A Story of Cosmic Evolution

Low and mysterious voice from offstage
Long ago, just as now, there is Great Mystery - the source of Curiosity, Wonder and Awe.

1. Somehow, 13.7 billion years ago, out of the Great Mystery, the cosmos flares forth in a blaze of inconceivable brilliance. Some call it the Big Bang or the Great Radiance. Space and time, shadows and light, and everything we know comes to be. From the void comes the spark and the light.
   Brief Sound and Light Show
   As the universe is born, it is unbelievably hot and dense, and everything expands outward.
2. Within a fraction of a second, the heat has dropped enough for protons and neutrons to form, followed shortly by electrons. The building blocks of matter as we know it have come to be. But this familiar stuff is only about 4% of what makes up the universe. Yes, there is more - much more. "Dark Matter" is a mysterious substance, not formed of atoms, which makes up about a quarter of the universe.
3. The universe expands and cools further. Within minutes, it is cool enough for the nuclei of the first three elements to form: Hydrogen, Helium and a bit of Lithium.
4. 380,000 years after the Great Radiance, the nuclei and electrons combine to form the first atoms, including the hydrogen that makes up much of our bodies. For the first time, you can see across long distances. In fact, we can still see the light that has been traveling since that time. It makes up the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. This is a very faint but all-pervasive glow. Because it comes from everywhere, it actually out-shines all the stars and galaxies. But you need a microwave antenna to see it.
   The age of Matter begins.
5. For billions of years, even while the universe as a whole expands, local clumps of Dark Matter and gas are pulled together by gravity into Galaxies, setting the stage for the evolution of nebulae and stars.
6. Stars are born, live, and die. Some stars even formed before the first galaxies, just 200 million years after the Great Radiance. Large stars make carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements of life. Some are large enough to explode as supernovas, generating even more exotic elements.
7. Galaxies have been moving apart at slower and slower speeds because of gravity. But strangely, after billions of years, this era of cosmic deceleration comes to an end. Unknown forces start to overcome gravity enough that galaxies gradually start accelerating - moving apart faster and faster. The cause remains mysterious. Is it Dark Energy? Quintessence? The Cosmological Constant? Phantom Energy? Whatever it is, it makes up about three-fourths of the universe!
8. As time passes, our ancestor stars are born and generate the elements our bodies are made of. Yes: our ancestors include ancient stars. Stars are part of our genealogy. The largest stars end their lives in enormous explosions called supernovas. Some of the dust and gas that is liberated is swept up into our Star. We call it the Sun.

   Now we start counting down to the present.

9. 5 billion years ago, our Solar System forms from great clouds of gas and the remains of the ancestor stars. The sun and a great disk of matter emerge--all the planets and other members of our solar system.

   Now comes a story of what will become one blue-and-white pearl of a planet. It starts with the Great Bombardment! Comets and meteorites pelt the Earth's thickening crust as it cools off. The moon is born when Earth is hit by a mars-sized body. The impact also causes the Earth to tilt to the side, giving rise to the seasons of the year. Over hundreds of millions of years, Earth grows from dust particles to a large, molten planet with a thin rocky crust. The crust thickens as cracks and exuberant volcanoes expel hotly agitated deep Earth magma to the surface.

   As steam condenses above the Earth, the miracle of rain and weather cycles begin. The first rains fall, then torrential rains fall on, and on, and on until rivers run over the land and gather into great seas.

10. Soon after the earth forms, Life emerges! Biological Evolution accelerates the rate of change. The rich chemical brew brings forth proteins, DNA and invisibly small creatures that we call bacteria. The first living cells!

    They soon invent ways to capture energy from the sun which they then use to create new sources of food from water and simple minerals. In the process, however, they give off oxygen, a deadly corrosive gas that eventually piles up in the atmosphere and threatens their survival. But new oxygen loving cells emerge. Oxygen levels continue to rise until they reach near present-day levels.

    Individual bacteria learn to cooperate and specialize within giant cell cooperatives. Within one cell, some creatures make food while others invent tiny electric motors that move the colony into sunlight, where others capture the energy of the sun. The individual parts become less independent but more secure as inseparable parts of the new wholes. These types of organisms are the same stuff of all plants and animals today. Cooperatives!

11. 550 million years ago there is a great explosion of diversity. The first multicellular organisms arise, and quickly develop a variety of body shapes. The individual cells find ways to communicate with each other using chemical messages. Life on Earth rediscovers Community!
12. 500 million years ago, trilobites have eyes with lenses made of crystals. The Earth is able to see herself!

    The first animals to evolve in the oceans are soft-bodied. Over time, these naked animals protect themselves with shells. Jaws, beaks, and skeletons follow suit.

13. 460 million years ago - Leaving the water, animals such as worms and mollusks and crustaceans seek the adventure of breathing air, surviving weather, and raising themselves against gravity. Algae and fungi venture ashore as well. The first plants evolve as mosses. Insects evolve with nearly weightless bodies that permit them to take to the air as the first flying animals! Algae, fungi, insects!
14. 395 million years ago - The first amphibian animals hop and lumber onto land, trading in their gill slits for air-breathing lungs, transforming fins into stubby legs and continuing to return to the water to lay their eggs. Frogs and toads!
15. 235 million years ago, Following the 4th and greatest mass extinction, come the emergence of dinosaurs. For 170 million years these creatures flourish. Some dinosaurs, over 100 feet long, are social animals that often travel and hunt in groups. Dinosaurs develop a behavioral novelty unknown previously in the reptilian world - parental care. Some of them carefully bury their eggs and stay with the young after they hatch, nurturing them toward independence.
16. 65 million years ago, an asteroid 6 miles in diameter hits the Yucatan peninsula. The resulting massive fires pump soot into the atmosphere, leading to a severe drop in temperature and the 5th mass extinction. The dinosaurs are less able to adapt to the cold than mammals, and they die off.
17. Over the course of the next 60 million years Earth greets rodents, whales, monkeys, horses, cats and dogs, antelopes, gibbons, grazing animals, orangutans, gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees, camels, bears, pigs, baboons and the first humans. The Age of Mammals!
18. Tens of thousands of years ago, Modern Humans emerge. Language, oral traditions, shamanic and goddess religions, and art become integral with human life.
19. 11,000 years ago, Agriculture is invented and wild animals are domesticated. Humans are shaping the environment, selecting which species to nurture, burning off forests, and hunting game. Population densities begin to climb. Communicable diseases spread. Civilization emerges.
20. 6000 years ago, Writing is invented, allowing cultures to pass along more information and become more complex. The level of abstraction of thought increases. The pace of change accelerates again. Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and more religions are born, spread and evolve. Their sacred texts pass along insights and stories for the ages.
21. Cultural evolution proceeds much more quickly than biological evolution, constantly reshaping the human world. A myriad of trends, events and inventions emerge.

    Exploration. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. The printing press. The scientific method. Colonization. Revolution.

22. The spread of knowledge quickens. The Renaissance and the scientific method lead to insights, innovations and disruptions.

    Constitution. Election. Territorial Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation. Mass production. Urbanization.

23. Mass communication and Globalization bind the fate of the world together more tightly and urgently than ever.

    Telegraphs and Telephones. Mass Migrations. World conflagrations. Suffrage extension. Fission explosions. United Nations. Decolonization. Population explosion. Environmental degradation. Space exploration. Liberation. Lunar excursions. Computerization. Globalization. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. Union. Genetic manipulation.

24. In the last few hundred years, our sense of our place in the universe and our story of history has dramatically changed. We no longer view the Earth as the center of the universe and we increasingly recognize the importance of the interdependent web of all existence.

    We directly observe cosmic expansion. Our calculations of how elements formed in the first few minutes match what we observe. And we have seen the oldest light in the universe, the Cosmic Background Radiation.

    We can now see the Earth as Whole from space. The Earth is complex enough to witness her own integral beauty.

This text was first developed as a "Cosmic Walk" by Sister Miriam Therese McGillis based on the works of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. Ruth Rosenhek wrote an adaptation incorporating also the works and words of Elisabet Sahtouris, John Fowler and Lynn Margulis.

This adaptation, by Neal McBurnett, Rev. Jacqueline Ziegler, John Russell and Bob Davis, builds on Ruth Rosenhek's version, the timelines written and collected by Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd at http://thegreatstory.org/ as well as the Universal History Translation Project, Paulita Bernuy and Still Point Retreat Center