The Story of Life

Welcome

2009-11-20T12:47:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the homepage of The Story of Life, a secular creation story for a new millennium.

The Story blends ancient storytelling methods with modern understanding of where we came from and how we got here. It describes plate tectonics, multicellular life, photosynthesis, the invasion of land, dinosaurs, mass extinction, mammals, human origins, and recent history in language as intelligible to a child as it is to a scientist.

The Story of Life was written in both English and Spanish simultaneously. It can be enjoyed by English speakers and Spanish speakers alike, and can even be used to teach a language.

The next stage for The Story of Life is an illustrated children's series. Read the story, get inspired, and then submit an illustration using the "art" link above!

To learn more use the links to the right to read the story or the links above to read more about it.

Introduction

2009-11-04T03:28:00.000-08:00

I began working on The Story of Life in 2008. Before that, I had vague ideas about an "evolution children's story." The need for such a story was obvious, a hole in our culture that needed filling. I could see the problem, but the question of why there was a problem and how to fix it eluded me until I began to think about creation stories.

Reading the Popol Vuh and learning about other native creation stories, I realized that most cultures have a collection of stories that serve as a cultural foundation. Passed down from generation to generation, these stories serve to explain how the world around us came to be. They serve as a frame of reference, archetypes that we all recognize and use in our metaphors. They serve to inspire a sense of wonder, awe and appreciation for the past.

The modern secular culture that is emerging around the world is missing such a story.

As the ideals of scientific inquiry and reason spread throughout the world, the ancient system of passing on knowledge to our children has been disrupted. There have been two general reactions. The first has been to reject the science that threatened to replace the old stories, as can be seen in the American Creationist movement. The second has been to reject the stories and replace them with dry scientific understanding.

I believe neither of these responses is correct. The creationist approach stands as a denial of reality as we know it. The rationalist approach is a denial of poetry, song and beauty as a means to instill wonder and encourage curiosity in the next generation.

The work before you is an attempt to meld modern scientific understanding of where we came from with ancient storytelling methods borrowed from various creation stories.

My hope is that The Story of Life will provide a foundation on which children and adults can build understanding of the way life came to be.

Let it sit in the back of the mind until it is needed.

How to Read

2008-11-04T22:03:00.000-08:00

The Story of Life is best read as a series of shorter stories.

Read it a few pages at a time, with time to reflect in between. There are are no chapter breaks, but there are natural breaks allowing you to start or stop on just about any page.

When reading to a young audience, notice that there are activities throughout the story. Some of these point out a body part that came from our ancestors. When you come across these, don't forget to move that part or otherwise indicate it, and try to get the kids to notice their jaw, lungs, or tailbone as well.

Other activities instruct to go outside and notice something. If its possible to do so easily and quickly, this can be done during the reading. Most of the time, these activities are meant to be realized independently on an outing. The idea is to plant a seed for something to be noticed and remembered later on, but it doesn't hurt to encourage such outings.

When reading out loud to anyone, remember to say "Sunrise" before and after your reading.

The Story of Life has no end, just a long series of beginnings.

Myth

2007-11-05T17:26:00.000-08:00

As a reason-driven person, I never truly believed the creation stories that were told to me as a child. I remember realizing the impossibility of Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark because of the inevitable inbreeding both would cause. I would fiercely attempt to rationalize movies like Star Wars, coming up with ever more complex theories that would allow for humans to exist "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away." Perhaps because of this inability to suspend disbelief, I became fascinated with evolution at an early age. I would gobble up magazine articles, nature documentaries, and even a whole children's encyclopedia (during a very boring summer).

At the same time, I was fascinated by what I understood as "mythology": stories of ancient Greek gods, the Ramayana, and my trusty illustrated children's bible. I loved these stories and absorbed parts of the morality within them, but I never took these stories to be literally true (I wasn't capable of it, because of all the logical holes).

At 11 years old, I was quite shocked to learn that there were still people around who understood religious stories as more than mythology. I first encountered American creationism on a weekend morning in Southern California. I was walking along a path with a friend, and noticed a curious-looking plant close to his apartment. I turned to him non-challantly and said, "I wonder how that evolved?" He turned back to me with bewilderment, even fear, in his eyes and accused, "You believe in evolution?!" To which, I replied, equally bewildered and fearful, "You don't?!"

We both ran back to our homes and never spoke of it again, but the moment stayed with me as I tried to come to terms with its implications. How many of these people were there? Did they believe in gravity, in the roundness of the earth, in its revolution around the sun? How could they survive in a world fueled (literally) by science? Later, in College, I wondered how people could make it through school without dropping their anti-scientific beliefs. I began to realize that it was possible to have a full K-12 and College education without ever taking a biology class that included evolution. Versed in Genesis but not The Origin of Species, creationists in the 21st century continued to make arguments that Darwin himself had defeated in the 19th.

In order to bring evolution back into the public sphere, I had to compete not just with education or the media but with religion itself. Only by creating a new vision of creation can we ever hope to defeat the root cause of Creation-ism. The fact is, evolution simply doesn't seem as compelling as Genesis at first glance. It seems meaningless, empty, caused by random chance alone. That is, until one looks deeper.

Every leaf in the forest, every fish in the sea, every bone in your body has a story to tell.

It is a story of struggle, of terrible tragedies and explosive successes. The two often seem to come hand in hand. There have been several mass extinctions on this planet, and after each of them has come a huge radiation in the diversity of life. Without the extinction of the dinosaurs, the radiation of mammals and birds we see today would never have happened.

From the way some orchids and their pollinators have co-evolved to the extreme, to the way Lichens can survive on the highest mountain peaks, evolution teaches us that there is almost nothing life cannot do. Each year we find ever more surprising creatures that survive, even thrive, in what we consider to be extreme conditions. We've found a fungus growing inside the Chernobyl reactor, eating radiation the way plants eat light. Water bears have been exposed to the vacuum of space and lived to tell the tale. It is even possible that life originated in one such extreme environment: the Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents (or "Wet Fire").

The very appearance of every living thing around us has been sculpted by billions of years of trial and error. In nature, form is function. The two are nearly inseparable. Not only that, but the biological chiseling continues to this day. The most compelling part of evolution as our origin story is that it is ongoing. Although some creatures seem perfectly adapted to their environment, the truth is that they are most definitely not perfect, though they get a little closer with every generation.

The story continues with every rising sun.

Science

2006-11-18T14:25:00.000-08:00

As soon as I got to First Animal, I realized this was going to be a long story. I tried as hard as I could to keep it short, and began trying to end the story after spending a lot of time on the vertebrates' invasion of land. Continually, I was battling myself over what was important enough to go in and what could be mentioned briefly or cut out. The result is both a bit long and a bit thin, since there was a lot to cover. There is much that I have left out in my attempt at brevity, including the Cambrian explosion and extinction, most of Australia's history, and the birth of the Internet.  

You might notice that I give a lot more time to plants than one might expect. Remember, this is the story of life, not just of humans. It is possible to imagine a biosphere made up entirely of plants; it is not possible to imagine one with only animals. I feel that as a civilization, we are a bit animal-centric, from the halls of biology departments to endangered species legislation. We would do well to remember that every living plant is just as alive as you or me, and every one of them has an evolutionary history just as intriguing.

I began The Story of Life with a water covered Earth, but I could have started earlier, at the Big Bang or at the formation of the Solar System. It seemed both poetic and biologically appropriate to start at the same place that many creation stories, including the Christian Genesis, begin.

Life began in the ocean, and so too do many origin myths.  

Throughout my explorations into ancient creation stories, I have been fascinated by the fact that many stories get certain details right. For example, the general order of events in Genesis is essentially correct: water, land, plants, animals, humans. Same with the Popol Vuh and others. Rather than trying to create a perfect, scientifically verifiable account of life on this planet, I merely extended this idea, trying to make the order of events come close to our current approximation of the truth.

It is important to note that in no way is this story to be taken as literally true, or even as a completely accurate version of the truth as we know it today. Such a story would inevitably carry the characteristics of a textbook: heavy, difficult to read, and quickly obsolete.

I deliberately removed all scientific terminology.

Words like "Archaeopteryx" and "speciation" are neither poetic nor easy to remember as a child. Their presence in other attempts at this sort of story is jarring, pulling you out of the feeling and flow of the story. They sound too much like a textbook. Not only that, but the complexity of these terms is for the most part unnecessary. The concepts behind them can often be explained using more familiar words. Once these concepts are understood, they can be built upon later in the educational process.

My ultimate goal is to hear about a child who learns about the origin of photosynthesis in school and says "Oh yeah, that's just like Green Thing!"

Poetry

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The Story of Life's unique lyrical style comes from the way it was written and the texts that inspired it. I did not write in English and translate into Spanish, I wrote the book in both Spanish and English simultaneously. I would write a passage in English, translate it to Spanish and keep going, translate the new text into English and keep going, an so on. The method kept me from biasing towards either language and added a certain character to the epic tale of life on Earth. It also means that readers of both languages will be able to enjoy a natively, colloquially written version of the story in their own tongue.

The Story of Life was directly inspired by The Popol Vuh and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony.

I was reading both books for different classes when I began writing The Story of Life, so I absorbed and combined elements of their writing styles. From the Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, came the long lines of descent and the genderless beginning. From Ceremony came the "Sunrise" convention and the poetic style - a column of short phrases centered on the page.

Other, more indirect influences are the Bible, the Qur'an, the Ramayana, and more Native American, Greek, Roman, Indian (from India) and Viking mythologies than I can name. These are works that I did not look at directly during writing, but I had either read or heard before and subconsciously added their elements to the mix.

Now that you know everything, go read the story!

Art

2004-01-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

Inspired by The Story of Life to create a piece of artwork?

Help us illustrate the story by sending it in! Whether its a drawing or a painting, a doodle or a masterpiece, a physical work or a digital one, all contributions are welcome. Children and adults are both encouraged to participate.

We'll post the submissions here on the website, and our favorites will make it into a series of 6 illustrated children's books: Genesis, Landfall, Trimurti, Age of Dragons, Eden, and Gaia. The text from the original Story will be split up to form the series.

The illustrated series will be printed on Landscape oriented, 9'' by 7'' paper in full color. Make sure that your submission will fit or can be scaled to fit that size.

Let us know what page you were thinking of when you made your piece. We suggest leaving some space with less detail and thinking about how the words will fit into your page. Don't include the words themselves though, leave that to us.

Keep in mind that this is a children's series, so please imagine showing your piece to a toddler without scaring her.

You can send digital works or scans to andon dot zebal at gmail dot com, and physical works can be sent to

Andon Zebal
New Forest Books
536 Spring Trace
Williamsburg, VA 23185