Taking The Thousand Year View

I have written about this before:  

https://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-second-commandment-love-everything.html

I came across this picture on CrackBook:  

It struck a note with me… 

An illustration of how little time humans have been on this Earth.  

In this time of fear and chaos…  

To realize how primitive we still are…  

A terribly young species, us Homo sapiens…  

This illustration shows us the age of the Earth superimposed on a clock face of 24 hours.  

First life, as bacteria, appearing at 8:00 hours…  

First plant life, as green algae, appearing at 18:40 hours…  

First fish at 21:20 hours…  

First land plants at 21:36 hours…  

First dinosaurs at 22:47 hours…  

First mammals at 22:56 hours…  

Dinosaur extinction at 23:40:48 hours…  

First Homo species, Homo habilis, at 23:59:12 hours…  

First Homo sapiens at 23:59:56 hours…  

We appear on this Earth at about 4 seconds, on this clock of the age of this Earth of about 4.6 billion years…  

The age of the Universe is estimated at 14 billion years…  

It is estimated that the Earth will be uninhabitable in 1.3 billion years, due to the changes in our Sun, that is if we do not make the Earth uninhabitable before then by our own hands…   

Homo habilis evolved from our more ape-like ancestors about 3 million years ago…  

Homo sapiens evolved from our more primitive ancestors only about 300,000 years ago… 

We were hunter gatherers until about 12.000 years ago…  

The first City-States arose about 4,000 years ago…  

So, if we can avoid making the planet uninhabitable for humans by our own blunderings, we have about a billion years or so to evolve…  

I like to think we, as a species, could, at least socially, evolve…  

Maybe even physically evolve…  

I know, what an eternal optimist!  

For me, taking the 1,000-year view, or even the 10,000- or 100,000-year view, maybe even the 1-million-year view, gives me the perspective of coming so far from our early roots as hunter gatherers…  

Humans slowly exploring the near and the far, the small and the large, uncovering the secrets of the Universe, discovering ways to keep us healthy, building libraries, passing on knowledge to the next generations, for them to build upon…  

Today’s Blog is about seeing vastly forward into the future…  

With hope for a slow evolution toward a society that takes care of all individuals…

Namaste