How Evolution Explains Everything About LifeHow did we get here? All cultures have a creation story, but a little over 150 years ago Charles Darwin introduced a revolutionary new one. We, and all living things, exist because of the action of evolution on the first simple life form and its descendants. We now know that it has taken 3. 8 billion years of work by the forces of evolution to turn what was once a lump of barren rock into the rich diversity of plants, animals, and microbes that