Notes From Deep Time: A Journey Through Our Past And Future Worlds
Helen Gordon
Ina world where we are all essentially housebound for what feels like an interminable age, it’s a real treat to travel through space and time. To be reminded of the world’s immensity, of its infinite capacity for change and possibility puts humanity’s current situation into context as the tiniest pinprick of a moment – which will pass.
This is a beautiful and deftly written book, essentially on geology. Not the sexiest subject; even though I’m one of those people who stop to admire rock strata on holiday, I know rocks aren’t for everyone. However, with considerable skill, sound research and lovely sprinklings of literary and human insight, Helen Gordon has elevated what might be a dry subject for some to the appropriate level of awe-inspiring reverence that deep time deserves.
What exactly is deep time? We aren’t talking about 10,000 years, or even 100,000 years – these are mere nanoseconds on a geological timescale. We are talking about millions and billions of years. It might sound beyond the reach of the human imagination, but the echoes of deep time are never far away. In fact, you can see back two million years in the sandy gravel of a building site on Cambridge Heath Road in East London, 55 million in the London clay beneath that, up to 100 million in the chalk of the North Downs.
Gordon takes us scrambling down cliffs to reach Siccar Point, a headland in Berwickshire that gave 18th Century geologist James Hutton evidence to argue for ‘deep time’ – that the Earth was much older than then thought.
We also join a ‘fault-finder’ on a tour of Hollywood looking for everyday evidence of the San Andreas fault; and we walk with Gordon through sunny Naples, examining the stonework of beautiful, historic buildings.
As well as providing for buildings, and being the literal bedrock of our existence, geology has many other contributions to human life. For example, the first comprehensive geological map of Britain by William Smith in 1815 helped spur the Industrial Revolution by revealing seams of coal. On a more individual level, it can even have forensic uses. In 2002, the type of microfossils found i n a fragment of chalk helped to convict Soham murderer Ian Huntley – geologists were able to link the chalk found under Huntley’s wheel arch to a farm track where he said he had never been. Fascinating stuff, but it’s Gordon’s background as a literary writer that takes Notes From Deep Time to the next level. She has imbued geological tales with a beauty and humanity.
In the far reaches of north-west Scotland, ancient boulders (a mind-boggling three billion years old) break ‘through the grass and bracken like the backs of grey whales in a green sea’. As a pregnant Gordon sits on these rocks, thoughts of the beating heart of her unborn child segue to one of the earliest hearts found in a 520 million-year-old arthropod from the same geological time as the quartzite hilltops that surround her. Life resonates through the ages.