Aging & Natural Selection

Because the world as we know it  didn't contain complex organisms  like ourselves in the very  beginning, the definition of  aging is hard to apply to all  living things.

Bacteria and viruses can  reproduce in a matter of minutes,  living endlessly as they mutate  into hardier and hardier strains.  As they reproduce, the parents  become the offspring due to cell  replication, and thus the parent  remains active, never reaching  maturity, aging, or dying.

Viruses, bacteria, and other  small organisms can stay dormant  for thousands of years - an  existence that is a lot longer  than our own, needless to say.

The origins of aging and the  endless theories that followed  weren't simple. As soon as more  complex living creatures came  around, the concept of aging took  shape. It was initially believed  that aging and death were only  imminent after an organism was  sexually active. If it hadn't  fulfilled the function of  reproduction, the subject wasn't  ready to die.

Theories also suggest that the  way genetic material was  initially replicated in the  beginning was due to organisms  eating each other, thus  interchanging and doubling their  inherent chromosomes within the  body.

As a result, the cells would  replicate into an offspring, and  the organism would then reach  maturity to deteriorate and die.  In this scenario, parent  organisms go through aging and  maturity, as opposed to the  original occurrences when cells  remained as offsprings themselves.

The theory of natural selection  revolves entirely around this  last hypothesis. But it was a lot  more advanced, and accounted for  the variables associated with our  habitat shaping our skills,  intelligence, and abilities.

It suggested death was not only a  result of reproductive  fulfillment, but also of a  subject not actually fulfilling  their purpose either by choice or  circumstance. Thus the term  "survival of the fittest."