Hello everyone! This is my attempt to give you some perspective on your life, and the world you live in! You are so young. Enjoy, and feel free to comment and correct any mistakes you find. If you find a calculation error, let me know! Thanks

Relative Age of the Homo Sapiens Species

I've always stated that human beings are an infant species. Hence, we are prejudice, racist, ignorant. But how young are we really? I've decided to calculate our approximate relative age. I condensed the entire lifespan of Earth into a single human lifespan - roughly eighty years. Then I proportionally condensed the lifespan of the entire homo sapiens species (150,000* years) into a single human lifespan. I then compared the two.

Info:

the age of earth = 4.5 billion years old (4,500,000,000)
age of homo sapiens = 150,000 years old
longevity of average human life = 80 years

If we were to condense the timespan of the entire time homo sapiens have been around to a single human lifespan, represented by the time Earth has been here, how old would we be? Infant, toddler, adolescent, adult, etc...?

I cross multiplied:

Cross multiply the real age of Homo Sapiens with the age of a single human lifespan.

xxxxxx 150,000 years
------ = ---------------
80 years 4.5 billion years

Then take that result and divide it by the real age of our planet.

(150,000 x 80) / 4.5 billion = 0.002666666666667

but we'll use 0.0026

x = 0.0026

For example: 0.01 (1%) of one year (365 days) = 3.65

BUT!

The result received was 0.0026

thus, 0.0026 (< 1%) of one year; 0.0026 x 365 = 0.949

0.949 = a little under one SINGLE day.

Yes, that's right. Our species, Homo Sapiens, is less than a single day old. So if the timespan of the Earth's existence were to be condensed into 80 years - a mature old adult -, then our species would be only a little under 24 hours old; or 9/10 of a day old. We would be ranked as infants.

It is now no wonder why we are ignorant; for we have just been born.

*NOTE: The age for Homo Sapiens is closer to 200,000 years than 150,000. So if we were to use 200,000 instead we would receive an age of 1.3 days. Thanks to Chris Bain for doing the math. As one may notice, it is not much of a difference - a mere 0.4. Thus we still remain in the "infant" rank.

Updated: 10/30/09 7:39 PM Log in to comment! | Share this!