We Just Got Here

Agriculture's Short Chapter

The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge, 1829. Thomas Cole.

We act like we’ve been here forever

If Earth’s existence were a 1-mile walk (5,280 feet), humans arrived in the final 351 feet.

The primate’s short time on Earth.

You Missed So Much on the Way Here

• Imagine driving between New York and Los Angeles with your friends. It’s a 2,800-mile drive. You decide to fly most of the way, hopping in the car somewhere in the Mojave Desert for the last 180 miles of the journey. What about the drama, excitement, stories, and adventure you missed by not being in the car for the first part of the journey? That 180 miles is like humans on Earth.

But We Showed Up Just Before the Credits Rolled

• If you watched the movie, E.T., for the last five minutes, you’d see E.T. getting picked up by his spaceship. No backstory. No details. Just an odd-looking creature with translucent skin over his heart, surrounded by sweatsuit-wearing teenagers. Those final five minutes mirror humanity’s time on Earth.

The scale of humanity’s insignificance cannot be overstated.

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Back to the 1-Mile Walk

• On that same 1-mile walk, farming began within the last speck of existence: the last 0.0001056 feet of the journey (0.000002% of Earth’s existence).

• For the 315,000 years humans have been around, they’ve been farming for 3.5% of the time.

  

  The majority of the events we talk about occurred recently.

Yet We Changed Everything

• Just 500 years after the discovery of agriculture, continuous human settlement began. We settled, stayed, and grew. After planting our first seed, it took us 1,500 years to milk cows and harvest grains.

• As of 2015, lawns are America’s largest crop.

Now We are Rewriting the Script

• Three thousand years later (5,000 years ago), the global population reached 50 million.

• We’re late to Earth’s story, but act like the story is about us. We might just be walk-ons.

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