"Suppose Earth's history were charted on a single year's calendar, with midnight on January representing the origin of the Earth and midnight December 31 the present. Then each day of the Earth's "year" would represent the 12 million years of actual history. On that scale, the first form of life, a simple bacterium, would arise sometime in February. More complex life-forms, however, come much later; the first fishes appear around November 20. The dinosaurs arrive around December 10 and disappear around Christmas Day. The first of our ancestors recognizable as human would not show up until the afternoon of December 31. Homo sapiens - our species - would emerge around 11:45 p.m. All that has happened in recorded history would occur in the final minute of the year"
- New World New Mind, R. Ornstein & P. Ehrlich
We see, then, where we are in the scale of things.
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