In the beginning

150 years ago, Europeans believed that God created man. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: Paradise...Paraiso!

see Paraiso's Evolution carnival

hear the beautiful and poetic song

The Theory of Evolution

In 1832, a 23 year old Englishman called Charles Darwin arrived in Brasil aboard the ship HMS Beagle at the start of a journey of nature study that was to last almost 5 years and to take in Brasil, other countries of South America and Australia.

HMS Beagle was commanded by Captain Fitzroy who went on to become a famous meteorologist and to invent the Fitroy Barometer. Fitzroy was a devout christian who, as was common at the time, believed that slavery was in God's order. But the friendship forged between Darwin and Fitzroy during the voyage was destroyed as Darwin's ideas shattered everything that Fitroy believed in.

In 1848 another (less well known) 25 year old Englishman called Alfred Wallace arrived in Pará. He too made the trip to study nature and was to be in Brasil for 4 years.

These two men developed the Theory of Evolution. This theory was that the individual animals and plants that are best adapted to their local surroundings have a better chance of surviving, and to pass on their traits to their offspring. The most famous implication of this was that humans and apes/monkeys evolved from a common ancestor.

The Theory of Evolution was first announced in 1859 in Darwin's famous paper called "On the Origin of Species".

This directly contradicted the teaching of the Church and, not surprisingly, caused uproar and a war between the Church and the scientists of epic proportions. You can imagine the jokes that were made about Darwin believing he was descended from a monkey! Even today in the USA, this conflict between the "Creationists" and the "Evolutionists" continues.

Darwin's quarrel with Captn Fitzroy about slavery
". early in the voyage at Bahia in Brazil he [Fitzroy] defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered 'No.' I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answers of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything. This made him excessively angry ..."

Wallace

The discovery of DNA

Almost 100 years later in 1953 in England, two young scientists Francis Crick & James Watson (one English the other American) discovered DNA, the substance which is "the building block of life".

Today the study of DNA has allowed scientists to produce identical copies of animals and to manipulate the characteristics of animals and plants.

The future

The discovery of DNA makes in possible for humans to control the development of humans, animals and plants - so evolution is now under the control of scientists .. and therefore, perhaps of politicians! We will be able to develop people with fantastic intelligence, with fantastic strength.people with no imagination designed to be "workers" and so on. Worrying.

Let's hope that God's hand guides man's hand.