As the end of the second millennium A.D. approaches, the two resounding assertions may be worth putting in perspective, perhaps even on New Year's Eve of 1999, as a reminder not only of the breathtakingly brief time during which human beings have inhabited the planet, but of the breathtakingly long history of life on earth before we ever appeared. There is some measure of encouragement, perhaps, in considering just what latecomers we are. Celebrated biologist H. J. Muller once asked the readers of one of his essays to imagine the history of all life-forms on earth as a rope composed of evolving cells and genes stretching several hundred miles from New England to New York City, and ending at the center of a desk in the Wall Street office of J. P. Morgan. The line represents three or four billion years, starting as far away as Boston with the appearance of the first minute signs of life on earth, primeval protoplasm. Blind chemical forces go to work.
Genes mysteriously multiply and differentiate.
Mutate, or don't. Trial and error in numbers beyond computing. Beyond imagination, even. It is not until the line reaches Harlem that the first mammals and birds appear, coexisting with huge dinosaurs who do not drop out entirely until the lifeline crosses 42nd Street. Monkeys first arrive a bit south of there, somewhere around Macy's, but nothing more complex than an ape shows up until the line has reached a spot directly in front of the House of Morgan.