To understand how anything very complex works, or even to know that there is something complex at work, man needs to see little tiny bits of it at a time. And this is why small islands have been so important to our understanding of life. On the Galápagos Islands, for instance, animals and plants that shared the same ancestors began to change and adapt in different ways once they were divided from one another by a few miles of water. The islands neatly separated out the component parts of the process for us, and it was thus that Charles Darwin was able to make the observations that led directly
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