And then there was life

In the beginning, it was cold and muggy. Life begins for a lonely diploid zygote, which we shall call Adam. But it was not good for for the zygote to be alone.

Chlamydomonas ambigua. Unicellular algae living in freshwater. Zero (zoospore) to one-hundred (reproductive maturity) takes 24 hours in favorable conditions.

Adam morphs quickly into a non-motile, thick-walled adult, and in this stage, he rests. When mugginess turns into full light of day, Adam springs from his slumber, and his genetic backbone (or ribcage) splits into 2 then into 2 again. These four entities grow into haploid zoospores, which we shall call Adam and Eves.

 Provided a steady supply of lightness (sunshine), they eat (photosynthesize), gaining energy that puts them well on their way to the ultimate goal: replication. When Adam and Eves have eaten and they are well, they muster up some gumption and squeeze out an identical replicate of themselves.

Life's beginnings. As death is imminent for all, self-replication is currently the only known strategy that enables long-term existence. Over time, what is now known to us as reproduction caused a tiny parcel of energetic containment (pre-life) to survive as some form of energetic containment beyond its obliteration (death). The first prototypes of replication-capable energetic-containment probably didn’t make it very far. It is conceivable that it wasn’t until they could pump out a real-substantial number of copies that these prototypes could avoid complete and total obliteration. 

Replication and the quality of information coded by replication would have become increasingly co-dependent. That is, replication depended on high-quality information in order for its continued survival; likewise for high-quality information for its continued survival. Similarly, Facebook was the first of social networking, not only allowing for the signing up for Facebook, but creating the signing up for Facebook.

What came first?  The information coded in "life" or the replication?  The Facebook sign up page or the Facebook? Or, is it more complex, are the two confounded?

Back to Adam and Eves. Adam and Eves, sensing that life is good, begin their journey towards profileration. Each of the 4 cells divide, 2 by 2, to create “Adam” and 15 Eves. They don't sit for long. If the weather is still favorable, they divide again then divide again and again. Friskiness here is bound only by environmental conditions and the limits of mitosis. After a few rounds, given that death and disease and labor pains have not yet been created, 4,294,967,296 identical little daughter cells are born.

Is division death? Maybe the scenario of Adam lending his ribs to create 3 Eves was a simplification? Adam could have simply ceased to exist after the first division. His cell walls disintegrated, and the daughter cells were liberated to go on developing and reproducing in the same way, each "disintegrating" upon each round of mitosis. The alternative is that Adam was still in there somewhere. Some of the original material is was still there, with no clear break from the conditions which we call life, just constructed into a new form.
If Adam was still Adam after the first round of divisions then he was Adam among 15 to 4 billion Eves. It would take the death of the whole population for Adam's material to really become extinct.

If this division isn't death, where does death come into play?  This Chlamydomonas type of ‘death’ seems to not be very prevalent.  Moreover, higher life forms don’t just disintegrate into a bunch of daughter cells. Higher death involves the energy of the body going cold, the body shutting down completely then getting cremated and spread out over the ocean. Parallels between the two?  Except by analogy, this would be hocus pocus or homeopathy... 

Here comes in the spider, which we shall call Charlotte. Charlotte reaches sexual maturity, she totes around her sack of eggs, dies, and becomes her hatchlings' first meal. It is not exactly as clean-cut as mitosis, but the main theme remains; her body goes away and her young scatter. Even if Charlotte was a little more motherly and nurtured her young before becoming their first meal, she is absorbed into the baby spider bodies and her material legend gets carried on. She at least is closer to the Chlamydomonas than we humans.

It'd really be something if we humans multiplied and our 'cell walls' disintegrated, leaving only our progeny. Our existence, our reproduction, eventually connects back to the phylogenetic tree of Adam and those before him, and even to those original pre-life pioneers. However, regardless of ancestral roots, our life cycle is no longer a 24-hour cycle of rest-eat-and-divide. If in the frame of time between birth and death we enjoy consciousness and aesthetics and lofty ideals, we get into something else entirely... right?