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> It took six million years for the forests to return to the level of diversity they had before the meteorite, and the species that slowly grew back were comple
by jmchuster 6y ago
> It took six million years for the forests to return to the level of diversity they had before the meteorite, and the species that slowly grew back were completely different than what came before.
It's just very difficult to think in terms of these timescales, when all of human history is only a few thousand years.
- cheschire 6y agoJust imagine you've only got to trace your lineage through a few hundred ancestors to reach the beginning of recorded history!
- ip26 6y agoSetting aside ancient history like Egypt, any sense of modern recording started something like 400 BC. At 20 years between generations, that's only ~120 generations. With this accounting, the United States was founded ~12 generations ago.
- cheschire 6y agoAnd that was my initial estimate as well until I doubted my own knowledge of how long history has been recorded. Apparently the definition for some stretches all the way back to 4000 BC! So to account for this wide range of opinions I anticipated I would encounter on HN, I chose to be vague.
- vbezhenar 6y agoI'd argue that Human history starts at lest 3.3 millions years ago, when first stone tools were found.
- throwaway894345 6y ago“History” is often used to mean “written history” as in the opposite of “pre-history”. That seems to be the sense in which the parent is using the term.
- tremon 6y agoIn general "human history" starts with the first written word, around 10,000 BC. Everything before that is considered prehistory. Of course, humans didn't simply come into existence 12,000 years ago, but we have very little conception of life before The Word (tm).
- dividedbyzero 6y agoUnless I'm unaware of some new discoveries, i believe the first written word (that is clearly identifiable as a written word) would be in cuneiform, around 3500 BC, in ancient Sumer.
- tremon 6y agoYou are correct. I was confusing human history with recorded history. Wikipedia tells me that human history starts with the agricultural revolution, around 10,000 BC. Recorded history starts, as you say, in the 4th millennium BC.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoI'm pretty sure they were vandalizing caves long before they were writing cuneiform. Though it's debatable whether those illustrations counts that as "history" since it's more like a powerpoint than a memo.
- scollet 6y agoI can't take another of Grug's hour-long rant about live stocks being down and how we need to divest from transportation.
- aasasd 6y agoI recommend nursing half a glass of wine to get just a wee bit lightheaded, putting on some ethereal music like Dead Can Dance, and reading on Wikipedia through the history of continent movements and formation and breakup of supercontinents. After a while such reading evokes rather curious feelings, and six million years won't seem so long when continents are swimming this and that way. (‘A Passage In Time’ is a great compilation from DCD. E.g.: https://youtu.be/ajfVT_uk6j4 https://youtu.be/ajfVT_uk6j4)
- ip26 6y agoPrior to 2013, it was commonly cited as having happened about 65 million years ago, but Renne and colleagues (2013) gave an updated value of 66 million years. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis My first thought reading this is, here they are casually adjusting the date by 1,000,000 years, and meanwhile homo sapiens is 200,000-300,000 years old. Helps illustrates the timescales a little.