Goosebumps

Your ancient ancestors were small hairy little animals that would puff up when startled like a cat does when it feels threatened--a biological response to alarm which protected them from attack by making them look bigger than they were. You have kept this response in an interesting way.

You notice this residual response of hair follicles standing at attention when you are lucky enough to have someone kiss your neck or are moved by a song. The feeling is goosebumps. Next time you are surprised by a kiss or see something beautiful and amazing, remember, you have your ancient mammalian ancestors to thank.

If you go back further, before flowers and birds, grass and animals, you would find an ocean full of what looked like large nubby rocks. These odd structures imparted an untold number of qualities to their future descendants--plants and animals.

Just what did they pass on to people? Scientifically that answer could get way too complicated and maybe boring. For me just casually observing the fossil remains of these amazing algae/bacterial structures that flourished 3.5 billion years ago, I am struck by the beautiful growth patterns.

Cut pieces of these stromatolites look to me like shards of Greek pottery. I'm not sure what qualities we inherited from these ancient structures. But when I consider that a beautiful fossil of a stromatolite is in a way a very distant ancestor of man and that the art men created in ancient Greece retains similar aesthetic qualities--it gives me goosebumps.

Shards of Greek pottery

Stromatolite fossil

More Greek pottery shards