up to the surface. The rock cools and over millions of years breaks down to mud and sand once again.

Carbon dioxide also exists in the oceans, air, and underground. There is a balance of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the oceans, as the atmosphere and the oceans exchange carbon dioxide according to their temperatures and composition.

Scientists like to talk about these as carbon dioxide cycles. A major cycle in this regard is the photosynthesis/respiration cycle of living matter in the biosphere. For plants, photosynthesis takes carbon dioxide and water to produce Oxygen, sugars, and starches which many if not most of the living depend on for energy. With respiration, the reverse can be observed: Oxygen and carbohydrates are combined, releasing carbon dioxide and water once again.

An example of the carbon dioxide cycles

The Living Cycles

In the simplest of terms, life is a chemical reaction requiring energy. With a fixed amount of incoming energy from the Sun hitting our planet’s surface, lowering the amount of energy required for this chemical reaction to take place allows for a proliferation of life. If the reader asks how they might lower the amount of energy required for a chemical reaction, the answer would revolve around the availability of catalysts and enzymes which are the biological catalysts. In most cases where an enzyme is required, reactions occur faster because they require less energy to activate the reaction. You can think of a catalyst as a tool like a wrench which makes it so much easier to unscrew a nut.

In summary, increased energy efficiency using tools, such as an enzyme, occurs when mutations in our offspring lead to more efficient enzymes.

As far as we are aware, the cycles discussed in the carbon dioxide cycles are neither the rule nor the exception for the movement of matter on and within the Earth’s mantle. However, they are certainly present in each species in their circulatory systems. Specific groups of species—such as those found in a forest— circulate matter too. One can say that energy drives the circulatory system of forests. Without it, forests would collapse because each of its links, whether one species or a piece of inanimate matter, provides a tiny link in the larger overall forest chain or chains that provide a way to recycle life-giving nutrients. These recycling chains make these nutrients available for the regeneration of the forest.

For example, on a smaller scale when looking out a window or strolling through a park, the reader may observe trees, birds, grass, and bees, to name just a few of the life forms present in our surroundings. When focusing on a flower merely as an object, it may appear entirely independent of the other objects around it, but it is intimately connected with all other objects in its immediate vicinity.

A clover, for example, needs soil to grow. As a mature plant, it

later provides nourishment for the bison that roam the plains of the Midwest of the U.S.A. The puma, meanwhile, later hunts out the bison for food. When it manages to bring one down, it drags what it can of the carcass to the shade of a tree to eat. Flies gather around the carcass to feed, lay eggs, and try to avoid the birds that feed on them.

The above picture and explanation are simplified, but they show how different species are so closely interlinked. A more accurate representation of the cyclical link between species is shown in the following graphic.

When following the biological cycle pictured above in a clockwise direction, starting with the green bush at the top left, a story can be told of how nutrients flow from one species to another. First, the bush extracts water and minerals from the soil and with the help of the Sun and atmosphere produces tender leaves some of which are consumed by the goat to build its muscle, maintain its growth, and hopefully also give birth.

The goat in turn is consumed by the lion in the picture. The leftovers from the goat are used by the fly to lay its eggs. Some birds will feed on those flies, while the goat, lion, bird, and fly leave behind fecal matter that is consumed by various microbes such as amoebas and bacteria, which return the nutrients to the soil once again.

On any given territory, there are multitudes of life cycles, but perhaps with different species that participate in returning the atoms and chemical compounds (nutrients) to the soil and into the atmosphere. In addition, these living cycles can often be interrelated. For instance, a living cycle that starts with a bush can have more than one grazer consuming it: they may be goats, sheep, or deer. These living cycles can take the following shape:

Looking at a square acre of land and trying to describe the number of living cycles within it, one may count many millions of combinations, and their arrangement may look like the living cycles in the next diagram:

Living cycles are not limited to food, either. They can be observed in nest building, territory, and so on. The biological cycle graphic below shows the cycle for a bird building a nest in a tree. When the eggs hatch, the nest may fall to the ground where insects break it down and pass on the resulting matter to amoebas and bacteria which will return the nutrients to the soil to be used by the bush.

A forest is an example of an ecosystem: Like any ecosystem, it contains mega cycles of circular chains involving the air, soil, water, plants, the sun, and animals. A forest is not the only ecosystem. A desert such as the Sahara Desert is also considered an ecosystem.

In summary, the chain of life is circular, meaning that there is no start or end, no top or bottom link, nor is there any intelligent link or any particularly unintelligent one. The chain is nevertheless very complex. It contains many circular side chains. You can imagine the chain as a solid sphere where no one circular chain can be distinguished from another.

A possible scenario for species relationships on Earth

It is hoped it was noticed that death played an important role in this discussion. For example, a goat eats the leaves of a bush, a human eats the flesh of the goat, and the birds eat the flies. Each one of these acts involves the death of an individual leaf, goat, and fly. In a diverse and sustainable environment, we all depend on each other for sustenance and shelter.

So, with all this death going on how does the ecosystem survive?

Chapter 2

The Balance of Specie Communities

To have a balance of species death rates must equal birth rates. When looking at the relationship between a lion and its prey—the gazelle for example—the African lioness eats from the herd of gazelle to satisfy her hunger. She hunts in a way that always leaves enough gazelle for her to pursue the next day and the next year. If she and her cohorts finished off the whole herd of gazelle, then her cubs will have nothing to eat the next day or year and they will die off, resulting in their extinction.

One key factor that gives stability to this living relationship is sleep. In the wild, it has been observed that lions sleep for 21 to 22 hours a day and go hunting for gazelle or other prey only when their bellies rumble. To conserve energy lions, pursue only the slowest individuals in the gazelle herd. If an element of sleepiness was not present in this pride of lions, one can imagine the lions hunting all day and bringing down as many gazelles as they can, which would ultimately break the living relationship between predator and prey by decimating both populations and lead to their extinction.

Other key factors to consider here are the territoriality of lions where the larger the territory the more gazelles there are to survive and the increasing speed of gazelles that protects them against overhunting.

So, living relationships are stable over time largely due to the genetics of their participants which have mutated into a form that fits the environment. Unstable relationships in Nature such as when birth rates are not equal to death rates for the most part are rare and most likely to collapse.

The Teeter-tatter of Earthly Life

This balancing act can be represented by a teeter-tater. For the species to survive the teeter-tatter board must not touch the ground. If it does the species will go extinct. You may ask how this balancing act is achieved.

In the slide above we have a representation of three species numbered on the left and their ways of survival on the right. For example, if species 1 has a high birth rate it is countered by a high death rate. Species 2 is a good hunter and that is balanced by the habit of sleeping a lot. Species 3 hides well from its predators but has a low birth rate to keep the teeter tatter in balance.

The slide above represents 2 ways a species keeps the teeter tatter in balance. If the species is a good hunter, then for it to keep the teeter tatter in balance it has the traits of sleeping a lot and has a low birth rate. It just so happens the lioness in the previous section has these two traits.

If we continue with the lioness example, the above slide shows three possible ways she might have to balance out the teeter tatter. In addition to sleeping a lot and having a low birth rate, it might have a higher death rate which is not uncommon for lions if you observe the way they eat where the adults eat first leaving the young scraps of hide and bones.

The balancing act is not restricted to a single species but may include two or more species. The slide above shows a balancing act between a predator and its prey where a good hunter may sleep a lot and the prey can run faster than the hunter.

The slide above is an example of a predator in balance with another species in three ways. First, the predator sleeps a lot. Second, the prey can outrun the predator while the prey also has a high birth rate.

In the case of the lioness and the gazelle, we know that the gazelle also needs to eat. So, in reality, we have a serial relationship involved that might look like the following slide:

Here we have a predator who consumes prey and in turn, the prey consumes grass. It is assumed that the grass needs water to grow. So far, we have not explored what will happen if anything unexpected happens. The next slide demonstrates what will happen if the rains stop and the grass dies.

If the pride of lions only ate gazelle and the gazelle only ate grass the result would be the extinction of the lions and gazelles.

The good news is that many species are diversified in what they eat so you might be able to imagine parallel teeter tatters where the lions also consume wort hogs and the wort hogs eat legumes instead of grass. You might say if there is a drought one year wouldn’t the legumes also die out? The answer is “yes” but the legumes have deeper roots so they can access deeper groundwater and stay alive. The grasses leave behind seeds that can last for several years so they will come back when the rains return.

The imagery starts to get very complex when you consider an ecosystem. There will be countless numbers of serial and parallel species teeter tatters or relationships as biologists would put it. These relationships attest to the resilience of ecosystems where if the unexpected happens there are alternate cyclical, sustainable, and balanced paths that can be taken.

The bad news is that civilized humans have no concept of what it takes to survive on the planet Earth. Therefore, their concepts of economy, wealth, and other inventions that do not follow nature’s cyclical systems will end in disaster and failure. This is so because Nature always has the last word.