Not long. If you condense the history of the Earth — about 4.54 billion years — to just one year, humans have been been here for only about 23 minutes of that one year. In real time, humans have been on the Earth about 200,000 years. The sun predates us all, however — it is estimated to be about 4.57 billion years old.
More universal knowledge:
- One of the oldest human settlements found is in an area of Ethiopia called Middle Awash. The settlement dates to about 160,000 years ago.
- Humans mostly lived in the area of Africa until about 70,000 years ago. The first humans populated the Americas about 14,500 years ago.
- C.C. Patterson is credited for dating the Earth. In 1956, he determined the approximate age by performing a type of lead test on the Canyon Diablo meteorite, among others. His calculations have been backed up by hundreds of later tests.
- No one really knows how old the universe is, but current theories estimate it at about 13.75 billion years.
