EVF Podcast — Episode #2 — Written word version
Earth is 4,6 billion years old, science says. While our ancestors have been around for about 6 million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200.000 years ago, and our civilisation started about 6000 years ago. That, to me, is very impressive. There it is, the planet, going ‘round the sun more than 4 and a half billion times, doing its thing, keeping things very steady, changing at a ridiculously slow rate, and then something happened: humanity.
We surely don’t lack theories and attempts to explain it, but we don’t know how we came about. We developed thousands of religions attributing the creation of every single little thing in the universe to a superior being called God, or to a group of Gods, appealing to the faith of the individual. We also developed theories that don’t include an imaginary entity, but haven’t been able to prove those just yet.
We are a young species who managed to dominate our birth planet. No other animal was ever able to do it (at least to our knowledge). We went from hiding in caves, struggling to defend ourselves from bad weather and predators to shaping the whole planet to our wants and needs. We developed our freedom of operating around the world through discoveries, such as fire, and inventions, like the wheel. We created villages, where we started growing and breeding our food, avoiding dangerous hunting missions.
This gave us a chance for leisure, a luxury that not many animals get to have. Without having to worry about our survival, we could sit around, idly, look up to the stars and WONDER.
Of all the factors that allowed us to take over the world, this episode is about just one of those; I believe that this was crucial to the rise of humanity, especially for the creation of civilisation as we know it. It elongated our lives, giving us more time to create, build and transform. It mainly kept us clean from pathogenic microorganisms and it made its first appearance as early as ancient Babylon, around 2800BC. Today, the market for this product is set to reach a volume of 22 billion dollars per year by 2022.
We have been talking about it intensively during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it’s the simplest preventive action we can take against coronaviruses. It’s really hard to determine whether it was discovered or invented. It sort of appeared in different parts of the world through random discoveries that led to the creation of different recipes to take advantage of its effects.
If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m talking about Soap. Yes, I believe that the hard slippery bar or scented bottle that sits on the side of your sink is one of the most important factors that led humanity to the comfort we live in today.
It’s very well understood, in today’s society, that cleanliness and hygiene are paramount for maintaining good health. But it’s not always been. In fact, despite our rapid development during our 6000 years of documented civilisation, the first official document stating the danger of germs was published in 1861 by a french biologist named Louis Pasteur. He carried out research proving that a certain type of microorganism, through fermentation, can cause disease. Among other things, such as vaccines for chicken cholera, anthrax and rabies, he invented a process that bears his name, pasteurization, which prevents goods (such as beer and milk) from spoiling. Through his discoveries, the french scientist paved the way for sanitation and the creation of effective medicines and vaccines.
The humankind has seen its share of pandemics, with examples going back as far as Ancient Greece and Rome. More recent examples can be the great plagues of London and Marseille. These rapid spreads of disease held our species back in terms of development and progress, wiping out millions and millions of individuals through the centuries. Without the ultrafast methods of communication we have the luxury of using today, it was extremely hard for us to ignite innovation and technological progress. Cities, and big cities, in particular, allowed for dense agglomeration of people — therefore of minds — to thrive and live increasingly easier lives. Merchants travelling from all over the place could unite in conducting business just as much as ideas could reach a vast portion of the population, in little to no time, compared to precedent times. The main catalyst of progress, the beautiful cities where our civilization reached a peak for efficiency, was also the main contributing factor to the spreading of infectious diseases.
Louis Pasteur’s work changed everything, transforming cities from dangerous pools of infection to safe havens for rapid innovation. In other words, it created the world as we know it today.
In a recent Ted Talk, Alanna Shaikh, an expert in international health, explained that Coronaviruses are our future, and the particular strain of COVID-19 is just the first of many more to come. This outlines the fact that, about 150 years later, the discoveries and theories of Louis Pasteur are more relevant and important than ever before. The poor response and management that our society had to the spread of COVID-19 is a great example of what should be avoided in the future. To this day, more than 2 million people worldwide have lost their life due to this virus. If that wasn’t enough, the lives of almost all 7 plus billions of us were affected like never before in history, with restricted movement and drastic change to everyday schedules and routines. We saw our freedom being taken from us, with the addition in our lives of the fear for each other: fear of getting close and gather in groups, something that our species requires enormously.
There’s plenty of things that the average person in our society doesn’t have control over, but hygiene and sanitation aren’t part of those. They could truly prevent most of the implications of these inevitable viruses in the future. Let’s take care of them.
