>Empedocles, who flourished around 450 B.C. Some accounts claim he identified himself as a god. But perhaps it was only that he was so clever that others thought him a god. He believed that light travels very fast, but not infinitely fast. He taught that there was once a much greater variety of living things on the Earth, but that many races of beings must have been unable to beget and continue their kind. ..., Empedocles, like Anaximander Democritus, clearly anticipated some aspects of Darwin's great idea of evolution by natural selection ~ [[Sagan]]