About Christopher Lloyd

18th August, York, Yorkshire.

My name is Christopher Lloyd (chris@bigbang2911.com) and I am a UK journalist and author who specialises in writing about the history of the world. My book What on Earth Happened? (in Dutch it's called Wat Is Er In Hemels Naam Gebeurd?), published in 2008, aims to reunite human history with natural history by telling the complete story of the planet, life and people from the beginning of time to the present day in an interconnected, holistic narrative.

Meanwhile, another world history in the What on Earth? series is about to be launched this October. What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World has taken 18 months to research and write and tells the story of life on Earth through the lens of 100 different lifeforms, some still living, some extinct.

The first 50 are species that evolved in the pre-human era, beginning with microbial life (viruses, bacteria, protists), through to prehistoric marine species (e.g. sharks), plants (e.g. Lepidodendron trees) , giant fungi (Prototaxites), and land vertebrates, including dinosaurs and mammals and upto man.

The second 50 are species that have thrived only as result of human domestication over the last 10,000 years. These are divided thematically into farmed foods (e.g. cows, wheat, rice, maize, sugarcane), those that have provided material weatth (cotton, rubber, silkworms); mind-enhancing drugs (e.g. tea, coffee, cacao, coca, poppies (opium), tobacco); pets (cats, dogs), and species that appeal to our senses (e.g. roses, the lotus flowers, oranges, bananas etc).

At the end I have ranked and scored all these 100 species according to their overall impact on planet, life and people (as a bit of fun).

The aim of such a survey of life on earth is to put human achievement within its proper context. It shows how the self-correcting system of natural selection, which has emerged over the last 4 billion years, is being rapidly threatened by the rival system of domestication (artificial selection).

Discussing these issues, highlighting the problems we face today and coming up with potential solutions is what I am most looking forward to on my journey retracing the first leg of Darwin’s great trip. Above all else, Charles Darwin was the man who first articulated the dichotomy between Artificial Selection (which concerns the first chapter of his On the Origin of Species) and Natural Selection (which he revealed as nature's way of adapting life to the dynamic environments on Earth).

His revelation that humans are inextricably part of the natural world (i.e. that we evolved), and are not some kind of special creatures endowed with the right to exploit the Earth's natural riches only for the sake of our own species, reverberates with as much significance today as ever it did when he first published his theory 150 years ago..

My goodness....What a lot we will have to talk about!