History is an amazing subject. Well, at least to those interested in learning about the past! We live on an incredibly ancient planet that has gone through numerous eons & eras. Human history is just a speck on the vast geological timescale, to say nothing of recorded human history. Dwell into the Earth’s prehistory and the history of humanity’s rise, & you will be amazed at the things you get to know. And, if you are looking for a career as a historian, archaeologist, or anthropologist, then history is a core subject to master.
This article comes to you from a professional history homework helper of Top homework and is for every history enthusiast student. It comes with some astounding historical & pre-historical facts as well as some handy tips on acing your history assignments.
Dive in for a good read.
Amazing Facts about Ancient Earth
- The geological time scale of Earth is unfathomably huge. The planet coalesced from a hot rotating proto-planetary disc of gases and dust around the Sun. Thanks to its distance from the Sun, a magnetic field, and several other factors, Earth soon became a planet that could support it.
- The Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic – these are the four primary eons of the Earth. These eons are subdivided into eras, periods, epochs, and ages.
- The pre-Cambrian era spread across the Hadean, Proterozoic, & Proterozoic eons. This is why the pre-Cambrian era is sometimes referred to as a supereon.
- The eon we humans live in is the Phanerozoic, which is 541 million years old and comprises just 12 % of the Earth’s history. Compared to that, the first Homo Sapiens, or modern humans, appeared a mere 200000 or 300000 years ago!
So, if we compress the entire geological time scale into just 24 hours, humans appear right before day and have been around for just 1 minute & 43 seconds!
- Dinosaurs had been on Earth for 165 million years, while the earliest ancestors of modern humans (Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis) appeared just about 2.8 to 2.3 million years ago.
- Earth has witnessed some drastic extinction events. The most well-known would be the one at the end of the Cretaceous-Paleogene period that wiped out the dinosaurs. However, at least five major extinction events have occurred throughout Earth’s history.
The Permian Extinction was one of the deadliest mass extinction events ever. Caused by global warming & oceanic changes due to a large number of volcanic eruptions in Siberia, the extinction event occurred approximately 252 million years ago. It wiped out 9 in 10 of all marine species and 7 in 10 of all land species.
- Around 530 million years ago, the first animals, similar to millipedes & centipedes, began to venture out of water. And around 30 million years later, the first pre-historic fish-like creature crawled out to land and life on Earth went down another major path of diversification.
- 25 million years after the Permian extinction event, the first ancestor of mammals, Brasilodon, a shrew-like animal, was estimated to have appeared right around the time of the oldest dinosaur of the Triassic period.
Every mammal today, including us humans, has its ancestral roots originating from that shrew-like mammal and its successor, such as the Purgatorius, which survived the Cretaceous extinction event by diversifying its diet.
Modern humans first evolved from Homo heidelbergensis around 300,000 years ago. Homo sapiens have since then changed the very face of this planet faster than any natural process, harnessing its resources for survival and convenience.
We wrap things up with interesting facts about humanity & human activities through millennia.
The Astonishing History of Human Beings
The history of humanity and this planet is filled with numerous such amazing incidences & events. Many have been forgotten, while many have changed the course of life & humanity. If you are interested in learning more about this amazing & astonishing history, then history is the subject to choose from. Study diligently to build your knowledge, and if you need a history homework helper to help you out, connect with Tophomeworkhelper.com, a leading history homework helper service in the USA.
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