We think of some places as sacred, others as haunted, and still others as peaceful or beautiful or rugged. We invariably ascribe some metaphysical characteristic or meaning to place, and in doing so, we bond with it both intellectually and emotionally. Place suffuses us.
Early this morning I had a Face Time chat with a young friend who stood at Siccar Point in Scotland, a site significant to geologists. The rocks there lie in angular unconformity, revealing a gap of more than 50 million years in sedimentary deposition. Siccar Point’s rocks also show the result of continental and ocean floor collisions that built not only Scotland, but also parts of northeastern North America. And Siccar Point played a significant role influencing the thinking of Sir James Hutton, the Father of Geology. Hutton came to the realization that Earth was not only old, but also a continuation of geologic processes that occurred from very long ago. His realization stood in contrast with most of the people of eighteenth century Europe. To Hutton, Earth appeared to be so old and so enduring that he could see no “vestige of a past, no prospect for an end.”
Siccar Point has become a symbol of “deep time.” No place has remained the same, and all place records time in some way. Siccar Point’s unconformity (a gap in the rock record) reveals that while the place has existed for hundreds of millions of years, it features a large temporal gap. And that in itself is instructive.
Even the most common and taken-for-granted places in our lives hide something of their pasts. We aren’t the first to see meaning in a place. Beyond mere hypotheses we can’t know the human prehistory of most places. The place where you now sit reading this might have been the site of romance or war, of charity or cruelty. There’s always a gap, but that doesn't mean the absence of some past event or condition.
Gaps (unconformities) in the rock record reveal the limits of our knowledge about the past. In curiosity we attempt to understand our world; in pride we attempt to master it.
Hutton once said, “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.” If Hutton had traveled to Alexandria Bay in New York, he would have encountered an even greater unconformity and a greater age in rocks, a gap not of 50-plus million years, but rather of some 600 million years, lying between rocks 1.1 billion years old and younger rocks about 500 million years old. There’s a gap to make one giddy.
What about much smaller temporal gaps, say, those in the lives of people we meet? No one can reveal all that has happened in his or her life; much is lost in the depths of forgetfulness, and much is infused without one’s conscious knowledge like sediments settling in murky water. We can look at one another and realize that we see a partial history. How do we handle the deep time of another and the lost records of the unconformities in another’s life? We can get caught up looking for vestiges of the past in another’s life, or we can ask ourselves about the prospects for a future. In a world so caught up in filling in gaps in hopes of finding out some hidden evil in others, a little forward-looking wouldn’t hurt. We have the rocks on record. Where do we go from here?
Early this morning I had a Face Time chat with a young friend who stood at Siccar Point in Scotland, a site significant to geologists. The rocks there lie in angular unconformity, revealing a gap of more than 50 million years in sedimentary deposition. Siccar Point’s rocks also show the result of continental and ocean floor collisions that built not only Scotland, but also parts of northeastern North America. And Siccar Point played a significant role influencing the thinking of Sir James Hutton, the Father of Geology. Hutton came to the realization that Earth was not only old, but also a continuation of geologic processes that occurred from very long ago. His realization stood in contrast with most of the people of eighteenth century Europe. To Hutton, Earth appeared to be so old and so enduring that he could see no “vestige of a past, no prospect for an end.”
Siccar Point has become a symbol of “deep time.” No place has remained the same, and all place records time in some way. Siccar Point’s unconformity (a gap in the rock record) reveals that while the place has existed for hundreds of millions of years, it features a large temporal gap. And that in itself is instructive.
Even the most common and taken-for-granted places in our lives hide something of their pasts. We aren’t the first to see meaning in a place. Beyond mere hypotheses we can’t know the human prehistory of most places. The place where you now sit reading this might have been the site of romance or war, of charity or cruelty. There’s always a gap, but that doesn't mean the absence of some past event or condition.
Gaps (unconformities) in the rock record reveal the limits of our knowledge about the past. In curiosity we attempt to understand our world; in pride we attempt to master it.
Hutton once said, “The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time.” If Hutton had traveled to Alexandria Bay in New York, he would have encountered an even greater unconformity and a greater age in rocks, a gap not of 50-plus million years, but rather of some 600 million years, lying between rocks 1.1 billion years old and younger rocks about 500 million years old. There’s a gap to make one giddy.
What about much smaller temporal gaps, say, those in the lives of people we meet? No one can reveal all that has happened in his or her life; much is lost in the depths of forgetfulness, and much is infused without one’s conscious knowledge like sediments settling in murky water. We can look at one another and realize that we see a partial history. How do we handle the deep time of another and the lost records of the unconformities in another’s life? We can get caught up looking for vestiges of the past in another’s life, or we can ask ourselves about the prospects for a future. In a world so caught up in filling in gaps in hopes of finding out some hidden evil in others, a little forward-looking wouldn’t hurt. We have the rocks on record. Where do we go from here?
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