GEOLOGICAL CLOCK OF THE WORLD’S LIFE
This page is an effort, based on Professor Lester Ward’s calculations in “Pure Sociology,” to show the comparative length of each geological period, and the thin white line between Tertiary and Archæan indicates the period of human history. Thin as this line is—and we could not show it thinner—it is too thick, and out of proportion to the rest of the clock. If we assume that from the beginning of the world—from its first forming into a solid sphere—to the present, time may be represented by a day of twenty-four hours, the time occupied by human history does not exceed twelve seconds. This is reckoning human history as ten thousand years. There is, of course, no possibility of obtaining more than relative figures for such a scheme as this, which should be regarded in connection with theprevious pageand the chart of the Beginnings of Life,facing page 96
The thin white line between the Tertiary and the Archæan periods represents the duration of human history
The thin white line between the Tertiary and the Archæan periods represents the duration of human history
TABLE SHOWING PROPORTIONS OF YEARS AND HOURS
Geological Periods
Years
Hours
Archæan
18,000,000
6
Laurentian
18,000,000
6
Cambrian
6,000,000
2
Silurian
6,000,000
2
Devonian
6,000,000
2
Carboniferous
6,000,000
2
Triassic
3,000,000
1
Jurassic
3,000,000
1
Cretaceous
3,000,000
1
Tertiary and Quaternary
3,000,000
1
The Quaternary Periodis that in which we live
72,000,000
=
24
TERTIARY AND QUATERNARY PERIODS
At a rough guess, three million years may beallowed for the Tertiary and Quaternary periods
Geological Periods
Years
Hrs.
Min.
Sec.
Tertiary
2,600,000
—
52
—
Pleistocene
300,000
—
6
—
Human
100,000
—
2
—
Total
3,000,000
1
—
—
Human History
10,000
=
=
12