Thomas Halliday – Primal Worlds – SWR2

Paleontologist Thomas Halliday, in his non-fiction book Primordial Worlds, describes why ecosystems became extinct millions of years ago, some for reasons similar to those threatening the current man-made ecosystem. A fact-filled and poetic text about the blue planet’s ability to generate new life after every sinking.
Bridget Newman review.

Translated from the English by Heiner Cooper
Hanser Verlag, 464 pages, €28
ISBN 978-3-446-27268-2

This is an amazing book–amazing in its density of facts, amazing in its poetic style, and amazing in the way it shakes the reader. He grabs him, puts him in a time machine and propels him through 16 eras of Earth. For example in the Ediacarian beginning 635 million years ago. Paleontologist Thomas Halliday wrote “a strange world, more like watery Mars than Earth as we know it today.”

There are no plants or animals. But the multicellular life that began to evolve in the water. The bacteria and archaea in the sea created the foundation for it, producing layer after layer “milk pudding crust”As the author writes, it is where higher organisms anchor themselves or feed from them.

Two aspects of Thomas Halliday’s style are noteworthy—his penchant for sensory metaphors and cinematic action scenes about how he imagined life in distant geological ages, and his scientific style. “Archaea” – what is it? Only an encyclopedia brings enlightenment – in a word, a special kind of bacteria. But the book is worth it, if only because it sheds light on the place of man in the history of the development of our planet.

Halliday’s book “Urwelten” is clearly structured: 16 geological eras, 16 chapters. Each chapter is about 20 pages long and deals with a place where the author or one of his predecessors and colleagues came across antiquities, finds, and so-called paleontological reports. At the end of the book he thanks them and writes: “In this book alone, direct references to literature make reference to the work of more than 4,000 individual scientists.”

Halliday says the planet experienced five mass extinctions on its way from the Ice Age, which ended 11,000 years ago, to the Ediacaran, the last geological age for which fossil records were found. The most famous of them occurred in the Paleocene, when a 10-kilometer meteorite tore through the earth’s crust. Three-quarters of all species are extinct, including the dinosaurs. But after his departure always comes, as we learn from Thomas Halliday, in this case the pinnacle of decomposers, the fungus. After that, life returns to Earth.

Thomas Halliday describes the cyclical fluctuations of ecosystems from the Ice Age to the Warm Age and back again, as if obedient to the pendulum of an indifferent god. We may now believe that we are heading towards an unprecedented, perhaps final, crisis on Earth and feel guilty and victims of this misery, as sinners awaiting punishment. No, Thomas Halliday wrote, like all animals, humans only sought an evolutionary advantage. And she also says:

Man-made changes can be considered largely normal. We belong to the living world and are part of the tree of life.”

Thomas Halliday’s “Prime Worlds” shows that in distant geological times there were similar problems as today: increased carbon in the atmosphere, global warming, species extinction, and rising sea levels. By looking into the past, we can see what awaits us in the future if we don’t stop man-made climate change, says Halliday, explaining his motivations for writing this book.

If we continue as before, the earth will become uninhabitable for us and the ecosystem that surrounds us. After a short hiatus of tens of thousands of years, Halliday believes, it would simply start over with bacteria, ferns, and woodlice—but then without us.

(please note: The manuscript is intended only for personal and private use. Any further reproduction and distribution requires the express permission of the author or SWR.)