Here we zoom in on what happened since early apes appeared 6 hours ago – so about 6pm yesterday – and what will happen by the same time tomorrow morning. See this chart on page 2 of the poster.
5 hours ago – at 7pm, about an hour after evolving, some early apes start walking on two legs (ref).
4 hours ago human-like apes evolve, and 3 hours ago australopithecus appears (ref).
2 hours ago homo habilis evolves and starts using the earliest stone tools (ref).
Just under an hour ago our ancestors start using fire and cooking, and some leave Africa (ref).
Just under a quarter of an hour ago modern humans evolve – 300,000 years ago in real time (ref).
NOW – midnight 17 May
Again that takes us to now, midnight on 17 May. What’s in store for the next hours?
In about three quarters of an hour (1 million years) the Great Pyramid of Giza erodes into unrecognisability, Apollo footprints on the Moon fade and current glass objects in the environment decompose (ref). This is also the planned lifespan of the Memory of Mankind project.
In 2 hours the satellite Pioneer 10 passes near the bright star Aldebaran, 65 light years (over 624,000,000,000,000 km) away (ref).
By mid-morning tomorrow the Mediterranean sea becomes landlocked as Africa continues moving north colliding into Europe (ref).
But what about us? The short-term is too long. Let’s zoom in on a timescale that we can relate to, the last and next minutes, seconds and less.
It’s a mind boggling perspective, both to get a sense of how insignificant our time on the planet is in the greater course of things, but also how quickly our actions and way of life have affected the Earth system. This time when there is life on Earth, as we know it, could have been a paradise with a lot of wonder and awe for the other life forms and sentient beings that we share it with, instead of the current exploitation of animals and nature.
You’re so right, Camilla. As other have commented on other pages, humanity divorced itself from nature. So if we are separate from the ‘natural world’, then logically that make ours the ‘unnatural world’. We’ve branded it differently for centuries of course.