Bodybuilding

So, after the readers learned about the plans for bodies, the importance of their DNA, and all that other good stuff that goes along with biology and the complexities of bodies, we go into the subjects of when, why, and how bodies arose in history. The fact that bodies have only been present in the world for less than a billion years astonished me when I first read it. Even more surprising was the comparison that Shubin provides. That if the Earth were seen as being a year old, bodies had barely shown up on December 31. This comparison really puts the fact that bodies are a fairly new phenomena for history into perspective. So, this being the when, the chapter then moved onto the how.

I thought this to be the most complex part of the chapter, thus being the hardest part to understand. Especially with no comparisons that would suddenly simplify the idea like that of the when, this subject of the chapter was no easy task. With this said, the actual ideas of how are mainly that cells and microbes changed and advanced to form hard parts, soft parts, and other parts of bodies that all serve different purposes but work together to accomplish one thing: life. To me this seemed a simple concept but was comprised of the complexities mentioned earlier. It was pretty interesting learning that all these little pieces of bodybuilding have been used in the most primitive of bodies and even the most complex; our own. This all explained the rise of the body, but why? Survival. Simple huh? Not really. That's what I though when I first read Shubin's explanation of why. It was a bit more complicated than that. Turns out that along with survival the abundance of oxygen was the key to the sudden popularity of bodies.