That's a good question. I can imagine that there was a time before there was life on Earth, and then clearly there was a time X-hundred thousand years or a million years later when there were things that we would all recognize as biological.
A high count indicates the presence of inflammation in the body. Because white blood cells are calculated by the number of cells per volume of blood, test results can vary between labs. Different labs use different degrees of measurements for the white blood cell count.
They are made and stored in your bone marrow and released into your blood as needed. The cause of a high white blood cell count is usually from the bone marrow releasing some of its stored white blood cells into the blood or the bone marrow producing too many white blood cells.