THE EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT 333 



more to turn to the world of nature, they were furnished with a ready- 

 made explanation of the origin of living things — the Mosaic account 

 of creation given in the Bible. Not only was this the official and respect- 

 able belief but, infused during youthful training, it seemed to make any 

 other explanation of the origin and diversity of life unnecessary. 



For more than a millennium, from the Middle Ages until about the 

 middle of the last century, the great majority of people in Christian 

 lands thought that the world had been suddenly created only a few 

 thousand years ago. The church eventually lent its authority to the 

 literal interpretation of the story of creation told in the book of Genesis, 

 according to which all the species of animals and plants were created to 

 populate the newly formed earth, with the making of man as the last 

 and crowning event. It was only about 300 years ago that Archbishop 

 Ussher, a church authority, calculated that creation occurred in the 

 year 4004 B.C., and even determined the day and hour when man was 

 called into being. This date is still to be found as a marginal notation 

 in some editions of the Bible. 



The theory of catastrophism. From the time of the Renaissance 

 onward, more and more persons became interested in the study of the 

 earth and of the organisms that inhabit it. It had long been known that 

 the rock layers were filled with objects that looked very much like shells, 

 bones, and other parts of animals. Many of these fossils, l found far from 

 the sea and even high up on the flanks of mountains, nevertheless had 

 the appearance of creatures that once lived in the sea. Others were alto- 

 gether strange; some of these were great toothlike or bonelike objects 

 unlike the teeth or bones of any known creature. 



With the renewal of interest in natural phenomena, a controversy 

 sprang up over the nature of these "fossilia." As early as the fifteenth 

 century the versatile artist, inventor, and scientist Leonardo da Vinci 

 correctly interpreted them. Such interpretations were, however, so 

 unorthodox that many curious hypotheses were advanced by others to 

 explain in a less disturbing manner the occurrence of fossils. Eventually, 

 however, the conclusion could no longer be resisted that they actually 

 were the remains of animals long dead. 



As knowledge of comparative anatomy increased it became possible 

 to assemble and fit together fossil bones to form more or less complete 

 skeletons, from which the appearance of the animals in life could be 

 deduced. Many of the types so reconstructed proved to be unlike anything 

 that now exists, either in Europe or, as exploration gradually showed, 

 anywhere else in the modern world. The early reconstructions of fossils 

 were, to be sure, often faulty and sometimes bizarre, but this served 

 merely to exaggerate an essentially true conclusion — that many animals 



1 From the Latin fossilium, "something dug up." 



