ancient human

 humans have been doing mostly the same thing for SO many years. talking to each other, schools, trade, crafting, law, society. cultural modernity was reached 50,000 BC don't forget. 

but it all started with the "recognition of I", of self, which is on the order of tens of millions of years ago. thats when humans really started to take a turn. hominids diverged from gorillas around 9 mya. probably the theory of self, gestural communication, cooperation, social hierarchy, tool use, and other basic aspects of human life were already in place (or their foundations). 

after 3 mya and by 700,000 BC, early hominids (Homo erectus and heidelbergensis) already had established cave man culture and had left Africa to expand. by 500,000 BC, most of Europe and Asia had at least been colonized by someone (prior species evolving into Neandertals and Denisovans). all this time, Homo sapiens was evolving from heidelbergensis in Africa, until 70-60,000 BC when they too migrated out. this was the full blown migration of sapien that would overtake the world.

after 500,000 BC, and by 100,000 BC, abstract symbolic thought AND sophisticated spoken language became fully developed. broca's & wernicke's areas become fully evolved. story telling developed. "Our god is the earth, we must kill them, this is my family, i will give you this fish, dont touch my bear" etc. ever since then we've been wheelin and dealin in boats, weapons, trade, structures, clothing, all the good stuff.

so we had about 1 million years of consistent rich cave man culture and activity, most modern lines of thought already had foundations, religions being created, primeval city states and monkey kings. just, no one was writing anythng down in any preservable context. 

after 100,000 BC by 50,000 BC, humans all over the world were behaviorally modern: abstract thought, symbolism, language, hunting, society, laws. neanderthals were already operating flint mines in the ground, for tool making. south african humans already had a hematite mine operating, extracted for pigment production. we can mine, yall. but seemingly most precious metals back then were used in cerominial purposes: badges, funeral things, etc. slabs of marble in funeral tombs. 

so we had over 50,000 years of consistent rich fully developed human culture before anything got even documented.

after 30,000 BC and known by 10,000 BC, basic writing was finally being employed preservably: hieroglyphics, symbols, calendars, math, counting. 

so after 10,000 BC, and known by 1000 BC, the Greeks had already colonized the mediterrenean coasts. Crete was already long since colonized by the Minoans by 10,000 BC, with great seafaring prowess. and the phonecians were living a vibrant, scholarly society to the east. and egyptians, similarly, to the south. and (?proto-) romans to the west. and to the north: macedonia (who would cause trouble) and the germanic tribes. Greeks (and ?most coastal societies) were adept at crafting boats, sailing, etc. 

so by the time Homer wrote the Iliad around 750 BC, he was just documenting oral stories that were being told for ?hundreds of years already.

agriculture and land controlled were the two main wealth resources of the day. but we're all so close together now, some are super rich. well luckily we found shiny metallic stones in the ground that look super cool and its kinda a pain in the ass to get but if we start collecting a ton of it, its gunna look way cooler, and other people will also want it. 

thus economics with coins is born!

but how did currency evolve? it probably started 10s of thousands of years BC with the evolution of the theory of mind, altruism, accountability. when humanoids started realizing "if you try ten times as hard as he does, and the community all benefits, you should receive more than him". an extension of "I have this" and "I need this", which is at the base of evolution itself. cooperation then underlies the origin of currency. in a hierchical social group, everyone understands that everyone else is different - we just need a way to quantify that, to counteract cheaters in the group.

after 100,000 BC and by 50,000 BC, the main form of currency was promises and debts, NOT trading materials. favors too.

by 10,000 BC, agriculture was booming, and crops and livestock became all the rage. grains were some of the earliest material currency. by 4000 BC, egyptians were using gold and mesopotamians silver. mesopotamians in 3000 BC said "If you work 20 hours we will give you one bushel of grain", and "deposit a bushel of grain with us each day, and youll receive a clay tablet that you can use to redeem services with us". for generations, humanoids had already been trading with debts, promises, favors. and for tens of thousands of years, trading with materials here and there. but by 10,000 BC, humans basically had the hang of material items as a form of currency.

spacetime & the illusion of gravity

 there never WAS gravity, eg a linear force pushing or pulling things. there is only spacetime (more of a solution, or material) and mass, which is king - and therefore, energy is king. 

energy is simply when 'momentum is transferred through a field to other bodies'. energy is a property OF matter. matter HAS energy, and matter can express this energy in various different ways. 

energy also comes in FLAVORS, in that many different flavors of events can all result in the same ol 'energy'. one flavor is called mechanical or thermal energy. nuclear, gravitational, etc. but no matter what, energy always just seems to be MASS MOVING AROUND. mass moves, implying distance over time. now 3 variables can be affected by energy, and indeed themselves ARE energy: mass, distance, and time. where distance itself is actually 'distance over time' redundantly (since 1 meter = the distance light travels in 1⁄299792458 second). distance IS space over time: spacetime. 

so energy is mass, space, and time. when matter is affected by energy, either its mass, its space or its time can be affected. 

the photonfield - a 3D field where its excitations are focal packets of energy called 'photons' that push the field forward in a wave like pattern (similar to how in a wave of water, each water molecule is pushing into the one in front of it, resulting in a forward energy even tho the wave itself has no different mass than before)

just as a photon is a massless surge of energy through the photonfield (magnetic and electric fields), so are gravitational waves massless surges of energy through the spacetime field. the electromagnetic field affects matter via moving (distance over time) particles around based on the particle's charge (an intrinsic value of the matter). similarly, the spacetime field affects matter via moving (distance over time) particles around based on the particles' masses (an intrinsic value of the matter), in the sense that even tho gravitational acceleration moves matter while IGNORING the mass of that matter, it is the matter itself thats curving the spacetime in the first place. this redundancy (the mass bends spacetime, spacetime then moves the mass irrespective of the value of the mass, then the mass re-bends spacetime, then spacetime moves the mass more, etc) is probably why gravity is always an acceleration, not just a velocity.

what else is massless? how gravitational acceleration works. spacetime curvature causes two masses to ACCELERATE towards each other, REGARDLESS of either's mass. they are gaining energy, in a mass-agnostic fashion. energy is king, mass means nothing.

photons are confusing: all energy, but no mass. they are beings of distance=space, and time. their own energy is in the FORM OF space and time - their ability to MODIFY it among others. photons in a box will have zero mass, but not zero energy. e=mc2, so this energy is all in c2 units, aka space and time. but this equation should really just be m=e/c2, because MASS is usually king.

but, no. ENERGY IS KING - as proven by photons. you can have energy without having mass (as w eknow it)

time is just 'how fast things are allowed to move', as a foundational property of the system - but it can change. when space is distorted by mass, the foundational 'rate of time' also changes. 

since photons have no mass, they can only control things via space and/or time. perhaps when a photon blazes past something, it exchanges energy with it by giving up some of its time dilation. photons are fast, so their time has slowed down; but if they pass something, 

gravity just means "this particular curve of spacetime will have [this effect] on energy". how do you know what spacetime in that location looks like? what is the nature of its 4D shape, aka its geometry? imagine a 3D world of just space, then imagine another, differnt exotic 3D world of space. these two flavors of 3D space are just different geometries. 4D includes space (the distance between things) and time (the rate of things), so different and exotic types of 4D universes would simply differ in how their space looks and how their time looks. the catch is: matter itself (aka energy) CONTORTS the 4D spacetime around it, filling our own universe with myriad pockets of exotically different 4D areas, each different from each other, yet all within the same universe! so spacetime will change based on the position of an energy mass, and the 4D environment gets particularlly bizarre/exotic when two masses are involved (as is always the case in practical physics). 

so energy contorts spacetime, which is space (distance) and time (rate). And so, THE NOBLE THREE: energy, distance, and rate - thESE ARE THE 3 FUNDAMENTAL variables of the universe.

interestingly, gravity is not a velocity, its an acceleration. meaning, somehow, its adding energy - the object is going faster and then even MORE faster. E=mc2, and since the mass isnt changing, and energy is increaing, that means c2 must be the one causing the increase, and since its units are distance2/time2, either distance (space) is increasing, or time (the rate of things) is decreasing, which means time is slowing, meaning theres potential energy being built up inside the object since the rate of things is now slower so more energy is sitting on the left side of the reaction, waiting to pass to the right side. AND/OR, spacetime becomes more and more stretched as you approach a massive object, meaning space itself, the distance of things, is increasing. making space itself wider somehow could increase overall energy, perhaps by the fact that increasing the radius bw two objects will increase the force of gravity bw them. since space and time are inextricably linked, it must be that distance is increasing AND time is decreasing at the same time, together, and in such a way that overall E is still increasing simply exponentially ^2.

 as this object slides down a very curved spacetime, it gains exponential energy because space is stretching (more potential energy generated between any two points in space since raidus increased), AND because time is slowing (slower rate of things, so more stored potentnial energy waiting to be spent per unit time). 

perhaps the true sources of energy are space itself and time itself. space, if its the case that there is inherent potential energy between any two given points of empty space, and as space stretches, these imaginary points grow farther apart, increasing their potential energy - like an elastic tension, or rubber band. similarly, as time (the rate of things) slows, potential energy increases - similar process, where since the the distance between two points in TIME is now farther, that same elastic energy is increasing. think of the light box, or an 'interval' in spacetime where its two events separated in time. if you slow time, then matter must move farther to complete a full cycle/carry on at a rate, so potential energy increases. 

the elastic energy principle: there seems to be a strange inherent principle in the universe: that when one thing is moved away from another thing (whether two points in space, or two different rates of time where a slower time has particles needing to travel farther distances), a potential energy is generated. an elastic tension. but why?? is it just because? well, potential energy is being stored up, almost as if entropy is decreasing, as if energy is being put into a chemical bond that can be broken later and harvested. as things stretch, this potential energy builds up and radiates outward as dark energy, which expands the universe exponentially. entropy is decreasing as the objects fall down spacetime curves (potential energy being generated and stored as space and time are stretched), and its radiating outwards to the rest of the universe causing an overall increase in entropy. 

it could be THIS VERY elastic force that is supplying the energy for acceleration here. as energy becomes stretched in both space and time, its radiuses of ALL types and forms are increasing, creating a RUNAWAY EFFECT where more stretching leads to more energy leads to more acceleration, as the masses continue to move ever-down the spacetime curve until finally meeting their end (probably at a blackhole somewhere millions of years down the line), its like, as energy increases, spacetime is stretched, and this very stretching generates a spontaneous, hot friction that exudes outwards. this 'increased potential energy between things, generally' 

so energy is simply generated by the process of 'a thing changing its position', whether its changing its position in space, or in time. energy is generated as things fall naturally down a slide that compels them downwards, gently with ease. a universe filled with energy is inherently always falling inwards towards itself, down the spacetime curve of masses attracting each other... but as spacetime stretches, it generates the radiating friction energy which causes the expansion of the universe constantly, for as long as matter is allowed to fall inwards down its gradient, which will be "forever" or "as long as two energy piles exist". 

energy is constantly attracting each other. massive energy balls curve spacetime around them, and other energy balls fall inwards down a gradient in response, on a huge scale. compare two sources of energy in two different 4D spacetimes: as energy travels through space OR travels through time, the farther it goes, the more energy is generated (somehow). 

"energy travling down a spacetime gradient will inherently increase itself because of the stretching of things, both distance and time itself"

everything is accelerating. WHYz? because energy inherently stretches spacetime, and as spacetime stretches energy is inherently generated (a potential energy, via particles having to travel longer/farther to do things, but its a REAL energy, realized as spacetime itself expanding outwards. as if potential energy on the spacetime level is kinetic energy in the IRL level).

 Einstein realized the fact that we dont notice we are accelerating while sitting on earth, therefore gravity is indistinguishable from acceleration, so it must be one. whereas velocity is a constant: it doesnt change, just as an object at rest doesnt change, aka inertia, aka an object with constant velocity will only ever stay in that state, and another perspective is the object is at rest while everything is just moving around it (relativity). 

lichens and photobionts

 what if there was a variety of mushrooms that also plants? thats lichens: a tube of fungus, filled with chloroplasts in the form of either green algae or cyanobacteria (or both). critically, this changes the typical fungus strategy from decomposer to primary producer - they can simply sit on a rock and live off sunlight, just like a plant!

they are essentially the 'ultra-plant'. lichens compose the majority of biomass in a variety of habitats (like Sequoia groves) for this reason. they are very successful, can resist drying out, so can colonize almost any habitat or surface. 

what came first? cyanobacteria! (which came from deep sea thermophilic bacteria)

cyanobacteria, the 'first plants', invented chlorophyll. fungus probably evolved next, separately, as a marine organism. fungus would become terrestrial and steal the cyanobacterial cells, creating lichens. and, proto-algae (eukaryotic protists probably) would steal them too via endosymbiosis, creating chloroplasts and therefore algae. algae evolved and gave off true plants.

fungi see these photobionts (cyanobacteria and/or algae) as simply gelatinous balls dripping sugar syruip when exposed to light. so, fungi wrap their arms around them and absorb up all that sweet sugar. 

the fungus seems to remain in control, though, so lichens generally just do fungus things. they crawl outwards and fruit with caps (usually cup-shaped apothecia) and spread out spores. the photobionts give up 80% of their sugar production to the fungus, and allow the fungus to penetrate them with special hyphae, so they do seem like slaves. crucial, however, since that same fungus isolated in culture without its partner would simply grow as an undifferentiated mass of hyphae. 

can fungus copy that proto-algae, and themselves engulf a photobiont via endosymbiosis? yes! but its only happened once: Geosiphon pyriformis, the only member of its genus, a fungus whose cells have engulfed Nostoc cyanobacteria cells, creating a 'chloroplast' again. its not a lichen, because the symbiosis is intracellular, not extracellular. fungal-bacterial endosymbiosis has occurred a few other times as well, but apparently never involving chlorophyll/photosynthesis. so, if Geosiphon eventually internalizes the Nostoc genome into its own nucleus, it would become a new type of organism. 

mycorrhizae are fungi that are symbiotes with plants. there is a plant analogue to lichens: plants will wrap themselves (their roots, specifically) around fungal hyphae, surrounding them and feeding off each other - the ectomycorrhizae. even more common are the endomycorrhizae - fungi that dont just wrap gently around, but instead penetrate and invaginate into the plant cells - an intracellular endosymbiosis akin to Geosiphon, except in plants they are much more common: ~85% of all plant families have had endomyco's found, compared to simply 1 species of the fungal-algal endosymbiosis.   

stories

why do humans have such a tendency towards creating stories? "A literary cycle is a group of stories focused on common figures, often (though not necessarily) based on mythical figures or loosely on historical ones." take the Matter of Britain. for centuries, groups of people just began telling each other stories sometimes non-fiction, but over time fiction penetrated deeper and deeper until eventually certain stories were complete fabrications, yet still passed on (eg., the Greek gods). while Charlemagne truly existed, most of his paladins did not in the Matter of France. why is it compelling for us to create fabrications? creativity? 

being creative lets you be fanciful, imaginative, and interesting. it excites the mind and intrigues the audience. it's crucial to rhetoric. its as though thinking wildly is a dopamine-producing process, similar to how solving puzzles or playing games is. theres no particular reason humans should necessarily gain satisfaction from games evolutionarily, though 'play' is encoded into all mammals in some sense, yet humans love games for the sake of it. Similarly, wild thinking must stimulate us arbitrarily so. 

if I can trap your attention by stimulating your imagination, you'll keep listening to me. you'll grow to like me. my words have meaning and instill the production of thoughts and values within you. by telling a riveting story, I can now capture your attention, have you believe what I'm telling you, eventually trust me and even become a follower or a rival. group theory dictates that any method whereby humans can create trust among disparate tribe members will be evolutionarily advantageous. this extends to the benefits of religion. 

so, religion IS stories. mythology. religion is a series of stories that are collected and passed on about specific historical figures, and over time about made-up ones as well. the stories provide a gathering of people, ways to cope with scary thoughts (death, purpose), morals, values. a group of people said let's stay in a big group and all tell these stories, and recruit others to tell these stories. but the foundational question is, why are stories so potent to humans? and is there even a line between religion and stories?

stories are a subclass and a flavor of LANGUAGE as a whole. so, what's so valuable about language, that which is instilling stories with such value? whatever benefits language provides, stories must also include those. the origin of language is multifactorial. before language we needed to evolve a basic theory of mind, recognize you are different from me, and abstract abilities like planning. infant language development is revelatory in that early language among humans probably started similar to that, and all early language could only continue to evolve if it WAS understood by the children at the time. nonhuman primates are revelatory as well, like how chimps can communicate with hand gestures, have genetically encoded gestural signals (eg chest beating). gestures were the first form of language. 

so how did language become subspecialized into stories, and why? each can refer to objects or events that aren't present in the moment (including imaginary ones), each can put an idea in someone's head and get them to change their behavior to do it. each can instill NEW ideas inside someone's head, things they never even conceived of but now can consider doing (eg, learning). what ideas would you want to instill? evolutionarily, look to apes to see how they use gestures etc to communicate with each other, what types of things they try to get the others to do. move, stop, come, do this for me, there will be rain, that way is dangerous, if you do this action then this bad thing will happen, i love you, help me. 

mental images are entities conjured inside your mind. humans evolved to do this in three ways: (1) dreams [spontaneous]), (2) memory recall [think about a past experience], (3) prefrontal synthesis [active imagination]. early language served a more operational, functional purpose - getting food and water, staying safe, where's the tiger? strict memory recall, and theory of mind, were important, but only later on did we start flexing our prefrontal synthesis muscles, once we had the basics already figured out. 

stories are language that hijacks and stimulates the prefrontal synthesis pathways directly. telling stories can quickly conjure 'memories' into other people's minds, as well as new ideas = teaching. stories are typically fanciful or atypical, novelty which cements its teachings more quickly in the user. also, children seem to preferentially enjoy the fanciful, and were integral to the evolution of language, so perhaps stories grew initially as vectors for quickly and reliably teaching children evolutionary advantageous lessons without having to demonstrate anything to them physically. same as regular teaching or communication would be, except spicier, with more flare. 

the spicy flare aspect is what seems unique to stories, and what seems to fuel their main strength: the ability to quickly transmit among the masses and influence them. stories require symbolic culture - a feature of certain human cultures where they pass on behavioral traits among generations via centering the reasoning for those behaviors on something completely made-up, symbolic. it started as distant as 300,000 years ago. "we must do these behaviors because of [concept that's made up]". promises, currency, etc. social constructs were likely the first or one of the earliest forms of symbolic culture - we must do certain things this way, 'just because we trust each other' (essentially). at its core, its the concept of trust - we all agree to trust that the made-up thing is real/reliable, and therefore all agree to conduct our behaviors as such. so, cooperation. 

what purpose did the Matter of Britain serve? or ancient African folklores? what about LOTR? what about DND? 

pine tar

 

for most of our (Homo) time on this planet, all we had at our disposal was basically plants and fire. we had so much time (>50,000 years) to experiment, that we've done just about everything to plant products. if you light wood on fire, it burns. if you instead heat it up without lighting it aflame (heated in an anoxic environment since oxygen=explosion), instead it acts in a purely physics-type manner. all the molecules inside the wood have their ambient temp raised, turning solids into liquids and liquids into gases. the liquid and gas products then escape outwards (terpentine from smoke, pine tar from liquid run-off - to be captured by humans), while anything resilient enough to still be a solid is left behind (charcoal). chemistry, and the phases of matter, explains it all. 

can we leach human bones as if they were blocks of pine? bones are animal (not plant) and therefore seem to be more protein filled - bones boiled yield liquid collagen, which is a sticky glue-like substance, that solidifies when cooled. plant resin, in contrast, is more pure carbon - benzenes, phenols, cellulose (carbon-rich), polysaccharides - with less protein/nitrogen/amino acid content (?). 

plants REALLY LIKE benzene. but all Life loves squalene - an unsaturated hydrocarbon. cells wrap it around itself to form rings = steroids, different types between animals, plants and fungi. 

regarding biochemistry, "everything is water". meaning, in its basal state, all biochemistry existed in an aqueous medium, water soluble, polar. therefore, if cells wanted to enact meaningful change, they'd need a mechanism that was different - that was water insoluble. therefore, fats/water insoluble compounds became the 'key' to biology - these are the molecules that can bind to receptors, cross cell membranes, activate proteins. plants use terpenoids (unsaturated hydrocarbons) to interact with biology in a wide array of ways - cell sgnaling, deterring predacors, etc. 

hydrocarbons - these were so important to both life, and later to human society. we talked about their impact on biochemistry. all realms of life were excited to discover hydrocarbons and exploit them to no end. when human society discovered them, we did the same thing - distilling and separating wood and coal into all sorts of composing parts, heating them up to create new parts, mixing things together to get new parts still. using them in every industry from construction to medicine. human society exploited hydrocarbons hardcore. hydrocarbons were the key that allowed humans to fully exploit the field of synthetic chemistry and all it could be. 

petroleum (aka crude oil, from plankton) is basically the same composition as resin (from plants eg coal). 

god is the spontaneous bias towards life

 

what is god. god is the invisible force that drives particles together, that coaxes amino acid chains to fold and twist upon themselves in fantastic shapes, that swirls stars and planets around each other in massive clouds and strands throughout the universe. god is the drive of life, organization, evolution. god is anti-entropy. god is the spontaneous creation of order, a chain reaction. god is not passive - it is a force. it applies spooky energy towards compelling molecules to 'intelligently' arrange themselves in a feel of best fit. god is akin to gravity, two different forces that each compel molecules to move in specific ways. god is the invisible force that pushes proteins ever-onward towards evolution. 

take cytochrome c. iron is a fancy atom, its like a rare powerful gem that early cells wanted a way to shuttle around and use it as a tool. cells (a single cell is an enclosed community) began making a sticky twisted protein mass named cytochrome c to trap the iron and shuttle it around. proteins became legos, each finding new and interesting ways to create 3D structures and build worlds around them. cells began writing down ledgers of how to create different legos. recipes for crafting fantastical structures. they wrote these recipes as DNA and stored them in the cabinet, a nucleus. later, a big symbiotic community of various cells decided to pool their resources, donate all their DNA into a communal pot, and let that new communal cell replicate. "this god cell will let us all live forever", they mightve said, "though we may degrade, our recipes will be carried on by him, and he can create new copies of us, so while we die, our clones live on". 

and so cells became tissues became organisms. but why? how? what compelled them to do so? the invisible force of god

chemosynthesis and particle physics

 chemosynthesis is the twin sibling to photosynthesis. both create glucose/organic matter by harnessing carbon, but chemosynthesis uses explosions instead of light.

the oxidation of elemental sulfur to sulfate (S2O2-4) releases 150 kcal/mol of energy presumably as heat. imagine sulfur as a fat slow grey globe, hovering around weighed down by its swarming cloud of dense electrons. it is slow and cumbersome - it is fully reduced. it's charge has been reduced by all the negative electrons. 

oxygen is a black hole-like void. it hovers around sucking anything towards it, often to form a bond to it. when oxygen sucks up the electrons of something nearby, the target got oxidized. 

the explosion occurs when the electrons move. depending how fast oxygen is able to rip those electrons away, the bigger the explosion. if the electron is weak and oxygen rips it away super fast and strong, presumably more energy is released. often a bond remains as a result 

heat itself speeds up molecules. heat can add energy to a system and break bonds between elements. heat makes atoms move faster, which can then slam into each other at higher speeds. 

chemosynthesis and cell respiration, life at a basic level, want one thing: fold carbon into interesting useful shapes, to create physical mechanical assets. using chemical reactions and enzymes, exogenous carbon can be ingested, processed, and turned into biomass matter. 

a photon doesnt have mass. its analog of mass is its wavelength, eg the way photons move will follow the stereotypical ways a wave would move. so photons have a wavelength based on how fast theyre going. therefore photons have that characteristic (their wavelength) and it moderates how it interacts with matter, the same as 'mass' would moderate how a 'particle' interacts with matter 

photons do act like particles too, though. a photon would say, "i'm a special snowflake, look at my cool unique wavelength. its my own special way to interact with other things. its a flavor of interaction. other photons have different wavelengths so they have their own flavor of interaction."

photons are abstract. they are more of a confluent ebbing force, an energy that pushes through spacetime.