Give a monkey thumbs

The Earth has never had to contend with so much profound, paradigm-shifting change as that wrought by our species in the last two million years, most in the last few hundred. Give a monkey thumbs and he starts walking on his hind legs, develops a brain and comes up with E=Mc2 … and boy, howdy. Suddenly, we have a soul!

If the duration of earth, estimated to be 4.54 billion years, were compressed into one day, life first appeared just shy of 4:30 a.m. (3.5-billion years ago.) The first opposable thumb popped into view at about 11:11 p.m. (two million year ago) and the first couple you’d recognize as mom and dad got here at about 11:54 p.m.

All of recorded human history encompasses less than a minute, all of modern history almost one second.

As an evolutionary experiment, intelligence fares poorly.

We all know a little about a lot of things. We convince ourselves we know all about the important things. In truth, we don’t know much about anything.