Earth is 4.543 billion years old. That’s 4.5 billion. A long, long time.
And when did we show up? We humans. We’ve only been here a sliver of the time. The modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old. Then we moved on to industrialization, which started in earnest only in the 1800s.
So. We’ve grown in leaps and bounds in a short time. There are 7.5 billion people on the face of good, old planet earth. The effects of humans on Earth cannot be understated.
Environmentally, I believe, we have done ourselves in. There’s no going back, and the scientists behind closed doors, the ones you see in the movies like Armageddon? They are in a frenzied panic. They hold documents in their hand, saying those classic movie lines, “I’ve got to get this to the President immediately.”
Yeah, but. It isn’t going to happen. Everybody knows the warning, and the world keeps chug-a-lugging on. I’m just glad I don’t have children of my own. And while I have two grandkids, which I love to pieces, there’s nothing I can do for them where this is concerned.
The environment should be the only thing we should be talking about—all of us, all day long. The economies won’t matter. COVID won’t matter. Wars won’t matter. Soon, the only thing that matters will be the weather.
In the days of old, when people were still civil and had manners, there were certain etiquette rules about public conversation. You didn’t talk about religion, politics, or money. Basically, to be polite, you talked about the weather. In a decade or so, we won’t have a choice.
But. This wasn’t supposed to be about the environment. Although I’d surely start every piece this way if I didn’t think it would drive off readers.
No, today I wanted to talk about our beginning as humans and how since that time, every day, humans have been making history. It is what we do. We act in each moment, and then the moment becomes history.
Albeit, our every move won’t get recorded in the history books. Thank the History Gods for that!
But we make notes on the big stuff, by the big players. The attempted coup of the United States government and the storming of the Capitol. The pandemics. The World Wars. The Holocausts and Genocides. Slavery.
Then, there are all sorts of other items on many different levels of importance, historically speaking. Like man reaching the moon, or Madam Curie and her radium, the building of the pyramids, the Great Fire of London.
But amidst all the thousands and thousands and thousands of events, many are barely remembered at all. And the further away in time we go, the further away those memories get. Even though it has all been written down somewhere.
Take today’s date. It was on November 30, 1876, that Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the gold Mask of Agamemnon at Mycenae, which is now modern Greece. The funeral mask has been called “the Mona Lisa of prehistory.”
The story is interesting in that he believed he had found the body of King Agamemnon, leader of the Achaeans in Homer’s epic of the Trojan War, the Iliad. But, modern research and assessment suggest the mask dates to about 1600 BC. That would pre-date the period of the legendary Trojan War by about 400 years.
Anyway, the mask is creepy. And, in the history of finding the thing, there is controversy. Fake or real?
Proponents of the fraud argument center their case on Schliemann’s reputation for salting digs with artifacts from other places. But, the skeptics are few. Nonetheless, it is an interesting part of our history that most people would not notice.
As I mentioned, these historical notables range in size and scope. The next one comes in the form of a birthday on today’s date, from 1924. A man named Allan Sherman was born in Chicago, Illinois (d. 1973). He grew up to be a songwriter. He coined the song, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, Here I am at Camp Grenada.
The lyrics continue:
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining.
And there it is. Like I said. Everyone will be talking about the weather.
Eventually.
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“By polluting the oceans, not mitigating CO2 emissions and destroying our biodiversity, we are killing our planet. Let us face it, there is no planet B.”
— Emmanuel Macron, President of France
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“We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.”
— Barack Obama, Former US President
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“Believe in the power of your own voice. The more noise you make, the more accountability you demand from your leaders, the more our world will change for the better.”
— Al Gore, Former US Vice President
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Humans. A tiny bit of the time. How’s the weather?
