question 4 of six · an open board
Where did we come from?
Origins — of the universe, of life, of us. What does the evidence actually support?
The board
Three origin stories nest inside this one: the cosmos (what, if anything, preceded the Big Bang), life (abiogenesis versus arrival from elsewhere), and us (a deep human past that keeps getting older and stranger as the digs continue). Some of it is well-established, some genuinely unresolved, and the interesting work is telling which is which without flinching either way.
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From the research base
Thoughts written on research documents across the site and routed to this question. Reply here or on the source page — it’s the same conversation either way.