Francesco Redi performed an experiment in 1668 that disproved the theory of spontaneous generation. He took two identical pieces of meat and placed them in sealed jars, with one covered to prevent flies from entering. Only the uncovered jar grew maggots, showing that living things arise from other living things, not non-living matter. Louis Pasteur further disproved spontaneous generation through experiments showing that microbes could only enter sterile broth through airborne dust, not by generating within the broth itself. This led to the theory of biogenesis, that all life arises from pre-existing life. While life on Earth is believed to have begun around 3.5 billion years ago, scientists have proposed theories of how simple