For the last couple of years, I used to organize colleges for city council clerks at the university in Amsterdam. During one of the colleges, the ‘age of speciation’ of humans came up: ‘roughly 300.000 years ago.’ One of the clerks countered this. According to his belief, it could only have been between 5.000 to 6.000 years before the birth of Jesus, when ‘his father’ created the world. From the professor who gave the lecture, this elicited the remark: “I only conduct science.”
Studying the ingenious architecture of the wasps in this picture I wondered how old this species is. Thanks to Wikipedia, I discovered that “Fig wasps with modern anatomical features first appeared in the Lower Cretaceous of the Crato Formation in Brazil, some 65 million years before the first fig trees.” But fossil records date early families of this fig wasp some 247 to 252 million years ago.
Einstein remarked that it would be a pity if we altogether would abandon the idea of metaphysics. If by metaphysics he means fantasy, I gladly agree. If by metaphysics he refers to the religious lies that are daily administered by humans, I disagree.
May the wasp live another 250 million years! In which case they probably outlive humans by another 247 million years.
^tvo