The Long Now Blog

As part of SEED Magazine’s Darwin anniversary articles here is “a video experiment in scale, condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute.” I thought it a worthy entry into our “Long Shorts” category.

The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds is an experiment in scale: By condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video is a self-contained timepiece. Like a specialized clock, it gives one a sense of perspective. Everything — from the formation of the Earth, to the Cambrian Explosion, to the evolution of mice and squirrels — is proportionate to everything else, displaying humankind as a blip, almost indiscernible in the layered course of history.

Each event in the Evolution of Life fades gradually over the course of the minute, leaving typographic traces that echo all the way to the present day. Just as our blood still bears the salt water of our most ancient evolutionary ancestors.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 3:48 am and is filed under "Long Shorts". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.