The Theory of Evolution

Today as part of my topic on amazing animals, I'm going to be learning about the theory of evolution.

Evolution is a theory that explains the way living things (for example: animals, humans, insects) have changed over millions of years. For example over millions of years apes have evolved to walk on two legs and gradually become modern day humans.

The person who came up with the theory of evolution is Charles Darwin. As a young man Darwin was studying and training to be a doctor but he gradually lost interest and found surgery upsetting. He neglected his studies instead spent hours learning taxidermy. At university he became involved with natural history societies and debating clubs and began to question and challenge the accepted explanations for how the world was created. This was a radical thing to be interested in at the time.

Darwin's father was annoyed at his disinterest in medicine so he sent him to Christ's College, Cambrdge to study to become a vicar. Again, Darwin lost interest in becoming a vicar, and instead took interest in beetle collecting which was the popular craze of the time. During his time at Cambridge Darwin read many books exploring 'natural theology', the idea that the beauty of nature must have been created by God, as it couldn't be an accident. He became obsessed with the idea of travel and research, and won a place on the HMS Beagle for a planned expedition around the coast of South America.

The voyage on the HMS Beagle was a massive turning point for Darwin. On his voyage Darwin did lots and lots of research and collected many specimens such as animals, insects and sea creatures along the way. Darwin's specimens are probably scattered in museums all around the world now. The trip created many questions in Darwin's mind which he was eager to answer and fed his hunger for questioning what everyone else accepted. 

You might not know there was another person doing very similar work to Darwin at the same time who didn't get as much credit for his work. His name was Alfred Russel Wallace. He came up with his own theory of evolution around the same time as Darwin, and in fact they were very supportive of one another's work, but Wallace had financial problems which made it much harder for him to fund his research trips, and looking back now we can see that most of the credit goes to Darwin.

Many people laughed at Darwin when he released his book, On the Origin of Species, in 1859. Darwins book also annoyed a lot of Christians including the pope because it challenged their belief that the world was created by God.  

There is plenty of evidence to support Darwin's theory of evolution, such as fossils that show how animals have changed over millions of years. However, there are some people who still don't believe that evolution is real, mostly for religious reasons. Although scientists are 100% sure Darwins theory of evolution is true there is a link in history where there are no fossils or skeletons to prove evolution in that particular era. this is where everyone starts arguing.