I've always been weirdly obsessed with the question of how life on earth would have evolved differently if there had been no moon. So I was delighted to stumble across this fragment of an essay by Isamov from the early seventies called The Triple Triumph of the Moon. His most provocative conclusion: land-based life might have never have evolved without the moon:

Life spread outward into the rims of the ocean, where the sea water rose up against the continental slopes and then fell back twice each day. And thousands of species of seaweed and worms and crustaceans and molluscs and fish rose and fell with those tides. Some were exposed on shore as the sea retreated, and of those a very few survived, because they happened, for some reason, to be the best able to withstand the nightmare of land existence until the healing, life-giving water returned.

Species adapted to the temporary endurance of dry land
developed, and the continuing pressure of competitor saw
to it that there was survival value to be gained in developing
the capacity to withstand dry-land conditions for longer and
ever-longer periods.

Eventually species developed that could remain on land
indefinitely...

And of course the tides are the product of the Moon. The
Sun, to be sure, also produces tides, nearly half the size of
those produced by the Moon today, but that smaller to-and-fro
wash of salt water would represent a smaller drive towards
land and might have led to the colonisation of the
continents much later in time, if at all.

Comments

[Tim Reeves]

You may want to look into the book ~Sex, Time, and Power : How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution~ (2003) by Leonard Shlain. Though highly speculative (the author is a surgeon, not an anthropologist), I found it quite plausible. In it, the author proposes, among many other things, that human self-consciousness itself may have originated from women making a connection between their menstruation and the phases of the moon. I recommend.
Tim Reeves
Berkeley, Calif.
friarslantern@yahoo.com

[lvholmes]

I think it's also a bit amazing that the moon is exactly the right size and exactly the right distance between the earth and sun that total eclipses can occur. If the moon were smaller or farther from earth, total eclipses would not be possible. Even if the the size and distance of the moon is dictated by the gravitational pull of the earth and sun (which it may well be, I don't know) it's still interesting to consider that this particular relationship between the sun, moon and earth could be a precursor to the emergence of life on the planet.

When I searched for info about this I was alarmed to see that some have used this as an argument for "Intelligent Design" -- even so, I have to say I've wondered if there may be something in the configuration of gravity, solar particles, and electromagnetic energy that contributed to the overall stew of conditions required for life.

[Michael]

Asimov was amazing. I believe, if I can trust my decades-old memories, that he suggested firing nuclear waste into Lagrangian points in the Earth's orbit, which if I also recall correctly, are dictated in part by the Earth's relationship with the moon. Perhaps he was moon-obsessed?

The essay on Lagrangian points was 1960, I think...

[moon]

A moon lover that i am, with no specific expertise in it what so ever - but amateur enthusiasm, i read your post and the comments to it with delight.
i wonder if Asimov assumptions has any support in scientific researches...

[island]

When I searched for info about this I was alarmed to see that some have used this as an argument for "Intelligent Design" -- even so, I have to say I've wondered if there may be something in the configuration of gravity, solar particles, and electromagnetic energy that contributed to the overall stew of conditions required for life.

It's an "anthropic coincidence", and the fact that IDers use the anthropic principle as evidence for god's existence has pretty much destroyed the rational objectivity of many an otherwise good scientist, which is a real shame, because the strongest implications of the principle are through evolutionary theory.

There is also a misplaced perception of "geocentric arrogance" that has the same effect on scientists, but that's because they don't spend the time that's necessary to learn that it's actually a "biocentric" principle.

All this willful ignorance by scientists has, in my opinion, blinded science to the potential that the principle has, because it defines the theory of everything if the most accurate cosmological principle is anthropic in nature. Rather, it explains "why" the forces can't be unified.

The internet is a very bad place to learn about the anthropic principle.