Posted by Meri-Tuuli on December 13, 2006, at 12:02:16
In reply to Re: I need to stop reading Wikipedia..., posted by TexasChic on December 13, 2006, at 7:51:00
If you think 1000 years ago is a long time.....well I'm a geologist, 1000 years is *nothing*. Seriously. Its like a nanosecond of the Earth's overall timescale. Even the last 10,000 years (the Holocene) is a nanosecond. I forget precisely what the analogy is, but its like if you have a strip of paper 3m/10feet long, and this represents how long the earth has been in existance, then guess what proportion of that piece of paper represents how long humans have existed on this planet??
Its a mere pencil line. Thats nothing. At all. So you see, 1000 years isn't very long in the grand scheme of things..... my boyfriend works with rocks which are 450 million years old, thats 450,000,000 years ago.
The Earth is supposed to be around 4,600,000,000 years old approximately.
Thats scary.
Anyway ahhh, I just realised something. Most of your history taught in schools is like American history right? Well, I've had the Romans and the Vikings etc etc drilled into me since I ever started school. The Romans were certainly in existance 2000 years ago (they killed JC after all) and we have lots of roman stuff where I grew up, in fact the main road I lived off when I was a child was a roman road. Meaning the Romans started it and its still used today as a road. So I suppose 'history' doesn't seem very scary.
Strange old world huh?
Thats my lecture other with for today, class!
poster:Meri-Tuuli
thread:712807
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20061208/msgs/713259.html