EVOLUTION - THE STORY OF LIFE ON EARTH
On this site I have attempted to trace the principal steps by which life came into being and then evolved on this planet. I have no particular, or indeed any, qualifications in biology, geology, paleontology or archaeology or any of their related disciplines. However, I have read a great many books and articles, attended a number of exhibitions and courses and consulted various audio-visual aids, which I have incorporated into my narrative and amended as it has suited my purpose to produce a commentary which is I hope comprehensible and informative.
In this context, I can only reproduce again one of the opening paragraphs of Ibn Warraq’s magisterial tome Why I am not a Muslim[1] as equally applicable to my situation (the portions in italics are my own interpolations):
"I am not a scholar or a specialist (in this field). I certainly do not lay claim to originality. I lean heavily on the works of real scholars. I present to the reader in (hopefully) a more digestible form what I have culled from their works. I have quoted extensively. And where I have not quoted, I have paraphrased, all with the proper acknowledgments in the notes and bibliography. There is hardly an image or a thought that I can claim to be my own creation. If some critic were to dub this work “an extended annotated bibliography” I would not be offended".
I have not been shy about repeating direct citations from the texts otherwise than in quotation marks, and have reproduced them more or less as they appear in the original author’s language and I have always acknowledged my sources. The text is pitched at the level of the layperson, of which I indeed am one.
What I have attempted to do is to present in an organised fashion an amalgam drawn from the various sources I have read, watched and seen more-or-less as an aide memoire, because, if I did not, the vast majority of them would have by now long since evaporated into the ether. The very exercise of committing these disparate sources to paper is an aid to understanding and retention on my part. It remains a work in progress.
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Elwyn Elms
1 August 2013
Last revised: August 2019
[1] Prometheus Books, New York, 2003, Acknowledgements, xv.