Naturalistic Paganism
Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar maps the entire history of our cosmos onto a single year. You can follow the entire calendar here at Humanistic Paganism. As you imagine, things speed up considerably as the year advances. After the Big Bang on January 1, we have to wait until May for the Milky Way to form and September for our own sun to form. But things get really busy in December:
Dec 5 First multicellular life 1 bya
Dec 14 Simple animals emerge 0.67 bya
Dec 14 Arthropods emerge 0.55 bya
Dec 18 Fish and proto-amphibians emerge 0.5 bya
Dec 20 Land plants emerge 0.45 bya
Dec 21 Insects and seeds emerge 0.4 bya
Dec 22 Amphibians emerge 0.36 bya
Dec 23 Reptiles and dinosaurs emerge 0.3 bya
Dec 26 Mammals emerge 0.2 bya
Dec 27 Birds emerge 0.15 bya
Dec 28 Flowers emerge 0.13 bya
Dec 30 Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event (non-avian dinosaurs die out) 65 mya
Dec 30 Primates emerge 65 mya
Dec 31 Hominids emerge 15 mya
Now December 31st is finally here, and we have an especially fun way to count down to the New Year with Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. 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 |
Below is a video of Carl Sagan explaining the Cosmic Calendar.
Naturalistic Paganism 