Charles Darwin was born in England in 1809 in the town of Shrewsbury. While aboard the HMS beagle, Darwin studied fossils, marine organisms, and tribes of Indians in South America. In the autumn of 1835, the ship came to the Galapagos Islands where Darwin observed and studied a variety of organisms ranging from huge tortoises to sea lions, lizards, and mammals birds. He had never seen these before. He also studied 13 species of Finch (a type of bird), which were all different from each other.
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution can be summarized as follows:
1. Struggle for Survival: It is also known as “Survival of the fittest”. This concept describes how individuals compete for getting better resources. The reproductive capacity allows living organisms to produce more and more offspring. However, the limited resources in the environment, force those individuals to fight among themselves for food, shelter or mating.
2. Natural Selection: Those individuals survive in nature that are naturally selected and are better suited to live in the environmental conditions. For example, in a region where there are leaves in the higher branches of trees, giraffes having long necks will survive and those with shorter necks will slowly die. This natural selection happens to all living organisms. Thus, over a period of time, species change according to the environmental factors.
3. Evolution and Earth’s age: Darwin’s theory of evolution described that even the slightest changes in a certain species occur over a long period of time, that is, over millions of years. The Church estimated the Earth’s age to be around 6000 years which conflicted with the scientists of that day and also regarding Darwin’s theory. It is known today that planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old approximately.
4. Human Evolution: In “The Descent of Man” written in 1871, Darwin put forward the concept that human beings are also a product of evolution and that the modern day humans and the great apes have all evolved from a distant primate ancestor. Darwin explained that human emotions are similar to the animal emotions, which are necessary for survival.