3 ms·

To have a feel of long period of time, I always use one metric: my grand father. He's lived 93 years, so almost 100. 2000 years ago was then 20 grandad away. No

• Numberwang 7y ago
  25 years is probably a better approximation than 100 years. So 8000 gr. That's a lot of people.
• Swenrekcah 7y ago
  You can also think in terms of generations. If everyone has a kid at 20 then you can draw 100 stick figures in a line to go 2000 years back. Not so long when you look at it.
  • eloff 7y ago
    So this person 200k years ago was roughly 10000 generations ago. That's long in human terms and very short in the history of the earth.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • lm28469 7y ago
      The entire history of mammals is already quite small when you compare it to the history of earth. Protohumans/humans history is a drop in the ocean. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth#/media/File%3AGeologic_Clock_with_events_and_periods.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth#/media/File...
• riffraff 7y ago
  If I recall correctly this is one measure used in one of "the science of discworld" books.
  • stan_rogers 7y ago
    ...except that a "grandfather" was taken to be 50 years, since what matters is not the length of an individual life, but the time between generations (and the transmission of extelligence). James Burke used it as well in his Connections 2, noting that when his grandfather would tell him about his grandfather telling him about how things were when he was a lad, we were already back to the heart of the industrial revolution.
• mariushn 7y ago
  Life expectancy grew in time, and also the age when having kids. The grandfather from 2000 years ago probably had kids around 20 and lived to 60.
  • timcederman 7y ago
    Average life expectancy grew, but mostly as a function of increased survival of childhood.