“_” : this is our unit of time, and it’s 1000 years long.
_ is 10 long human lifespans, 40 generations, the time separating us from the first millennium and the Middle Ages in European history, when Canute of Denmark ruled Britain, before Marco Polo traveled the Silk Road. It’s a long time by any human account: twice the duration of the Roman Empire.
_____ is 5'000 years. It’s the age of the oldest known living tree, Methuselah, in the Californian White Mountains.
____________ is 12'000 years. It’s the time span separating us from the last ice age. This time is the time during which humans slowly selected plants, developed agriculture, cities, writing: anything we would call civilization. It is the time when humans thrived, cultures multiplied, our population grew. This clement and stable climate interval, which sheltered us and the plants we depend upon to live so well, is known as the Holocene. Gaze upon that interval fondly, for it is already in our past.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ is 103'000 years: the duration of the last Ice Age. Ice Ages, compared with the Holocene, were pretty brutal times for human beings, and the plants and animals we depend upon. Human population was only 1–10 million at the end of the last ice age — and the one before that nearly wiped us out entirely.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ is 250'000 years, the rough age of Homo Sapiens, our species, us. This is the late stage of the Quaternary period: a time when our planet swung between ice ages and more clement interglacial periods (of which the Holocene was the latest one).
Now, time starts going much further back.
But stay with me (keep scrolling!): this is important. This is not just a distant past that our species never knew: it’s also a future we and our children will experience. Because time is moving slowly far back from us, but we are changing our climate with a rapidity never previously experienced on Earth. Ready? 3 million years to travel through now. Off — we — go!
https://medium.com/@JKSteinberger/cogs-in-the-climate-machine-167cf16750dd