Africa Geographic June 2003 [antikvár]

I ,1 i' ^t 1i| Editorial VOLUME NUMBERS lUNE 200 3 Contemplating the infinite nature of life, time and space is at once exhilarating and disturbing It is a moment of visceral wonder to peer through a reasonably powerful telescope to see the topography our own pock-marked moon, the jewel of Saturn set in its shiny rings, out to Alpha Centauri revealed not as a single star but as twins locked for eternity in a swirling pas de deux - and beyond into the heart of the Milky Way, our own galaxy, of which our entire solar system is but the merest speck. Faint fuzzy blurs mark other galaxies and farther, beyond the light-gathering grasp of our lens, still others, and others and others I had this experience a few days ago during a clear late autumn night in the Magaliesberg range which arcs in a lazy sweep to touch at its eastern limit South Africa's administrative capital of Pretoria. Earlier that day we had tramped along a ridge of these mountains, aware that here are some of the oldest geological formations on our planet, reaching back more than 3 000 million years. Primitive blue-green algae formed in the shallow expanse of the saline lake that followed, leaving evidence of their existence in fossilised domes called stromatolites. A few kilometres away across the valley lies compelling evidence that this ancient landscape was the earliest home of our own species and that it was from here that our kind radiated out to colonise all of our planet, with the exception of Antarctica. On a parochial scale, much of southern Africa's turbulent history has tumbled through these mountains - australopithecines came and went, as did early and later Stone Age man. Iron Age pastoralist societies alternately settled, formed alliances and went to war to displace each other, and more recently Europeans added themselves to the mix. Gold and other precious ores were discovered and mined; more wars were waged; farms, villages, towns and cities were born. On a cosmic scale, all this has happened in less than the blinking of an eye. Whether we see ourselves at the centre of the firmament as creatures of Divine making or as evolved life forms that will inexorably move towards extinction like all other species have and will, is a matter of personal philosophy and religious conviction. But irrespective of that, it behoves us to consider our arrogance in consuming the resources of our world way beyond its ability to absorb the onslaught, and in the process destroying other life forms at a rate that scientists commonly agree is faster than at any other time since the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. We meddle at our peril, for there is a chaos and an order in the universe that could well be indifferent to the existence of our species. Contemplating the infinite nature of life, time and space is at once exhilarating and disturbing.