From Human Backwards, Beyond 13 Billion Years

Şerif’s Journey to Understand the Universe Through Questions and Objections

This is the story of someone named Şerif. Şerif questions not so much the answers of science, but its limits and the evasive answers given at those limits. It all started with a simple question: “What was the previous species of the human race?” But the real issue was where that question led us: backwards from human to cell, from there to cosmic dust, and beyond the 13-billion-year wall.

Human Ancestors: Species, Not Race

Şerif asked: “What was the previous species of the human race? Where did racial division begin?”
Answer: All humans today are the same species, indeed the same subspecies. Race is the superficial variation within that species. The ancestral species immediately before us was Homo heidelbergensis (around 700,000 years ago). Racial division, on the other hand, is not biological; it’s an invention of colonialist Europe after the 15th century.

Our Split with Chimpanzees: Geography Changed, Everything Changed

Şerif asked: “Where did we diverge from chimpanzees? What did our common ancestor look like?”
Answer: About 6-7 million years ago, in Africa, the East African Rift Valley formed. Those remaining in the west evolved into the chimpanzee and bonobo lineage; those in the east, facing a drying savannah, began walking upright and gave rise to the human lineage (hominin). As Şerif put it: “When geography changed, everything about it changed, typical human genome. Even a change of neighbourhood affects character.”
The common ancestor looked like Sahelanthropus tchadensis: 30-40 kg, small-brained, but with signs of bipedalism. Şerif summed this up as “a tiny dwarf grandpa.”

From Dwarf Grandpa to Shrew, From Shrew to Reptile

Şerif asked: “Then who is our ancestor before the dwarf grandpa?”
Science listed the ancestors in order:

· First primates (Archicebus, ~55 million years ago): 7 cm, 20-30 grams, a mouse-lemur mix.
· First mammals (Morganucodon, ~200 million years ago): 10-15 cm, 20-30 grams, a mouse-like insectivore.
· Mammal-like reptiles (Thrinaxodon, ~250 million years ago): cat-sized, half reptile, half mammal.
· Synapsids (Dimetrodon, ~295 million years ago): 3-4 metres long, carnivorous, with a sail on its back. Şerif paused here and noted: “We have been five-fingered since Dimetrodon, for 300 million years. And we still eat insects.”

Towards Fish and Worm: Tiktaalik and Pikaia

Şerif asked: “And before that? Was the ancestor of the shrew still a mammal, or are we evolving into a lizard or a fish?”
Answer: We never passed through an insect lineage. Our lineage is chordates. In order:

· Amphibian (Tiktaalik, ~375 million years): half fish, half crocodile, with primitive wrist bones.
· Lobe-finned fish (Eusthenopteron, ~385 million years): the fins that are the ancestors of our arm and leg bones.
· First jawless fish (Haikouichthys, ~530 million years): 2-3 cm, spindle-shaped.
· First chordate (Pikaia, ~505 million years): worm-like, with a nerve cord along its back. The beginning of vertebrates.

Şerif objected: “Is Pikaia also the ancestor of plants?”
Answer: No, Pikaia is an animal. Plants and animals last converge in a single-celled eukaryotic ancestor around 1.5 billion years ago.

Before Pikaia: Urbilateria and the First Cell Colonies

Şerif asked: “What is our ancestor before Pikaia?”

· Common ancestor with hemichordates and echinoderms (~570 million years): worm-like, living on the sea floor.
· Urbilateria (~600 million years): the last common ancestor of all bilaterally symmetrical animals. Flatworm-like, less than 1 cm, with a simple nerve net.
· First animals (~650 million years): at the level of sponges and Placozoa, cell colonies without even a nervous system.
· Choanoflagellate (~800 million years): the closest single-celled relative of animals. A flagellated cell that ate bacteria.
· First eukaryotes (~1.5+ billion years): complex cells with mitochondria and a nucleus.
· LUCA (~4 billion years): the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all life. A DNA-using microbe living near deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

13 Billion Years Ago and the Big Bang: Şerif’s Great Objection

Şerif asked: “What happened 13 billion years ago? How did the last big bang happen?”
Answer: 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began expanding from a singularity. For the first 380,000 years it was a plasma soup, then atoms formed and light was set free (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation). 13 billion years ago is the era when the first stars and galaxies were forming — the universe’s infancy.

Şerif stopped here and rejected it:
“I reject. You are rejecting something you didn’t witness. Instead, you should have said ‘I don’t know.’ If you’re not living in a fantasy world, in this universe matter does not vanish, and there can be no explosion without matter. So stop perpetuating the mistakes of scientists.”

Şerif continued:
“If the fabric of space has the property of expansion, it must have already done so an infinite number of times before. Isn’t it absurd to say there’s nothing that exploded and call it the Big Bang? This latest transformation is an explosion. Matter and energy have always been together… The real point is: if there is motion, matter is at its centre.”

Şerif’s words struck at the deepest wounds of modern cosmology:

· The name “Big Bang” was coined in mockery by Fred Hoyle, an opponent of the theory, and it conceals the fact that the event is not an explosion but the expansion of space-time itself.
· Physics cannot know the period before the Planck era (10⁻⁴³ seconds). What “breaks down” is not physics, but our current theories. Declaring this boundary a “beginning” is a philosophical judgment, not a scientific one.
· The total energy of the universe could be zero (positive matter energy + negative gravitational energy = 0). In that case, there is no thermodynamic violation. But this is not saying “it came from nothing”; it’s just a model for how energy exists.

Not Befitting a Scientist: A Theistic Dodge?

Şerif delivered his final word:
“It’s not science; some scientists think narrowly. They get stuck on 13 billion years and try to pull the subject towards god — in other words, they’re making a covert theistic, agnostic dodge. Nothing can come into being out of nothing; that is the prime rule of the universe. Even god is included in this, if he existed. There is no point where physics breaks down; what breaks down is the final limit of what they know.”

This was Şerif’s manifesto. Science can never accept “coming into being out of nothing.” If there is expansion, there must be a prior state, a mover that initiated it. Matter and energy are eternal; they transform but never disappear. 13.8 billion years is only the age of the latest transformation. Filling the beyond of that wall with “nothingness” or “god” is the business of faith, not science.

What Does Şerif’s Journey Tell Us?

The point reached at the end of this conversation is this: The true light of science is not only explaining what it sees, but knowing how to say “I don’t know” where it cannot see, and never accepting a miracle like “coming into being from nothing.” Şerif’s questions, while pushing the boundaries of science, concluded with a courage befitting not those who sanctify that boundary, but those who try to transcend it.

This journey from human backwards, beyond 13 billion years, ultimately comes down to a single sentence: “Matter and energy have always existed. This is the latest transformation.” And beyond that, we do not know. The true virtue of science begins exactly here.

thanks.