Evolutionary tale
May 1st
If you walk too fast on the pedestrian mall in Kaunas, you might miss the small gate there. That small gate leads into a yard where a church is hidden from the view. This church, the Church of St. Gertrude in Kaunas, is a hidden gem, and in my opinion — the most beautiful church I have ever seen. It is so minuscule, that it looks like something built from Lego blocks, but the form and patina of passing years make it a true masterpiece of sacral architecture. It is a historical building, founded in the XVI century and pretty much left without any changes since. And the fact that it survived to today might have something to do with it being hidden from undesirable eyes.
There is something else there in its smallness. The doors and windows and passageways are so tiny that a normal grown person has difficulty fitting there. It looks almost like a big-scale playhouse for children. But it was and still is a normal, working church. And that leads me to this thought — I read numerous times that average people were much smaller centuries ago than we are now. And that knowledge was recorded in my mind as a dry historical fact. But only seeing the actual building made for people of maybe a 1.5 meters in height brings it to full understanding only now. We evolved and got bigger (and fatter, maybe even smarter) over the last few centuries. It is not something from paleontology, where we talk about hundreds of thousands and millions of years. Right there in the middle of the Old Town in Kaunas is an example that our bodies had changed over a minute timescale for humankind. And seeing the obesity epidemic in our time, we are still changing, and this time definitely bigger is not for the better.
