The Story Of Earth

        History

           OF

        EARTH

                                                                                                                                            BY

                                                                                                                               SATYA PRAKASH

The Earth as far as we know it’s the only home to life in the Universe. Why what is it that makes our planet so special, the answer are hidden deep in the Earth’s past. To find them, we must travel back in time to see the first humans walk the earth, to ride continents on a collision course, face killer dinosaurs dive into oceans full of bizarre life form, feel the bitter chill of global ice ages and experience the fury of cosmic missile attacks. We must travel back in time, until we reach the birth of the earth itself. Then we can piece together our planets incredible story and discover why all of this all of us are here. 

Our journey starts almost 5 billion years ago but this can’t be right. There’s no sign of our beautiful blue planet just a new born star Our Sun surrounded by all this dust. We’ve arrived too early before the Earth has even formed. Speed up time and we can see gravity pull the dust into tiny rock. It hardly seems possible but something as complex as a planet is made from nothing more than dust and rocks. Over millions of year’s gravity pulls these rocks together to form the Earth. One of the at least a hundred planets circling the Sun. But 4.54 billion years ago our planet looks more like hell than home. Up closer the temperature is over 1200 degree Celsius. There’s no air, just carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water vapor. It’s so hot, so toxic that if we got any closer we’d be incinerated and suffocated in seconds. The new born planet is a boiling ball of liquid rock there are virtually no solid surfaces just an endless ocean of lava. A young planet called THEIA is heading straight for us. It’s the size of Mars and it’s traveling at nearly 15 kilometers a second 20 times faster than a bullet. The intrudes gravity is distorting the Earth’s surface. The blast wave races out around the planet. It’s as though both young planets turn to liquid. Trillions of tons of debris blast out into Space but over the course of just a thousand years gravity work its magic and turns the rubble into a ring of red-hot dust and rock that circles the Earth. And now from this ring of all forms over 3000 kilometers wide.

We’re watching the birth of our Moon. It’s much closer than the Moon we recognize, just 22000 kilometers away instead about four hundred thousand kilometers. The Sun rises over a cooling earth and sets just three hours after advisors. The impact has set the Earth spinning so fast that an entire day lasts just six hours. The days may pass quickly but the earth changes slowly. To understand the making of our planet we need to fast forward through millions of years.

3900 MILLION YEAR AGO

A hail of meteors, 3.9 billion year ago and we’re under attack from debris left over from the solar system formation. Look at these strange crystals inside the meteors.

The look like grains of salt the same salt you’d put on your French fries and inside these minute droplets of water. It seems this deadly missile could contain the vital ingredient for life on Earth. There’s only a small amount of water inside each meteorite but as they bombard the Earth for over 20 million years Pools of water grow. The water collects on solid ground. The Earth’s core remains mouton but its surface is cool to 70 or 80 degrees just enough to form a crust. In the future we could swallow this water when we take a drink. Every sip, every puddle, every drop of water in every ocean is billions of years old. And it may have traveled millions of kilometer to reach us carried inside a meteor. The Earth looks more familiar but this is still a dangerous place.

This wind is as fast perhaps faster than the most destructive hurricane. It’s a mega storm ripped up by the planets rapid rotation. The moon is so close to Earth that its gravity is overwhelming. It creates huge tides that race across the planet’s surface. But over time the Moon moves away, the wave calm and the planet spins slower.

3800 MILLION YEARS AGO

700 million years after the planets birth and life giving water covers its surface but not just water there’s something else down there, Tiny Islands. They seem to have appeared from nowhere until molten rock bursts through the Earth’s crust and rises up through the oceans. Over time the lava cools and forms a volcanic-island. This is how these islands formed in the future they will join together to form the first continents. The infant earth has water and land. It’s beginning to look like the planet we call homes but the atmosphere is toxic and the temperature is scorching nothing could live here. Meteors they’ve been raining down since the planets formation but now 3.8 billion years ago the assault has entreated a violent new phase. Something has disturbed the orbits of these meteorites. They already brought water to the planet but they’re caring something else too. As the meteorites dissolve they release their minerals and transport carbon and primitive proteins Amino acids from outer space to the bottom of the ocean. Its dark the sun’s rays can’t reach beyond 300 meters and it’s close to freezing.

This must be a mirage. A city of underwater chimneys and it’s not smoke its some kind of hot liquid. See water has seeped down into the Earth through cracks in the crust getting hotter collecting minerals and gasses on the way. It’s impotent mixture that’s spewing back out into the oceans building these towers. Add to this all those minerals and chemicals from the meteorites and the water have become a chemical soup. It’s impossible to know how or when but somehow these chemicals have come together to create life. The water is now full of microscopic organisms.

These single celled bacteria are the earliest forms of life on Earth. This is a defining moment in the making of the planet. Microscopic life is underway. To find more complex life we need to travel forwards through time to 3.5 billion years ago.

3500 MILLION YEAR AGO

These look like rocks or even plants. They seem to grow out of the seabed. Each is a mountain of living bacteria a colony called a Stromatolite. As if by magic these bacteria turns sunlight into food this process called Photosynthesis. Uses the power of sunlight to transform carbon dioxide and water into glucose. A simple form of sugar and similar to the stuff we put in our coffee. And this magic transformation releases a byproduct a gas called Oxygen. Underwater the Stromatolite slowly fills the oceans with oxygen. The oxygen turn traces of iron in the water into rust. This falls to the ocean floor to form deposits of iron rich rock. One day we’ll use this mineral to build bridges, ships and skyscrapers. Above the waves the oxygen transforms the atmosphere. This Stromatolite is creating a single most important element for life on Earth. Without them virtually every living thing wouldn’t exist. When we take our next breath we’re doing it thanks to these colonies of ancient bacteria.

1500 MILLION YEAR AGO

Over the next two billion years oxygen levels continue to rise and as the planet spin slows, the days get longer now they last at least 16 hours. We’re discovering it takes a long to make a planet. 1.5 billion years ago 3 billion year after the planets birth and there’s no complex life, no plants, no dinosaurs, no humans but the earth has something that no other planet has a force with the power to change everything. Our planet a beautiful blue ball dotted with volcanic islands. One and a half billion years ago its home to primitive life. Over millions of years we can see something is rearranging the islands. Hidden beneath the ocean the Earth’s crust has broken into vast plates. Deeper still the Earth’s cores at work it’s hotter than the surface of the Sun. So hot it generates movement in the rock beneath the crust. These movements push and pull the plats around the globe and carry the oceans and islands with them. Millions of years raced by seeing it like this our planet seem active changing alive. Over 400 million years a vast new supercontinent takes shape called “Rodinia”. In the shallow waters around Rodinia Stromatolite have been working their magic for over two billion years. Pumping oxygen into the atmosphere the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius and the days are 18 hours long.

But this looks more like Mars than earth. To find life here we need to move on through time.

0750 MILLION YEARS AGO

The state of Washington 750 deep inside the planet itself is ripping the crust to pieces. It’s as though the world is tearing apart and there’s only one force powerful enough to do this, heat. It escapes from the Earth’s molten core stretching and weakening the crust. Centimeter by centimeter year by year the great supercontinent is splitting in two. The intense geological activity has spawned a mass of volcanoes. These pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there’s smoke and gas everywhere. All that carbon-dioxide mixes with water to make acid rain. The rocks absorb the acid rain including its carbon dioxide and there are a lot of rocks on the Earth right now exposed when the continent tore apart. So many that vast quantities of carbon dioxide are absorbed out of the atmosphere and locked up in the Earth’s rocks. There’s not enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to trap the sun’ heat around the planet. In just a few thousand years the temperature plummets to around minus 50 degrees.

This frozen wasteland is southern Australia. 650 million years ago it’s the start of what some scientists call snowball Earth. A period they believed to be the longest coldest ice age ever to grip the planet. A vast wall of ice thousands of meters high, the ice is unstoppable the more ice there is the more sunlight it reflects away from the planet and the faster the ice spreads and there’s  a second ice sheet just as high. The two sheets spread away from the poles toward each-other to meet at the equator. Now an ice sheet up to three kilometers thick in Tunes the entire planet. First the planet was a molten ball of fire, now it’s a frozen ball of ice. Virtually all the sun’s light and warmth reflects back into space. But it can’t last forever something must release the earth from this frozen prison and when it does, who knows whether life will have survived beneath the ice. The surface is frozen but the core is still hotter than the sun’s surface. Volcanoes have been erupting since the world began to freeze but up until now even their heat and power made no impact on the ice volcanoes pump out billions of tons of carbon dioxide. Before the big freeze the Earth’s rocks absorb most of the carbon dioxide but now with the rocks smothered in ice. There’s nothing to absorb the gas so it fills the atmosphere like a blanket it traps the sun’s warmth around the planet. Temperature rise until now after 15 million years the ice begins to melt. It’s thought that during snowball Earth the ice pushed the cross down now as it melts the cross bounces up. This creates fissures and weak spots and more and more volcanoes. These volcanoes release more carbon dioxide and push the temperature up even higher. The melt gathers momentum, oxygen levels rocket. Through a series of chemical reactions the ice has created oxygen. While the planet was frozen the sun ultraviolet rays reacted with water molecules in the ice to produce a chemical rich in oxygen. Hydrogen peroxide the same chemical that bleaches head now as the ice melts the hydrogen peroxide breaks down and releases massive amounts of oxygen. The Earth is waking up and it’s a very different place. Now 600 million years ago the atmosphere is warmer. It feels like a summer’s day and the day are about 22 hours long. Add all this water and it’s the perfect recipe for life. Before snowballs Earth primitive bacteria had emerged in the oceans but surely they couldn’t have survived an ice age 75 times longer than the entire span of human history. If something has survived then our best chance of finding it is where we last save life in the ocean. Now 540 million years ago in an ocean full of oxygen those primitive bacteria have evolved. A handful must have clung on through big freeze there are plants everywhere and some else.

It looks like some kind of armored slug, it’s called wiwaxia. It’s one of a new generation of complex multi-celled organisms. We’re entering one of the most dynamic periods in the Earth story “the Cambrian explosion”. Increased oxygen levels allow bony skeleton.

There are velvet worm, sponge, chordate and olenoides.  They’re trilobite distant relatives of insects, lobsters even scorpions. Life in the oceans is blossoming from microscopic bacteria to a monster like this.

This is an anomalocaris, it’s about 60 centimeter long. Look at its large eyes, its razor-sharp teeth and grasping limbs. All anomalocaris has to do is take it speak. The trilobite guard right itself, its soft belly is exposed.

These are Pikaia. They’re just five or so centimeters long but they’ve got what may be the first ever spine. Over millions of years this simple structure will evolve into the spine that keeps us standing erect and creatures are beginning to take on familiar forms. Beneath the waves there are already tens of thousands of plant and animal species. The advance of life seems unstoppable. We’re looking to life on land, 460 million years ago and the plates have moved again below lies a new continent Gondwana. It’s a warm 30 degrees Celsius, Oxygen levels are close to those in which we live. The land should be covered with plants crawling with creatures but there’s not much here beside a few patches of algae. There’s only one explanation, the sun it blasts the surface with deadly radiation. The complex life we’ve seen in the ocean doesn’t stand a chance on land but 50 kilometers up where the rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere, something strange is happening. When oxygen meets the sun’s radiation the oxygen turns into another kind of gas called “ozone”. This gas formed a blanket around the planet. This ozone layer absorbs the lethal radiation. Over 120 million years the ozone layer gets thicker and stops more and more radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface. Without this layer life on land simply wouldn’t exist. New shielded from radiation life blossms.

Those small mossy lumps are the first land plants and they’re pumping out even more oxygen levels saw. 375 million years ago there’s something down there in the water it’s moving, swimming.

It’s a strange fish called Tiktaalik. Its neck allows it to raise itself up. It uses its fins as if their legs and moves out of the water where Clarke life is exploding. Over 15 million years these creatures call tetrapod evolve they grow stronger limbs and spend more time out of the water until 360 million years ago they make the land their home. It’s from a creature like this that all four legged vertebrates will evolve dinosaurs, birds, mammals and eventually you and me. We’ve come a long way from a lump of burning rock and dust to a blue green planet bursting with life. There are still no humans but there are fish, plants and this.

It’s a dragonfly, a dragonfly the size of an eagle. This giant is called Meganula. What were once legs have evolved into wings extending the dragonflies hunting territory over a vast area.

There are millipedes, spiders all sorts of bugs down there. These creatures called Arthropods, were among the very first to set foot on land. They’ve already around for hundreds of millions of years. They look almost identical to the bugs that invade our home today. Except for one big difference like meganeura they’re monsters. We’ve stumbled into a lost world of giants where millipedes are two meters long and scorpions the size of wolves. All the oxygen in the atmosphere allows their respiratory systems to be more efficient and frees up space for their bodies to grow.

A lizard-like creature called hylonomus. The creatures we’ve seen so far laid their eggs in the water but these eggs contain all the water and nutrients the developing hylonomus Sneed’s. The babies are growing in their own self-contained pond. The egg is a major evolution breakthrough. Now animals can leave the water behind and conquer the land. This baby hylonomus will lead the advance. It’s a new kind of creature “a reptile”. Inevitably with life comes death there’s so much dead plant matter it builds up and decays into dense soggy layers. Over hundreds of millions of years rocks will cover these layers. Heat from the Earth’s core and pressure from the overlying rocks will transform the layer of dead plants into seams of coal. Each lump of coal we burn today to warm our homes and fire our power stations is made of plant that died 300 million years ago. Amidst the decay hidden from sight life is stirring. Soon seeds will geminate plants will grow and this wasteland will live again. Life seems to have conquered the planet.

250 MILLION YERS AGO

A heard of creatures graze the Siberian plains. They’re not dinosaurs, they won’t set foot on earth for at least another 20 million years but they’re big. Evolution has taken a huge leap forwards the small lizards we saw earlier and now giant reptiles.

These are Scutosaurus, the distant relatives of turtles. They’re plant eaters and if the plant eaters look this tough the karlikwars must be seriously mean.

It’s a gorgonopsids, a perfectly engineered prehistoric killing machine. The gorgonopsids saber teeth have wounded the Scutosaurus. The predator is watching as its prey grows weak from blood loss until, hold on its backing off something strange is happening. The ground is getting hot, there must be enormous pressure beneath the surface, there is lava but this is not one single volcano the entire landscape is erupting. It’s a flood basalt eruption a massive plume of mantle is rising up from deep inside the earth pushing malting rock out through fissures in the Earth’s crust. The lush paradise is now a lifeless hell the Scutosaurus and the gorgonopsids a dead. They’re the first casualties is the greatest mass extinction the world has ever seen “the Permian extinction”. On the other side of the continent of Gondwana it’s as if nothing happened. ‘Snow’ but the temperature is about 20 digress Celsius. It’s not snow its ash, fallout from the eruption some 16000 kilometers away. The ash burns suffocates and kills animals around the world. The atmosphere is full of sulfur dioxide from the eruptions and it rains the gas turns to sulfuric acid and burns everything it falls on. At first it seemed like this was a local disaster but not it’s gone global. The Siberian eruptions increase the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels. The atmosphere gets hotter, water evaporates, and the vegetation dies. We saw life had finally found a foothold. Now it looks like we were wrong. There are no sign of life on land but in the oceans, this can’t be right the oceans are turning pink and the plants, the trilobites and the predators everything’s gone. Everything except for this pink alga. The new hotter atmosphere must have heated the oceans and stripped them of oxygen now nothing except algae can survive in the stagnant water. The Siberian eruption is transforming the entire planet nothing not even the deepest ocean floor is beyond their reach. ‘Bubbles’ but it’s not oxygen its methane escaping from vast pockets of methane gas beneath the seabed. Methane is a greenhouse gas at least 20 times deadlier than carbon dioxide. Until now the gas has been frozen but as the sea temperature rises the gas begins to melt released into the atmosphere. This powerful gas pushes up temperatures even further, up to temperatures even further, up to almost 40 degrees six degree hotter than before the Siberian eruptions. Now even the creatures that have made it this far are tuned. It’s 500000 year since the eruptions first began and all this time for half a million years the lava has been pouring out by now it covers an area the size of the united states with a layer of molten rock nearly six kilometer deep. 250 million years ago we’re back where we started on a lifeless planet almost. Its 50 million years since virtually all life on Earth was wiped out and the planet has been transformed. It’s now 200 million years ago and there’s just one supercontinent called Pangea, stretching from pole to pole. After the trauma of the mass extinction the planet is healing. Temperatures are stabilizing the acid rain is neutralizing and vegetation returning and with 95% of life on Earth wiped out. The field is open for a new species to emerge. One that will dominate the planet like no other before or since “the dinosaurs”.

These dinosaurs are called Ammosaurus. Like all dinosaurs they’ve evolved from the handful of reptiles that survived the Permian extinction. At four and a half meters tall their size makes them slow and vulnerable.

Dilophosaurs, two of them they’re small and fast. The Ammosaurus is too big meal for one Dilophosaurs but nor for two. The dinosaurs have repopulated the earth but no species contain this restless volatile planet. The Earth’s crust is thinning here its releasing lava shaking with earthquakes as though it’s been stretched by some unseen force and the same thing is happening all the way down what will be north America’s eastern seaboard. The Earth’s plates are on the move again, 190 million years ago, the great supercontinent of Pangea breaks up. A vast slab of land has broken away. You create a chasm and this fills with a new ocean called the Texas. Over what will one day be the Middle East. Currents are pushing nutrients up into the coastal waters running along what will Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. And the nutrients attract fish in their million and with so much life also come death. Dead fish and plankton carpet the ocean floor, over the next 10 million years layers of rock will bury and heat the dead creatures, ancient fish and plankton will become oil. Every liter of fuel in our cars, every piece of plastic on the planet, the paint on our walls, and the carpet under our feet even the soap you wash with almost all originated in this way. 180 million years ago and further west the North American plate is still moving away from the European and Asian plate. It happens slowly at about two and half centimeters each year, the same speed as our fingernails grow but hit fast-forward and a new ocean forms right beneath us and new continents. Montreal moves away from Marrakesh, New York from West Africa. The world as we know it is taking shape the chasm between the two continents fills to create a vast ocean “the Atlantic” and they’re in the middle a volcano. We know it’s caused by currents deep beneath the Earth’ crust this process is happening down there right now. The entire seafloor has been torn in two and pushed up into a ridge of mountains and volcanoes. It’s growing higher than the Himalayas and longer than the Rockies. The waters hot here molten lava is forcing its way out from deep inside the earth. As the lava cools it’s creating a new ocean floor. This is what’s pushing the plates and Pangaea’s apart and rearranging our world. It’s this geological activity that makes the Earth restless, creative and unique and every time the planet reinvents itself the things that live on it must adapt and evolve.

Things like these there Ichthyosaur. They’re reptile ancestors so did they grew fing and moved into the newly formed Atlantic ocean. This one is six meter long and fast. It travels at about forty kilometers an hour. It’s the oceans fastest creature, the most efficient predator and it’s ruled the Earth’s oceans for 50 million years but now there’s a new contender for the crown, “Plesiosaurs”.

Longer than a bus as heavy as a truck its jaws are immense over eight times more powerful than great white sharks and its teeth a 30 centimeter long. The Earth and the creatures that live on it have changed beyond recognition. This was once solid ground now it’s the Atlantic oceans it was on this very spot that we stood and watched Ammosaurus graze and Dilophosaurs stalk their prey. The dinosaur’s world may be different but there is dominant as ever they appear invincible.

065 MILLION YEAR AGO

It’s a shrew like mammal and it’s evolved from the small number of mammals that survived the mass extinction 185 million years ago. It’s also prey for the dinosaurs. The most of the mammals live in the tree or underground and venture out at night. Mammals are no threat to the dinosaurs; nothing on earth can challenge their dominance

Nothing on Earth.

It’s a lump of space rock a large one. This asteroids about 10 kilometers across, bigger than Mount Everest and its traveling at over 70000 kilometer an hour, straight towards the Earth its heading for the gulf of Mexico just off the Yucatan Peninsula. It travels so fast blink and we’d miss the impact unless we slow down time. It’s a split second that will change the world forever. At the moment of impact the asteroids back edge is still nearly 11000 meters, the same height as a commercial aircraft flay. The asteroid strikes with such immense force it destroys everything it hits even the asteroid itself instantly vaporizes. The impact unleashes the energy of millions of nuclear weapons. Nowhere is safe, not even way up here.

Some of these boulders are as big as entire city blocks. The blast wave races out from the impact zone like shrapnel from exploding bomb minutes after impact thousands of kilometers from where the asteroid struck. The Earth is under attack from every direction boulders rained down, earthquakes shake the ground and tsunamis batter he coasts but the onslaught has only just begun. The plume of molten rock and dust spreads out and engulfs the planet. The entire sky is acting like a giant sunlit. The Earth’s surface heats up to 275 degrees vegetation begins to spontaneously ignite. Even months after the impact smoke and ash still block out the sun’s rays. With less sunlight plants died and the animals that eat they starve against this onslaught it’s hard to see how anything can survive. The dinosaurs 165 million year reign are over but the dinosaur demise is an opportunity for another species “mammals”. By living underground they’re avoided the heat in the fires and by eating anything and everything. They thrive while more selective eaters die. These are the unlikely inheritors of the dinosaurs crown and as one story ends another begins. With the dinosaurs out of the way this could be our ancestor’s chance. The dinosaurs are long dead the planet is peaceful. In this new world our mammal ancestors are evolving.

This lake 47 million years ago in what will one day be Germany should be the perfect place to spot them. This is not like the mammals we saw earlier, its eyes and brain are bigger. This is Darwinius masillae or IDA. She looks nothing like us but fossil evidence from our own time tells us these creatures could evolve into monkeys, apes and eventually humans. We’re looking back through 47 million years of evolution to what may be one of our earliest known ancestors. The lake site on a volcanic crater it belches out noxious gas. Now the lake that killed her will preserve her in its oxygen-depleted deaths. One day when the water has gone an IDA is fossilized in stone. We will discover her and recognize in this primitive primate what could be the very beginning of our own story the story of human life. We’re closer to understanding how everything we’ve seen from ocean bacteria through walking fish and subterranean rodents leads to us and to understanding how our planet was made. 47 million years ago and the atmosphere is much like our own. The temperature is 24 degrees Celsius and a day lasts just under 24 hours. The Earth’s we’re looking at now is almost identical to the planet we call home almost. The Earth’s plates have been on the move again with the continents on their backs. India moves north towards Asia. The Indian and Asian plates are locked in a titanic struggle neither plate is winning both plates begin to buckle. Once ocean floor contorts upwards along a two and a half thousand kilometer line a vast mountain range rises up 1500 meters, 4500 meters. Now over 8000 meters these are the Himalayas and there it is the highest mountain of all Mount Everest. When the snow on the peaks melts it feeds great rivers the Ganges, Indus, Yangtze and yellow rivers. The Himalayas are like a vast water tower one day their rivers will supply water for almost half the world’s population.

20 million years ago this is our planet with every continent every ocean just as we know it except there’s one thing missing us, the human race. For humans to evolve something somewhere down there has to change.

4 MILLION YEAE AGO

Along Africa’s East coast between the plates that make up the Earth’s crust a great rift opens up. The rift stretches nearly 6000 kilometers along its Edge Mountains grow.

There, it looks like an ape not a human. It might stay in these trees forever but its world is changing. The growing mountains act like a wall, they stop moisture from the Indian Ocean passing over the land. It’s getting hotter and drier the lush rain forest is becoming arid, savanna. The new hotter climate destroys the creature’s habitat. It forces them to search further a field for food to stop dragging their knuckles on the floor like Apes. To stand and walk on two feet it’s the most important step in the human story. This mountain range along Africa’s East Coast could be the reason we walk on two feet it seems incredible. The random movement of two plates may have kick-started chain of events that will lead to the first humans.

01.5 MILLION YEAR AGO

The man and child it could be a scene from our own time but it’s one and a half million years ago these are an early species of human, called Homo erectus and these are the first footprints like our own. Civilizations past and present everyone that’s ever lived the greatest inventions the most brilliant ideas. Human history in all its complexity and splendor begins here and now.

 070 THOUSAND YEAR AGO

The climate changes again, 70000 year ago sea levels fall the gap between Africa and Arabia shrinks down to just 13 kilometers. The Red sea is narrow and shallow enough for this small group to cross out of Africa.

They’re another later species of human called Homosapien. They’ve made it across, scientists believe every man, and woman and child outside of Africa are descended from these 200 or so individuals. Over time our ancestors multiply and spread out to Indian on to Asia and into Europe but while humans head north a giant wall of ice travels south.

040 THOUSAND YEAR AGO

Europe 40000 years ago our Homosapiens ancestors are arriving. Only to find a world that’s changing fast it’s getting colder it should be the height of summer but the plants are frost bitten the rivers are frozen. Natural changes in the Earth’s orbit carbon dioxide levels and the flow of warm water around the planet conspire to lower the Earth’s temperature. The Earth and its inhabitants entre an ice age and glacier is as high as skyscrapers creep over the northern hemisphere at 30 centimeter a day. Slow and powerful they sculpt the landscape as they move over it gouging out great depressions the planet will never look the same again. Now around 20000 years ago they grind to a halt. Much of the northern hemisphere is covered by ice sheets up to two and a half kilometer thick with trillion of gallons of water locked up as ice sea levels fall. 20000 years ago a strip of land emerges from the ocean between Siberia and Alaska. It’s a bridge between two vast continents; a gateway that takes humans from Asia to a new world “America” it’s the last great continent to be colonized. The last great human migration and somewhere down there are the first Americans.

14000 YEAR AGO

Now 14000 year ago the changes that triggered the ice age go into reverse. As the ice retreats it reveals a very different another hemisphere. The glaciers gouged out huge depressions now they fill with water to become North America’s great lakes. 6000 year ago the ice retreats back to the poles to the Arctic and Antarctic.

0 THOUSAN YEARS AGO

After a four and a half billion year journey we made it we’re back home. This is our world our time now for the first time we can piece together our planets incredible story. We can understand how and why everything we see around us is here today. From the skies above us to water the essential ingredient for life the ground beneath our feel and final life. The spectacular result of a chain of catastrophes and coincidences each triumph each disaster is a step on the trail that leads to here to each and every one of us right now. The Earth story doesn’t end here. A lot has happened but there’s more to come the Earth will live for at least other four and a half billion years. Everything we’ve seen on our journey is only half the story. Just imagine what wonders what terrors what strange creatures lie ahead for our Restless creative planet.

                                                                

                                                                     THE END