Our Humble Place In Time

I mentioned this post from PZ Meyers some time ago, but it's such an important bit of writing to me on our place in time on this Earth, I thought it was worth linking again. The small chart of 200 "bibles" is just devastatingly humbling.

There are other metaphors like this, including the earth-history-as-one-year one, but PZ is a marvelous writer.

Here's another icon, a few bits of bone from another australopithecine, Lucy. Like the relics in those cardboard boxes from the bone room, we know little about Lucy the thinking, acting, living being. She was a small female, less than four feet tall, living in old Africa. We can imagine that she had family, she lived in a group or tribe, she foraged, she had hungry days and full days, she courted or was courted, she had moments of happiness and moments of grief. All of the things she thought most important are gone and lost to knowledge, and all we have now are these few bones. When I hold the femur of a man dead 50 years, I can feel the sorrow of a life lost to me; how much more reverence should we feel for these bones of a person from a world gone 3.2 million years?

Also, don't miss his beat-down of the BBC's lazy coverage of some bullshit science on how woman will evolve as hairless with "pert" breasts.