I love to
travel! I mean, who doesn't, right? So far my life adventures around the globe
include; once around most of western and central Europe, around the UK and
Ireland; going back to Europe on four other separate occasions, including
Greece and Macedonia, also travelling by train to the Arctic Circle in northern
Norway; twice flying across the Pacific Ocean to the paradise island of Hawaii;
one trip to Thailand; and even three separate road trips across the great
southern land for which I call my home, to her very corners, Brisbane, Perth
and Darwin. And that's just the start! There are many more travels in the
future to come, of that I am sure! I well and truly have the "travel
bug".
But what is at the core of this human ambition to leave the relative comfort
and safety of home and go exploring? It almost seems that there is something
built into our very own DNA that pushes us to cross that river, or climb over
that mountain. And does this drive to explore have any evolutionary advantage?
There
have been numerous studies that have revealed a variant of the gene (DRD4) that
helps to control the dopamine levels in the brain, linked to curiosity and
restlessness, known as DRD4-7R. It seems that close to 20 per cent of all
humans carry this 7R variant gene and are more likely to take bigger risks than
those that do not carry it.
From a
migration point of view, it seems safe to say that as humans began to spread
out across the globe, this 7R gene became more prominent in those societies of
humans that were always on the move than the ones that stayed back and settled
the land that they already had begun to develop for farming and other
industries. As the more adventurous
humans began to reproduce with other similar adventurous humans out on the
frontier, the 7R gene became more pronounced in their subsequent offspring.
And it
seems that it is only humans that have this genetic marker, as very few
animals, if any at all, are as wide-spread as us. Even the Neanderthals did not
populate every corner of the world like we have. It is our uniqueness as a
species that enables us explore the world unlike any other. And this uniqueness
is evident in the size of our brain and our physical capabilities. Our long
legs allow us to walk longer distances and our hands allow us to manipulate the
world around us and expand our imagination. In fact, in could be our slow
developmental stage as children that enabled our imaginations to grow. As it
takes longer for a human child to reach puberty compared to other primates and
even our Neanderthal cousins, the period of time that we are protect by our
parents is longer, which in turn allows us to explore the world around us for
longer and foster that desire to make sense of our experiences and to see more!
This slow
development in a juvenile-like state is called "neoteny" and physical
traits include a larger head compared to the rest of our bodies, physically
weaker than other primates and less hair on our bodies. But what we lack
physically, we more than make up in our lifelong capacity to continue learning
from our new experiences that we encounter.
So as our
imagination expanded, so did our drive to create new technologies to enable us
to explore the world around us. From inventing the wheel to help us travel
farther and faster, to crafting new ships to allow us to navigate the open seas
and discover new lands to colonize. But the real underlying question is, why?
Why did we feel that desire to expand our reach to these other lands, some more
hostile than the lands we originally came from, to cover every corner of this
planet?
Self
preservation is the key. This goes beyond an individual's fight-or-flight
response but is self preservation on a global scale. No complex life on this
planet is immune to disease, famine, natural disasters, among other things. So
it only makes sense that we as a species, spread ourselves in order to maximize
our survivability. If one community or region comes under threat and is
ultimately wiped out, we as a species will continue to live, hopefully,
unaffected.
You could
call this the law of not putting all your eggs in one basket.
But what
if we cannot protect ourselves if one of these threats goes global? We as a
species seem very aware, and sometimes oddly obsessed, with our own demise,
whether it is from a zombie apocalypse that wipes out most of the world's
population or an alien invasion coming to enslave us - if we're lucky! But more likely than those scenarios are
cosmic threats, such as an asteroid collision, also known as 'impact events'.
The fifth and last mass extinction, known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene
extinction, occurred 65 million years ago and was the result of such an impact
event. It was responsible for the extinction of 75% of all species, and is most
famous for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
So how do
we combat this threat, and the fear of our own oblivion? We develop a space
program of course! On April 12th 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first human to
leave the relative safety of Earth and officially into space. July 20th 1969,
NASA landed the first two humans on the Moon. Since then, we have built and
maintained the International Space Station (ISS) and even sent unmanned rovers
to our neighbouring planet Mars.
But I
would still argue that this sense of exploration stems from our fear of
oblivion. The 7R gene has stayed with us as a driving force for the sake of our
own survival as a species. If something catastrophic were to happen to Earth,
having us spread across the solar system, whether it be self sufficient
colonies on Mars, or one or more moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, we can
better guarantee human survival. Ideally, with technology continuing to evolve,
we will venture beyond our own solar system, under the declaration of
exploration but with the fear of oblivion being the driving force behind it, on
the chance that something disastrous happens to our sun and our solar system.
It could be this very 7R gene that is responsible for the spreading life across
the galaxy, and possibly farther. Our nearest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda,
is expected to collide with our own in 4.5 billion years. Can we escape our own
inevitable demise? Only time will tell…
