h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was born in Pretoria in 1972. My father and mother both were into books big-time, working in book stores and libraries … my father was an aspiring writer and poet as well. He read poetry to me ('real' poetry by esteemed poets like D. J. Opperman and N. P. van Wyk Louw) before I could speak. He also got me well-illustrated children's books and read them to me. I started reading fairly early, about when I was five years old, asking my dad to explain the alphabet to me and from there on working on figuring it out myself. At around that time I was looking at the comics pages in the newspaper and saw a strange thing in the 'Flintstones' comic. I asked my dad what he was, and he told me it was a dinosaur. I was intrigued.

My dad got a job as a librarian at the Merensky Library, of the University of Pretoria, in the seventies. He began bringing me books from the reference section over the weekends. Knowing I was interested in dinosaurs, he got me some wonderful books illustrated by the great Zdenek Burian. I devoured those, and also other encyclopedias with information on prehistoric life. I was into life all-round; another bunch of books I loved and almost memorized, were the Grzimek animal encyclopedia series. They're lavishly illustrated and very complete encyclopedias, the like of which you don't see anymore (at least, I haven't seen anything like them in a bookstore for many decades now). I rapidly came to understand that life is an incredibly complex phenomenon with a history going back in time and that the entire pattern of life on Earth went through several serious changes. I was fascinated by the idea that things could change, that the 'potential' for different living forms was almost inexhaustible.

My dad also bought me my own books. Again, his connections from earlier work in bookstores came in handy. I was getting well-acquainted with the Van Schaik's bookstore in Pretoria. Back in those days there were many wonderfully-illustrated books available. There were even dinosaur books in Afrikaans. But language wasn't a barrier; by the age of six I was already reading English. In fact I'd even been reading German at that point because that was the language the Grzimek encyclopedias were written in. I remember seeking out every book even just marginally involved with prehistoric life in every library we could find – the Pretoria public library, the Merensky library, and a couple of suburban and school libraries. I even borrowed books and encyclopedias from my friends. We got our own set of encyclopedias in the mid-seventies; there were also substantial sections on dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals in them but the info was already much out of date.

My dad was incredibly supportive. He was also highly artistic. We drew our own reconstructions of prehistoric animals – he was quite good. We also made our own fossils! Using clay, we sculpted trilobites (ancient 'bugs' that lived in the sea and of which vast numbers of fossils are known) and then cast them in plaster-of-Paris and painted them so they looked old. I also tried making a fossil like that of the early bird Archaeopteryx using some feathers from doves, but that wasn't very successful. My dad even got me my own real fossil from a colleague at the University. It was a small chunk of rock with a part of a trilobite in it, as well as some other shells. I still have it, and the scrap of paper with information about it: it was collected from the Koue Bokkeveld Mountains in the Cape; it is likely a species of Phacops; it lived in the Devonian, about 350 million years ago! It was illegal for him to give this fossil away, but it wasn't a particularly important one – the genus Phacops is one of the most abundant of trilobites found.

In 1980, when I was eight, I got what I still consider one of the best-ever Christmas present' I'd received – a book illustrated by Zdenek Burian, called 'Prehistoric Animals and Plants'. Burian, a Czech, worked closely together with Russian paleontologists to create some of the most beautiful paleo-art ever. Even today, though in many ways out of date, the illustrations are incomparable. Most of all they make everything seem completely real. The creatures and their backgrounds look totally natural; these things lived, they functioned well in their own environments. They weren't poorly adapted, they weren't 'primitive', they were simply stages in the history of life; the environments were simply different, and the things were quite well adapted to the way things were back then. Living things have been amazingly sophisticated even many millions of years ago.

Around the same time I also stumbled upon an exhibition of fossils of proto-mammals in the Transvaal Museum. I think they were on loan from the University of Cape Town. For the first time I saw a good collection of actual fossils, the remnants, of these incredible ancient living things. South Africa has a richer treasure-trove of fossils of these proto-mammals than any other country or region in the world. Proto-mammals included not only the ancestors of all mammals but also many groups that went on side journeys in evolution, yielding many bizarre 'experiments' … and yet, each one did fit well in its own time and place and was a miraculous manifestation of life. Apart from the fossils there was also a book in the museum store, which my father bought for me – 'Fossielreptiele van die Suid-Afrikaanse Kaoo' ('Fossil Reptiles of the South-African Karoo') by M. A. Cluver. This too became one of my own most cherished possessions.

That's how it got started. Since then I've read a vast number of further books, I've done a great amount of research online, into life during the past of this planet. To me, we have to know our past so as to understand our present and have an idea of possibilities for the future. Life is a whole. We are part of the pattern of life on our planet. We arose by the laws of life, and those laws determine where we shall go in the future. We need to understand that we are not alone in being important. All other living things are as important as we are. It all forms a pattern. The life that exists right now is just a tiny, tiny slice of the full diversity of life that has existed – and even so, we know next to nothing about that tiny slice which is the life of the present. There is vastly more that we do not know, than what we do know. Then there's the life of the future. As diverse as life has been, the possibilities open for the future include an even greater diversity. Our planet might continue hosting life for a billion, two billion or perhaps up to four and a half billion more years. And what about life on other planets? I am sure there must be a lot of life out there. Maybe not much intelligent life … heck, we still have to prove that there's intelligent life on Earth! But life, all the same. And all life is part of the same cosmic pattern, it's a single phenomenon. All life 'out there' will be kin to the life down here, will also develop and proceed according to the laws of life that determine what's possible, what's feasible – and that is a vast, vast lot more than most people could ever imagine. The last word as to what life is, how it gets started, where it is going, and what its ultimate meaning and value is, has yet to be said, but in order to have any chance of ever saying it, we not only need to study life in all its forms through all its history, but we also need to appreciate and cherish life. In the end it is utterly unique, it is complex and fascinating, it is a treasure without measure.

Lovely to read this, thank you for sharing your thoughts Willem. I have long been fascinated by dinosaurs and prehistoric life. The Flintstones was my favourite cartoon as a child!

Hello GB! Yes I've seen that you like the dinosaurs! I'm happy you appreciate this. I hope to eventually be able to write and get published a book of my own about all these old things.