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MILLENNIA BEFORE DARWIN
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finds showed however that all kinds of organisms had once lived which had a very different outer appearance that those of today, but that many of them had apparently become extinct. It was also discovered that very many organisms had appeared on the scene long after the presumed six or seven days of God's creation. But there was as yet no satisfactory explanation for these observations. Some biologists, notably Lamarck, presumed that properties which were imposed by the environment of an individual organism could be registered and maintained over the generations. If for example a tropical animal species were to be kept in a cold climate for a number of generations, they would naturally develop thicker fur. If the great great grandchildren would than be brought back to the tropics, their children born there would, despite the warmth, have the same thick fur as their parents because in the meantime this had become an acquired property. It would again take several generations to revert to the original situation. But where that property was recorded, and where the acquired information was kept, was not known. This theory was never proven and has now almost been abandoned. Others, like Charles Darwin and Albert Russell Wallace did not believe in this theory even in those days, Instead the assumed that new characteristics of organisms were either already existent in latency, or were newly formed within the living organisms, and could only surface via procreation. In the case of (either sudden or slow) alterations in environmental conditions, progeny of organisms which had surfaced such a new property might suddenly find themselves with a competitive advantage. The new circumstances suddenly made them “stronger” or fitter than their brothers and sisters and more remote family members. Thus they produced progeny that was more successful – seen from an anthropomorphic point of view of the economics of nature - and which carried the new characteristic which had been fixed in their being with them for the generations to follow. In the 21st century we no longer consider the manner in which characteristics are recorded to be at all mysterious: we know
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