INTRODUCTION

I was incredibly happy to see my 14-month old grandson realizing that the reflection in the mirror was his own. There was no doubt, his momentary calmness and the simultaneous deep focus, as a counterpoint to his usual liveliness, and his doubtless, barely visible enigmatic smile, his radiant face told it all. The confirmation came at the end when he, still smiling enigmatically, slowly and barely audibly but clearly, said his name. While I watched him, nothing else existed, other than him, the mirror and the music in my head, the beats of Strauss’ The Blue Danube Waltz.
     Every form of life has its own waltz, a waltz from the bottom of the ocean, the oceans’ expanses, the waltz of rivers, lakes, the land and the air. If not a waltz, then surely tango. Life is fascinating! Of this I was convinced, like so many times before. How did conditions for life emerge? How did life emerge? How does it continue to exist? How do more perfect forms of life develop? How do individual organisms age and how do they die? What have we known about these matters from ancient times up until the present?
     How can we answer these extremely interesting questions? Or, better to say, how can we give the most plausible answers, present models that answer these questions, answers or models that reflect the times, that is, the level of knowledge of the person answering all these questions from different areas of science? Obviously, a single human in a single lifetime cannot answer them. A human life is not long enough to think about all these question, form opinions on them, whether original or conventional.
     Therefore, when I wanted to reflect on these questions and gain my own experience of them, it seemed reasonable to follow a single thread based on a single specific principle, a thread that runs through all the answers to all of these questions and that does not disturb the totality they form. A new question follows immediately: is there such a thread? One that connects, that the emergence of life, evolution of all living things, survival of life, and the ageing and death of all living being have in common? I believe there is. This thread is the most widespread chemical reaction – the reaction of oxygenation.
     Therefore, the first part of this book is dedicated to oxygenation. That means that oxidation will be define in general terms and then oxygenation as oxidation in a more narrow sense. Establishing the conditions in which oxygenation takes place is complex. Primarily, this entails establishing the correct initial basis on which to build the knowledge of the mechanism of this chemical reaction.
     In this case, understanding the basic principles of oxygenation enables us to understand the rest of the book better and more easily. However, this does not imply that the other parts of the book cannot be comprehended without a complete understanding of oxygenation mechanisms. In fact, no one knows the exact mechanism of oxygenation, only its model. It suffices to have the knowledge of the basic principles of oxygenation, without delving deep into the mechanism of reaction, without inquiring into deeply. Accept it as a finished Lego or, if someone prefers, a black box.
     The second part of the book presents hypotheses on the emergence of life, its survival, the evolution of more perfect life forms, the ageing and dying of organisms. I try to explain the presented models through the role oxygenation plays in them, in view of previously explained basic principles of oxygenation. These are in fact the most basic manifestations of oxygenation, only in the field designated by the questions that had already been mentioned. So, I am trying to establish how one of the basic material causes – oxygenation – is common to the emergence and survival of life, the evolution of ever more perfect forms of life on the one hand, and to the ageing and death of all living organisms on the other.
     The third part of the book refers to what the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, Christians, Dogon, Tibetans, Karelians and Finns knew about the answers to these questions, in other words, on the topics laid out in the first two parts of the book. In order to better understand what these ancient civilizations actually knew about these topics it was necessary to bring up the symbols and symbolism in these ancient cultures and compare them to the symbols of the modern (Western) civilization in the introduction to the third part. In this manner we can better, more easily and quickly compare ancient and modern knowledge, or fictions and models.
     I have to mention that the results of the comparison between ancient and modern knowledge stirred an array of different emotions in me, from exaltation to disbelief, from thrill to disappointment, from pride to shame, from warmth to introversion and anxiety, etc. I hope that the reader of these lines will not remain indifferent.
     In his book The Anatomy of Criticism Northrop Frye wrote: “the errors of fact, taste, logic, and proportion are poor things, but my own”[1]. I have no better words to express my view about my text.