82 life's beginning on the earth 



is difficult to answer. At that early stage, certainly no life 

 in the usual sense of the word was present, yet conditions 

 prevailed which prepared for the appearance of life. This 

 period is named by geologists the Azoic or lifeless age. At 

 that time were formed the oldest known Sedimentary 

 Rocks, developed from sediments settled at the bottom of 

 the earliest oceans. These rocks come to the surface here 

 and there, exposed after vast ages of concealment, because 

 the rocks that covered them have worn off later. 



These ancient rocks contain no remains of life at all, not 

 a trace of it. Yet we find in them graphite, a kind of crys- 

 tallized carbon, (the material used for manufacturing pen- 

 cils). This deposit of solid carbon seems to justify our 

 assumption that the first lifeless ocean contained carbon 

 compounds (organic matter). Much of this organic mate- 

 rial decomposed and left carbon behind it, just as carbon 

 (coal) has formed from the organic matter of plants which 

 appeared at very much later periods. 



We are thus led to the ocean as the cradle of life's be- 

 ginnings. Others have propounded a different theory. 

 Cromeis and Krumbeis (in Down to Earth, Chicago, 1936) 

 express the view that life originated in the soil, since they 

 suppose that it is somehow related to processes of evaporation 

 or erosion. They consider that a concentration of certain 

 materials was necessary for the processes preceding life 

 generation. The sea water offers "too great an opportunity 

 of diffusion" which Cromeis and Krumbein regard as un- 

 favorable. The writers, however, admit that when any 

 life-line is traced into its simplest ancestral types, the hail 

 invariably leads to the ocean. Thus I hey confirm our 

 hypothesis. 



11. the slow development of life in its earliest 

 beginnings; its further course 



We may assume that thai early stage when enzymes were 

 acting upon lifeless organic matter extended over an enor- 



