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The Camden Public Library welcomes new Maine author Bill Portela for his presentation “Evolution in an Hour,” based on his recent book, The Eleventh Layer: Origins of Human Evolution on Thursday, March 7 at 6:30 p.m. in the Picker Room and on Zoom. Portela will also share insight about non-fiction writing and publishing.
This is a hybrid program and will take place in the Picker Room as well as on Zoom. To attend virtually, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rCN0ljVQSE-6n5_blfvH1Q
About The Eleventh Layer: Origins of Human Evolution
The quest for nature and truth is one of the most crucial explorations we can undertake. Yet often, our lives become too overwhelmed to embark on this journey. We rarely stumble across the avenues to enlightenment at university or in the office. From birth, we merge into our clans at home, school or work. We learn to conform and to be productive. But who makes the rules? The criteria for a joyous and full existence seem evasive. How does any species measure their quality of life?
In this far-reaching study, Bill Portela invites readers to consider the role of evolution in their personal, spiritual framework. This stirring journal takes us back five billion years as Earth transformed from star particles into the incubator for all known life in our universe. Darwin’s harsh laws of survival seem balanced by symbiotic theories proving that organic cooperation is a universal constant to our being.
Thriving varieties of plants and fungi forged alliances inland, allowing fledgling animals to inhabit new ecologies far removed from their coastlines of origin. Animal body sizes burst in magnitude over a thousandfold. Developmental schemes now managed complicated patterns for constructing all living creatures, from water fleas to humpback whales.
Our studies discuss the resilience of female-led mammalian societies, such as elephants, orcas, and spotted hyenas, and illuminated why humans remain deeply programmed to maintain biases against outsiders diverging from clan norms. We contrast feminine instincts with male behavior patterns. We probe how women developed essential coping strategies as men channeled aggression and why patriarchies persist today.
Bill Portela has been a wildlife rehabilitator and breeder/trainer or workhorses for thirty years. He has taught subjects, including biology, for over forty years in most settings such as elementary, middle, high school, university, service, and private sectors. His training as a systems engineer allowed him to spend twenty years evaluating (and correcting) how complex systems either do or do not function successfully. The propagation of resilient systems is exactly how evolution works; studying evolution is understanding how entangled organic interactions emerge, why they fail, and how they flourish.