History of Humility

Imagine that the history of the Earth can be compared to one day, and 4.500 million years can be compressed into 24 hours. The first signs of life appeared about 4 o’clock in the morning in the form of single-celled organisms. Then, for 16 hours, not much is happening. Not until 8.30 p.m. do the first microbes appear and right after them aquatic plants and jellyfish. At 9.04 p.m. trilobites swarm the seas. Land vegetation evolves around 10 p.m. allowing the first land animals to follow. There are somewhat less then two hours left to the end of the day.

Thanks to favorable weather conditions at 10.24 p.m. Earth is covered by abundant forests of the Carbonic era, from which today we have our coal. Approximately at 11 p.m. dinosaurs dominate the Earth for 45 minutes. They suddenly disappear giving way to mammals.

Humans emerge one minute and 17 seconds before midnight. One human life is a nanosecond in history’s clock.

If this example doesn’t appeal to you, then get up and stretch your arms. It’s ok, I’ll wait. Imagine that your shoulder’s width is 4.500 million years of Earth’s history. Complex life will be located in the width of your hand. With one stroke of the nail file you could eradicate the history of mankind.

Conclusion number one, is that we know very little about life on Earth. Even about the dinosaurs, who’s history is much longer then ours. Just over 1000 species of dinosaurs have been identified, which counts up to only ¼ of the currently living species of mammals. Scientists suspect that there remains ¾ yet undiscovered species of these giants.

The conclusion number two is that life wants to be, life is not always very ambitious (microbes for 16 hours – given we can compress Earth’s time to one day – have not evolved), life from time to time goes extinct, and life goes on, with or without us.

The first example comes from the book A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, the second form the book Basin and Range by John McPhee.