When
I was learning about geology – many decades ago – we were shown a diagram
comparing Earth’s natural history with a 24-hour clock. That was presented to
give us an idea of the relative lengths of the various geological eons, era and
periods, as well as a perspective of the age of the Earth in relation to how
long people have been around.
Retrieved
from Eras
of the Geologic Time Scale
Few people drive through a mountain range, for example, will have a proper
perspective of the time it took to first have the primary material be deposited
as sediment, turn the accumulation into rock and later uplift the whole succession
into what we see now in the towering cliffs. In the Rocky
Mountains of western North America, the rocks we now see were formed as far
back as the Middle Proterozoic Era (about 1,500,000,000 years ago). The uplift
and deformation of the strata began in the middle of the Mesozoic Era (about
175,000,000 years ago) and continue today.
Retrieved
from Wikitravel: Rocky
Mountains (Canada)
Different
forms of the clock-comparison diagram have been produced over the years but the
stories are still the same: the Earth took a long time to reach its present
form; hominids, in various forms, have existed only for about 5,000,000 years.
The human segment of that period is only about 2,000,000 years which takes up
the last minute and a quarter when history is viewed in relation to the clock.
Within that most recent, very small interval, the human species has developed
from forest-dwelling hominids to modern man.
Retrieved
from The
History of Life: Represented on a Clock
Retrieved
from What is a
timeline of human evolution?
One
might argue that humans have always been organized around families but there
was no clear evidence of that prior to the last 10,000 years (the Holocene
Epoch) unless you count the cave paintings by hominids in Europe about 40,000
years ago. The beginning of the Holocene interglacial period is when people
began to expand their geographic range, gather in small communities, eventually
build cities, live in family units and transform the environment around them. Communication in the
form of writing – such as cuneiform script – was only invented a few thousand
years ago. Civilization, indeed all of mankind’s entire recorded history,
occurred during the Holocene.
Retrieved
and modified from Skeptical
Science: We’ve been through climate changes before
The
oldest document I have come across is called the Elphantine
papyri, from 449 BC (2,500 years ago) which appears to be a formal
recognition of the marriage between a Jewish temple officer. Ananiah, and
Tamut, an Egyptian slave. Most of us won’t find records that old that relate to
our own families.
When genealogists research their roots, they are only looking
at a very recent fragment of time in which humans have inhabited the planet. They
are not really researching family history, or the history of families, but only
studying the events of families preserved in the written record. Most of what
we can view in terms of records go back only to about the early 15th
century – about 600 years ago. It is true that certain types of records were
kept in previous eras but few made mention specifically of people and their
families. As a result, they are not of much value in constructing true and
continuous family histories.
The
following shows how all these time periods relate to the age of the Earth
(according to the charts shown here):
Period Time
(Years) Proportion Clock Interval
Age of Earth 4,550,000,000 100% 24
hours
Hominid History 5,000,000 0.11% 7
minutes, 22 seconds
Modern Humans 2,000,000 0.0004% 1
minute, 17 seconds
Civilization 10,000 0.0002% 0.154 of a second
Limit of Genealogy Research 600 0.00001% 0.00924
of a second
My Personal Years of Study 50 0.000001% 0.00077 of a second
My experience in geology and genealogy take up an exceedingly small slice of
time relative to Earth’s history!
Just
to keep it all in perspective!
Wayne
Shepheard is a retired geologist and active genealogist. He volunteers with the
Online Parish
Clerk
program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of
articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society
journals. Wayne has also served as an editor of two such publications. He
provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated
