Life on Earth

Life on Earth

During the  the domestication of plants and animals further increased human access to solar energy. Fields devoted to crops were enriched by inedible plant matter, providing sugars anfor future harvests. Animals which had previously only provided humans with meat and tools once they were killed were now used for labour throughout their lives, fueled by  inedible to humans.

The more recent discoveries of and  are modern extensions of this trend. These are the remnants of ancient plant and animal matter, formed using energy from sunlight and then trapped within the earth for millions of years. Because the stored energy in these  has accumulated over many millions of years, they have allowed modern humans to massively increase the production and consumption of . As the amount of fossil fuel is large but finite, this cannot continue indefinitely, and various theories exist as to what will follow this stage of human civilization (e.g.

The existence of nearly allis fueled by light from the sun. Mos, such as plants, use the energy of sunlight, combined with carbon dioxide and water, to produce simple sugars—a process known as These sugars are then used as building blocks and in other synthetic pathways which allow the organism to grow.

such as animals, use light from the sun indirectly by consuming the products of autotrophs, either directly or by consuming other heterotrophs. The sugars and other molecular components produced by the autotrophs are then broken down, releasing stored solar energy, and giving the heterotroph the energy required for survival. This process is known as

In humans began to further extend this process by putting plant and animal materials to other uses. They used animal skins for warmth, for example, or wooden weapons to hunt. These skills allowed humans to harvest more of the sunlight than was possible through glycolysis alone, and human population began to grow.