Into the depths of time

Geologic time can be hard to get a grip on, with spans so vast human brains boggle. To make things easier, or at least more structured, geologists created the geologic time scale – a system of chronological dating that classifies geological strata in time. We have partly recreated the system here, showing time since the formation of the Earth to the present day, split into ‘eons’ (and for more recent time, further split into ‘eras’, ‘periods’ and finally ‘epochs’). Only by viewing time in this way can we really grasp just how short a time humans have walked the Earth. Perhaps most shocking of all is how large an impact we have had in that time.