A MESS OF BLUES

A semi-serious look at time, comparing the human experience since the first hominid crawled between the jungle trees and the age of our planet, and wondering whether there are any gaps.

A MESS OF BLUES

Here's a little thought. Or maybe it's a big one.

The earth is 4,540,000,000 years old. Scientists have calculated it, and they've got big brains in bulging foreheads so they're most likely correct.

That's a little more than four and a half billion years, and that little more bit is 40 million years. When the dinosaurs prowled around one of them might, had he developed sufficient intelligence and insight, have known that the Earth was four and almost a half billion years old even then. Between the dinosaurs becoming extinct in a monumental event sixty-five million years ago and today seems quite a long time until you look at it against the age of the Earth, and that planet we're all so fond of that we're slowly ruining it is hardly truly ancient.

The Universe itself has been calculated by men much cleverer than me (the aforementioned bulging forehead types) to be around 14.6 billion years, or had already been in existence for over ten billion years before the Earth was formed as a boiling mass of very hot material. Our sun, the one that fights to peep at us through masses of rain clouds every summer, was probably created from the remnants of other stars that grew old and exploded in one or more glorious supernovas long before God was a twinkle in Santa's eyes. There wasn't, of course, anyone around to see this, but the huge quantity of heavy metals (which get formed in the later stages of the life of a star) in the solar system tends to suggest this.

But all this is way off what I intended to write, so let's get back to my theme.

We know a great deal about the past (the aforementioned dinosaurs, for instance) because there are distressed remains of their bones and quantities of fossilised poo for archaeologists to find and leer at. There are, indeed, remains of lots of different creatures that have occupied this planet in the dim past, the oldest they've found being 3.4 billion years old. That's quite an age, especially seeing as these fossils belong to bacteria smaller than a pin head.

I sometimes get to wondering if bigger fossils have been missed. After all, the earliest fossil of someone who may have been a distant ancestor of ours is of a creature that walked and never talked properly 4.4 million years ago.

That seems a long time to have been hidden beneath the sands of Earth, but compared with the three and a bit billion years of a humble bacteria it's no time at all. Fossils of folks or pre-folks that are millions of years old are hard to come by. The Earth has changed, for starters. Mountains have been thrust up, ice-ages have come and gone, the continents have moved. So what I sometimes get to wondering (silly me) is whether a whole civilisation of intelligent beings existed in the dark billions of years between the bacteria and the very pre-human hominid

Numbers are strange things. 3.4 billion and 4.4 million, written like that, are both huge numbers and consequently not so different from each other. But write them like this: 3,400,000,000 and 4,400,000 and you can see one is a lot bigger than the other because of all the extra noughts, and very different from it. Take the smaller from the larger and you don't make much of a dent in it. So there were plenty of years between the earliest known hominid and that bacteria, and not much happening in them if you take the dinosaurs out of the equation " and to do that you've got to travel back to before the first one of those little tykes was born " 230,000,000 years, to be roughly exact. That's a long time, too, but a mere snippet of the age of the planet and even a tiny part of the time since Mr Ancient Bacteria noted above sniffed oxygen-free air of a fairly new planet.

So we come to a little fancy of mine.

What if there evolved a whole civilisation complete with bright sparks, dimwits and Essex girls in the three-billion long period I'm talking about. It's highly probable that if such a thing occurred there would no longer be much of a risk anyone finding a trace of them. But it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Three billion years is a fairly long time. Miss your lunch by that long and you'll grow hungry! There just might have been a little niche in time in which a civilisation evolved, grew, had wars, loved and finally lost. It is possible. It could have happened.

Then there are all the wondrous possibilities. The Earth may have been visited by ancient tribes from worlds that circle distant suns, may have been host to emissaries from far off civilisations " but back then, back when our brightest and best weren't human at all but, let's say, scarabs with a brain. Or they might have been intelligent insects, thoughtful weasels, anything, even, possibly, vaguely human. But not us. We're now and they were then.

You see what time does? It plays annoying tricks and when you get to thinking that human history is all there's ever been you just might, it is possible, have got it all wrong!

Look in the scientific press for inexplicable discoveries from the dawn of time and congratulate yourself, if they find some, that you thought of it second. Me: I thought of it first!!!

Reviews

[Will Neill]

I have always believed that each species has their day so to speak and for us it is now. Maybe there was other people or beings here before we evolved but I think we would find some evidence of that when you consider we discovered dinosaurs existed. Maybe we will some day and maybe all those UFO sightings are just them coming back to watch us get it so wrong. I enjoyed this thought provoking read Peter and I will try to read more of your stories. Its nice to see more story writers on W.C myself and Sam are two of few.
Will

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks, Will. I wonder if time )a great deal of time) might have obliterated a two or three-billion year-old civilisation on a raw and, to us, uninhabitable Earth. Probably not, but I like thinking such things

[Samuel Dickens]

Without the latest Pink Floyd album spinning on the turntable or even a little smoldering herb, (Just coffee) I enjoyed this take on creation. Excellent writing, my friend.

[Peter Rogerson]

I find the gaps in pre-pre-history interesting enough to think about from time to time.