328 Self and the Phenomenon of Life
b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity “9x6”female figurine (“Venus of Hohles Fels”) and half-human, half-
animal figurines (“lion-men”).
— 11,000 years ago: Turkey’s Gobekli Tepe — first temple (rows of
standing stones of animal figures).
— (? years ago): Turkey’s Catalhoyuk with evidence of religious rite
(feasts with wild bulls and burials of ancestors beneath houses).
— 5,000 years ago: Mesopotamia and Egypt — organized religious
hierarchies.
14.7 The Universe Inside Us
Our physical body speaks a lot of the universe, way back into billions
of years. Within the confine of our skin are common elements, among
which oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus
make up 99% of our body mass. Most of these were churned out in
the furnace of stars from primordial hydrogen and helium. In addition,
our body also contains traces of heavy elements that were forged only
at the moment of supernova explosions, violent episodes in the count-
less galactic birth-and-death cycles. Metaphorically, we are orphans of
distant stars and foundlings of supernovas. Every cell inside us bears
signatures of a long cosmic lineage.^33
Here on our planet, chemical elements circulate through gen-
erations of living things since the congealment of Earth. If atoms had
memories and electrons could keep tabs on their former lives, my physi-
cal body could easily be the outcome of serial reincarnations of trilobites,
coelacanths, pterodactyls, and tyrannosaurs; and the oxygen I breathe in
at this moment could have passed through the lungs of Ramses II, Ham-
murabi, Socrates, Confucius, Alexander, Genghis Khan, Peter the Great,
and countless other commoners and noblemen, before lodging by chance
in my body. The great recycling continues well into the end of time.
Indeed, we do not own the molecules inside us. They are part-us,
part-universe. The atoms of our physical self threaded through the
cosmos long before our birth, and will continue doing so long after
we are gone.