Welcome to Evolution of Stuff where we explore what it means to be a human being and how that has shaped the modern environment we live in, both the good and the bad parts of it. All the timelines and blogs on our platform will somehow sit within the vast timeline of the universe and existence as we know it. Therefore it is crucial to explore this as a springboard from which all other exploration will stem from.
In this blog we will look at the timeline of the universe to put into perspective when the earth formed, when life evolved and to consider the vastness of time in which we exist.
Age of the Universe
The universe is 13.8 billion years old by current estimates. This might change as the James Webb telescope discovers more fabulous things. The James Webb Telescope was launched on December 25th 2021 and arrived at its destination in space on January 24th 2022. So far, the telescope has sent back ground-breaking data that is reshaping our understanding of various aspects of the universe. In the future, as it has happened many times in the past with other discoveries, our understanding of the age of the universe may change with new discoveries.
Humanity’s Place in the Vastness of Time
It is difficult for us to comprehend the vastness of time and our place in it for reasons explored below. In order to make it easier for us to comprehend this, Carl Sagan, influential astronomer, created something called the ‘Cosmic Calendar’. He expressed this idea in his 1977 book ‘The Dragons of Eden’. The Cosmic Calendar compresses the entire history of the universe into one year in order for us to comprehend the vastness of time and our place in it.
Below are some key events in the cosmic calendar year along with the time of its actual occurrence. We can see from this list that modernity lasts mere milliseconds at the end of the cosmic year.
January 1st – Big Bang (13.8 billion years ago)
May 1st – Milky Way Galaxy forms
September 9th – Solar System forms
September 14th – Earth forms (4.5 billion years ago)
September 25th – Life begins on Earth
December 14th – Fish evolve, the first vertebrates
December 26th – Mammals evolve
December 30th – Dinosaurs go extinct (66 million years ago)
December 31st, 23:52 – Sapiens evolve (250,000 years ago)
December 31st, 23:59:32 – Agriculture begins (12,000 years ago)
December 31st, 23:59:47 – Writing emerges (5,500 years ago)
December 31st, 23:59:59.8 – Industrial Revolution and Moon Landing (200 – 50 years ago)
Why do humans struggle to comprehend the vastness of time?
We’re simply not evolved to. Unlike our other senses (vision, hearing etc.), there is no single organ or pathway that governs the perception of time. Due to evolution, we focus on short intervals like seconds, in order to maximise survival tasks such as movement or reacting to threat. The concern for our ancestors was immediate survival and reproduction rather than long-term planning and comprehension of vast time scales. These factors limit our ability to intuitively comprehend vast periods of time which led to the development of concepts like the Cosmic Calendar, to better comprehend time.
Timeline of the Universe
We will now explore the timeline of the universe from which all of our subsequent timelines are based on. Using the image below, we will go through various key time stamps and events that ultimately lead to today. We will use the following abbreviations for time in this description of the timeline:
billions of years ago – bya
millions of years ago – mya
thousands/hundreds of years ago – (number) ya
13.8 Billion Years Ago – Big Bang
We start at the beginning of the timeline with the first large pink dot at 13.8 billion years ago - the Big Bang. This is where it began for existence, laying the foundations for the laws of the universe and the building blocks of life. As mentioned above, this is likely to change as more discoveries are made in the future.
10 Billion Years Ago – Star Formation
At 10 billion years ago (the gold dot marked ‘10’), the universe was in relative full flow creating second and third generations of stars. The creation of stars occurred with the force of gravity bringing matter together. Matter formed clumps that were filled with immense heat and pressure.
4.5 Billion Years Ago – Earth Formed
The next large pink dot on our timeline marks 4.5 billion years ago and the birth of Earth. The Solar System was already forming at this point. It took a while for the rest of the planets to form and fall into orbit around the sun.
3.7 Billion Years Ago – Emergence of Life
The next large pink dot on the timeline marks the time when primitive life forms emerged in the primordial seas, Earth’s early oceans. They were single-celled microorganisms called prokaryotes, similar to modern day bacteria. These organisms evolved in a world very different to the one we know today. The atmosphere was mainly made up of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide and the temperature of Earth was very high compared to today.
This point in the history of the Earth and life marks a critical turning point. This is when molecules evolved ways to utilise simple chemical reactions to extract energy for itself. In comparison to today, we eat food which the body breaks down using chemical processes, and converts the food into energy so the body can perform vital functions and we can move around. It’s also the equivalent to how an engine of a car converts petrol into energy to drive the car forward.
2.4 Billion Years Ago – The Great Oxidation Event
The next large pink dot on our timeline represents The Great Oxidation Event that occurred between 2.4 – 2 billion years ago. This event was another crucial turning point in the history of earth and life.
This was essentially the first mass extinction that we know of, and not just that, a mass extinction caused by a species known as cyanobacteria, one of the very first organisms to photosynthesise.
It was this event that brought oxygen into our atmosphere and lead the way for a whole new group of organisms to dominate earth.
1.8 – 0.8 Billion Years Ago - The Boring Billion
In between the gold dots marked ‘2’ and ‘1’, we get the ‘Boring Billion’. This was a time of stability for living organisms that lasted a billion years. It’s thought that ‘eukaryotes’ evolved at the beginning of this period which are multi-cellular organisms based on the earlier single-celled prokaryotes mentioned above. This marks a great leap forward as we can see when single celled organisms began to come together to create more complex multi-cellular organisms.
1.2 Billion Years Ago - Sexual Reproduction
During the time of the ‘Boring Billion’ we get the evolution of sexual reproduction in eukaryotes. Up until now organisms would replicate exactly, creating clones of each other. But with the evolution of sexual reproduction, it means organisms share genetic material and reproduce expressing certain genes and not others. This results in greater genetic diversity. This paved the way for the capacity of quicker adaptation to the environment and greater complexity of life.
890 Million Years Ago - First Sponge-like Organism
We come to the next big pink dot on the timeline at 890 million years ago. It was around this time that the first sponge-like organism evolved.
538 Million Years Ago - Cambrian Explosion
The next pink dot marks the Cambrian Explosion. This was a time of great diversity, when all of the previous evolutionary events culminated into abundance of life. 538 million years to today includes the stories and the names we are familiar with as the tree of life evolved – The Age of Fish; vertebrates and invertebrates; The Age of the Dinosaurs; mass extinctions; ice ages; mammals; hominine evolution; Homo sapiens; civilisation.
Today
The next and final pink dot marks ‘today’.
There are now over 8 billion Homo sapiens on Earth, living alongside somewhere between 10 and 100 million other species. We live with huge inequality and suffering; we live in a world of abstraction and distraction; we are at the highest level of consumer debt ever recorded; we have driven the planet towards global warming; we are the next potential recorded extinction event for future observers.
Further Exploration
This has been a fascinating look at the history of time, covering many billions of years and different events that have led up to our present moment. We will continue the conversation in future blogs, looking at the history of the Earth, history of life and the history of our civilisation. With this, we can better understand the events of the past in accordance with the time in which they occurred. We can also understand what it means to be a human being, how, when human traits evolved, and how they shaped our modern day environment.
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