Every so often, it behooves one (Behooves? Where did That come from?) to ponder deep time. Pondering deep time is a mechanism that puts all present action in perspective. I’m thinking paleontologically and geologically, even cosmologically, here. Cosmologically? An explosive event in the middle of the galaxy at about the time that Little Lucy, our distant Australopithecine relative, walked across muddy ash in the Afar Triangle.* Paleontologically and geologically? Extinct organisms, all of them once living in a delicate balance of environmental conditions far different from today’s: A sea in New Mexico, for example, and long before that, warm muds in Scotland located not far from the Equator and attached to Greenland.
And as it is now, all life was balanced between safety and danger: The quick on the edge of the dead. That life has always lived on an edge isn’t a new observation, but it is one that throws today’s world into the mix of yesterdays’ worlds. Reflections on deep time tell us that.
What would Little Lucy have seen in the sky? A bright light in the night? A persistent glow in the night sky? The explosive event associated with the supermassive black hole in the middle of the galaxy might have shone for a million years. Surely, she could have seen it had she merely looked upward. But a persistent glow for a thousand millennia engulfing the lifespan of Lucy’s short life might just have been the “ordinary sky,” nothing to draw one’s attention any more than the Milky Way’s persistent light draws our attention nightly. Could she have “wondered?” Was there any wondering 3.5 million years ago? Could Lucy entertain a thought about time, about her finiteness?
By deep time, I’m thinking long before primates, back to the time of herbivorous horned dinosaurs like triceratops that have captured the imagination of many children, and frankly, probably of many adults. Recently, paleontologists dug up two previously unknown ceratopsian dinosaurs in New Mexico.** They date the fossil heads to a period known as the Campanian Stage (83.6 to 72.1 MYA), that is, sometime between 18 and 7 million years before the big extinction event that obliterated the non-avian dinosaurs like the ceratopsians. Let’s take that time frame as a point of departure for more pondering. Ten million years or so BEFORE the extinction event arguably caused by an impacting bolide as big as a mountain: Say it, “Ten million years before the extinction.” I know you know the math, but every million is thousand thousand, that is, a thousand millennia. Go back just ten millennia from today, and humans have little or no agriculture, no cities, no towns, even. Heck, we don’t see the Pyramid of Djoser until about 4,700 years ago, not even five millennia.*** Ten million years minus ten millennia is 9,990 millennia. This is 2020. That’s just 2 millennia plus twenty years since Christ and the Caesar Augustus. Why am I belaboring the point? Because in any “current” time, that is, the time of people who are alive, those who believe they are a center of both place and time seem to have no perspective on where they stand in either.
In another discovery, paleontologists have unearthed a millipede from Scotland. It dates to the Silurian Period, some 425 million years ago. It might not be the oldest millipede; it’s just the oldest ever found, and it dates to a time when the first land plant, Cooksonia, was growing in what is now present-day Scotland. And Scotland’s equatorial location back then? It was about 300 miles north of the Equator. The newly discovered fossil millipede scurried around in warm mud.****
Of course, deep time runs even deeper. Run the timeline of life backward from that millipede, and you get the Cambrian Explosion (of life). And before that? The Ediacaran life-forms of Australia lived between 635-541 million years ago. And before that? The bacteria that possibly go back to 3.5 billion years, each billion, I’ll repeat for emphasis, being a thousand million.
And back to the deep time of cosmology: Earth’s formation about 4.5 billion years ago; the universe’s formation at 13.7 billion years ago. So, when the pressure of current events overwhelms you, take a deep breath and ponder deep time. No, it won’t solve your current problems, but it will give you a larger context for those problems. Two thousand years ago people thought their current events occurred in the center of time. Four thousand years ago, people thought similarly. Six thousand years ago… Admittedly, for everyone, the present is the center of time, but maybe pondering deep time can lessen the significance of those events that though seemingly significant are actually insignificant, like arguments over perspectives.
*Video at: https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=big+explosion+in+the+center+of+the+galaxy+3.5+million+years+ago#id=1&vid=3a6922890fa02ec0f3802896615dad48&action=click Story at: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-intense-milky-black-hole-illuminated.html Accessed June 9, 2020.
**Yes, Gobekli Tepe seems to be much older than that pyramid, arguably having been built 12 millennia ago.
***Fowler, Denver Warwick, and Elizabeth Anne Freedman Fowler. Transitional evolutionary forms and stratigraphic trends in chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaurs: evidence from the Campanian of New Mexico. bioRxiv 854794; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/854794 Accessed June 8, 2020.
****M. E. Brookfield, E. J. Catlos & S. E. Suarez (2020) Myriapod divergence times differ between molecular clock and fossil evidence: U/Pb zircon ages of the earliest fossil millipede-bearing sediments and their significance, Historical Biology, DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2020.1761351
And as it is now, all life was balanced between safety and danger: The quick on the edge of the dead. That life has always lived on an edge isn’t a new observation, but it is one that throws today’s world into the mix of yesterdays’ worlds. Reflections on deep time tell us that.
What would Little Lucy have seen in the sky? A bright light in the night? A persistent glow in the night sky? The explosive event associated with the supermassive black hole in the middle of the galaxy might have shone for a million years. Surely, she could have seen it had she merely looked upward. But a persistent glow for a thousand millennia engulfing the lifespan of Lucy’s short life might just have been the “ordinary sky,” nothing to draw one’s attention any more than the Milky Way’s persistent light draws our attention nightly. Could she have “wondered?” Was there any wondering 3.5 million years ago? Could Lucy entertain a thought about time, about her finiteness?
By deep time, I’m thinking long before primates, back to the time of herbivorous horned dinosaurs like triceratops that have captured the imagination of many children, and frankly, probably of many adults. Recently, paleontologists dug up two previously unknown ceratopsian dinosaurs in New Mexico.** They date the fossil heads to a period known as the Campanian Stage (83.6 to 72.1 MYA), that is, sometime between 18 and 7 million years before the big extinction event that obliterated the non-avian dinosaurs like the ceratopsians. Let’s take that time frame as a point of departure for more pondering. Ten million years or so BEFORE the extinction event arguably caused by an impacting bolide as big as a mountain: Say it, “Ten million years before the extinction.” I know you know the math, but every million is thousand thousand, that is, a thousand millennia. Go back just ten millennia from today, and humans have little or no agriculture, no cities, no towns, even. Heck, we don’t see the Pyramid of Djoser until about 4,700 years ago, not even five millennia.*** Ten million years minus ten millennia is 9,990 millennia. This is 2020. That’s just 2 millennia plus twenty years since Christ and the Caesar Augustus. Why am I belaboring the point? Because in any “current” time, that is, the time of people who are alive, those who believe they are a center of both place and time seem to have no perspective on where they stand in either.
In another discovery, paleontologists have unearthed a millipede from Scotland. It dates to the Silurian Period, some 425 million years ago. It might not be the oldest millipede; it’s just the oldest ever found, and it dates to a time when the first land plant, Cooksonia, was growing in what is now present-day Scotland. And Scotland’s equatorial location back then? It was about 300 miles north of the Equator. The newly discovered fossil millipede scurried around in warm mud.****
Of course, deep time runs even deeper. Run the timeline of life backward from that millipede, and you get the Cambrian Explosion (of life). And before that? The Ediacaran life-forms of Australia lived between 635-541 million years ago. And before that? The bacteria that possibly go back to 3.5 billion years, each billion, I’ll repeat for emphasis, being a thousand million.
And back to the deep time of cosmology: Earth’s formation about 4.5 billion years ago; the universe’s formation at 13.7 billion years ago. So, when the pressure of current events overwhelms you, take a deep breath and ponder deep time. No, it won’t solve your current problems, but it will give you a larger context for those problems. Two thousand years ago people thought their current events occurred in the center of time. Four thousand years ago, people thought similarly. Six thousand years ago… Admittedly, for everyone, the present is the center of time, but maybe pondering deep time can lessen the significance of those events that though seemingly significant are actually insignificant, like arguments over perspectives.
*Video at: https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=big+explosion+in+the+center+of+the+galaxy+3.5+million+years+ago#id=1&vid=3a6922890fa02ec0f3802896615dad48&action=click Story at: https://phys.org/news/2020-06-intense-milky-black-hole-illuminated.html Accessed June 9, 2020.
**Yes, Gobekli Tepe seems to be much older than that pyramid, arguably having been built 12 millennia ago.
***Fowler, Denver Warwick, and Elizabeth Anne Freedman Fowler. Transitional evolutionary forms and stratigraphic trends in chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaurs: evidence from the Campanian of New Mexico. bioRxiv 854794; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/854794 Accessed June 8, 2020.
****M. E. Brookfield, E. J. Catlos & S. E. Suarez (2020) Myriapod divergence times differ between molecular clock and fossil evidence: U/Pb zircon ages of the earliest fossil millipede-bearing sediments and their significance, Historical Biology, DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2020.1761351
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