探索世界之生命物语 The Human Body: Life Story 6

...is actually the result of immeasurable activity inside our bodies.

We are performing literally thousands of different tasks every second of every day. Simply being is part of an intricately complicated balancing act, the mechanics of which are completely hidden from us. And just as our bodies hide from us the miracle of everyday life, so they hide from us an even bigger surprise.

It's the story of how we came to be the way we are. And it is an amazing story. It will change the way you think about your body, the way we live, the shape we are, even the way we think was decided for us thousands, millions even billions of years ago, when the human body didn't even exist, and planet earth was almost unrecognizable.

Here we are. 8,000 feet above sea level, in America's Yellowstone National Park. If you'd been on the surface of the planet earth three billon years ago, it would have looked something like this. The earth would have been covered in volcanoes and billowing vents of steam and sulphurous water.

Had you been standing here, you'd have been present as the story of life was unfolding. And had you been standing here, you'd have been standing by the most advanced life form on the planet. In this almost boiling water, there are thousands of long thin strands. They are actually colonies of tiny heat loving creatures, they are bacteria. Once, long ago, this was the most complex form of life anywhere on earth. What's so surprising is that it's still here today, just like it was three billion years ago. Whereas dinosaurs came and went, and literally millions of other species developed, withered and died out, this has survived practically unchanged.

words and expressions

billow:A great swell, surge, or undulating mass, as of smoke or sound.
似巨浪翻腾：巨浪、波涛或波浪形团块，如烟雾或声音

sulphurous:[化]硫磺的, 含有硫磺的

wither: 消亡，衰退