Cosmic Calendar: Apes to the present moment

It’s finally here.  An especially fun way to count down to the New Year is with Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar (illustrated as a comic strip here), which maps the entire history of our cosmos onto a single year.

Jon Cleland Host shares the experience with his children, calling out momentous events by the tick of a watch, as history whizzes by in the last few seconds before midnight.

Human evolution

Date / time mya Event
31 Dec, 06:05 15 Apes
31 Dec, 14:24 15 hominids
31 Dec, 22:24 2.5 primitive humans and stone tools
31 Dec, 23:44 0.4 Domestication of fire
31 Dec, 23:52 0.2 Anatomically modern humans
31 Dec, 23:55 0.11 Beginning of most recent glacial period
31 Dec, 23:58 0.035 sculpture and painting
31 Dec, 23:59:32 0.012 Agriculture

History begins

Date / time kya Event
31 Dec, 23:59:47 5.5 First writing (marks end of prehistory and beginning of history), beginning of the Bronze Age
31 Dec, 23:59:48 5.0 First dynasty of Egypt, Early Dynastic period in Sumer, Astronomy
31 Dec, 23:59:49 4.5 Alphabet, Akkadian Empire, Wheel
31 Dec, 23:59:51 4.0 Code of Hammurabi, Middle Kingdom of Egypt
31 Dec, 23:59:52 3.5 Mycenaean Greece; Olmec civilization; Iron Age in Near East, India, and Europe; founding of Carthage
31 Dec, 23:59:53 3.0 Kingdom of Israel, ancient Olympic games
31 Dec, 23:59:54 2.5 Buddha, Confucius, Qin Dynasty, Classical Greece, Ashokan Empire, Vedas completed, Euclidean geometry, Archimedean physics, Roman Republic
31 Dec, 23:59:55 2.0 Ptolemaic astronomy, Roman Empire, Christ, invention of numeral 0
31 Dec, 23:59:56 1.5 Muhammad, Maya civilization, Song Dynasty, rise of Byzantine Empire
31 Dec, 23:59:58 1.0 Mongol Empire, Crusades, Christopher Columbus voyages to the Americas, Renaissance in Europe

The current second

Date / time kya Event
31 Dec, 23:59:59 0.5 modern science and technology, American Revolution, French revolution, World War I, World War II, Apollo Moon landing

2 Comments on “Cosmic Calendar: Apes to the present moment”

  1. Pingback: What to look forward to in December at HP | Humanistic Paganism

  2. Pingback: Cosmic Calendar Special | Humanistic Paganism

Comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Buy Godless Paganism (paperback)
Buy Godless Paganism (ebook)
Follow Naturalistic Paganism on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 5,209 other subscribers
Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by individual authors do not necessarily reflect those of the staff. Not all contributors necessarily identify as Naturalistic or Humanistic Pagans or share the views expressed elsewhere on this site.

Harrassment and Discrimination Policy
This site is for constructive expression and debate. Comments of a harassing or insulting nature will be deleted. Racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise discriminatory comments will be deleted.
Pagan Coming Out Day – May 2nd
%d bloggers like this: