Deep Time

Humans have a life spend of about 80 years. Within that 80 years, a person learns to talk and

walk. They might be in school for another 20 years, then get a job, settle down and have a

family of their own. Eventually, that person will grow old and pass away. This is one lifetime.

History describes the beginning of civilization to the present day, which is roughly 5,000

years (Goeseke & Kramer, 1957). Similarly, the deep time is Earth's history. It illustrates the

exciting stories that have happened on Earth since its formation about 4.54 billion years ago

(Dalrymple, 2001). In other words, deep time is a geological concept that describes all the

phenomena that occur within Earth's history. Deep time is a difficult concept to grasp and

imagine for most people, artists use spiral timelines to illustrate the inconceivable concept.

Figure 1: illustration of a time spiral showing Earth’s history (Experiencing Deep Time

Through Visual Storytelling, 2019)

Belief Before Deep Time

The average duration of human life is remarkably short-lived compared to Earth's history; it is

no surprise that our ancestors believe mountains and rivers were eternal and forever lasting.

Most religions consciously reflected this belief of creationism or young Earth that all

topography features and lifeforms on Earth were created in a short amount of time, little

before the civilization begins 6,000 to 10,000 years ago (Ruse, 2003). However, in contrast

with young Earth, the actual age of this planet had proven to be much older than a few

thousand years.

Early Discovery of Deep Time

One of the first scientists who described the concept of deep time was James Hutton. James

Hutton (1726-1797) was a Scottish physician and geologist who went against the common

belief of young Earth and viewed the planet as an everchanging globe where mountains get

erose, river forms and disappear over time. Therefore, Hutton suggests the world is governed

by uniformitarianism, where the physical and chemical laws that govern nature are uniform

throughout time. For example, volcanic activities from million years ago are the same as

modern volcanic activites. He famously concluded that "the past history of our globe must be

explained by what can be seen to be happening now” and the present is key to the past (Levin,

2012).
Figure 1: an oil painting of James Hutton by Sir Henry Raeburn (Raeburn, 1776)

However, uniformitarianism was not the final explanation that geologists want to settle with.

Uniformitarianism suggests that all the same events over time happen at the same constant

rate where Earth is as it has been since its formation. It fails to recognize the rates of change

and intensity of processes varied depending on what we accustomed to seeing today and past

events are governed by the past counterpart (Levin, 2010). For example, bioerosion- erosion

caused by a living organism- would not be possible before the appearance of life on Earth.

Moreover, to build on top of uniformitarianism, Hutton's peer of the time, John Playfair

(1748-1819), introduced the concept of actualism. Actualism states that Earth changes in a

range of events where only the physical laws are constant; however, Earth may differ

depending on its given geological and biological features at the time. Most importantly, the

rate of change varies, but the laws do not (Levin, 2012). For instance, erosion processes of

rocks where nature mechanically or chemically breaks down the rocks are the same since the
creating of the earth. However, the speed of erosion may increase due to human activities

such as farming, ranching, cutting down forests.

Relative and Absolute Dating

Once the concept of actualism is established, scientists begin to question how much time is in

deep time. At the time of Hutton and Playfair, scientists were only able to determine if a

particular layer or body of rock is younger or older compared to each other. This is known as

relative dating. There are multiple principles when it comes to relative dating. For example,

superposition law states that the older rock in an undisturbed sequence of rock layers will be

at the lower bottom of the sequence and younger rocks are on top (Tikkanen, 2019).

Other principles of relative dating are:

1. Unconformity: the gap in the sequence of the rock layers.

2. The principle of original horizontality: sediment deposit on the Earth’s surface

horizontally

3. The principle of lateral continuity: rock layers are laterally continuous.

4. The principle of cross-cutting relationships: the geological feature that crosses the
rock units is younger than the rock unit.

5. The principle of inclusions: rock fragments included in a rock are older than the
rock.

Supplemental video link can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYSeM63Fv0s&ab_channel=MikeSammartano
Figure 2: cross-session of a volcano showing the different layers of rock units. (Lyell & M J

S Rudwick, 1990)

However, geologists could not answer how old Earth is until the discovery of radioactivity in

1896. Radioactivity allows a new form of dating, absolute dating. Absolute dating uses

unstable atoms that decay to a different element over time to calculate the actual age of an

object. The term half-life expresses the rate of decay. For example, one of the most useful

radioactive elements in geology is uranium-235. Uranium-235 has a half time of about 704

million years. A rock that contains minerals that only have 50% of uranium-235 remains in

the system, the rock can be dated to be 704 million years old. Furthermore, once uranium

decays another half of its half-life (75%), the rock is 1,408 million years old where the first

half-life of 704 million years adds another 704 million years (Levin, 2012).
 References

Dalrymple, G. B. (2001). The age of the Earth in the twentieth century: a problem (mostly)

solved. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 190(1), 205–221.

https://doi.org/10.1144/gsl.sp.2001.190.01.14

Experiencing Deep Time Through Visual Storytelling. (2019, November 26). Blog of the Long

Now.

https://blog.longnow.org/02019/11/26/experiencing-deep-time-through-visual-storytell

ing/

Goeseke, H., & Kramer, S. N. (1957). From the Tablets of Sumer, Twenty-Five Firsts in

Man’s Recorded History. Oriens, 10(2), 329. https://doi.org/10.2307/1579674

Levin, H. L. (2010). The earth through time. J. Wiley.

Levin, H. L. (2012). The earth through time. Wiley; Chichester.

Lyell, C., & M J S Rudwick. (1990). Principles of geology. University Of Chicago Press.

Numbers, R. L., & For, S. (2007). The creationists: from scientific creationism to intelligent

design. International Society For Science And Religion.

Raeburn, S. H. (1776). James Hutton (Scottis) [Oil on canvas]. Scottish National Portrait

Gallery.

Ruse, M. (2003). Creationism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Stanford.edu.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creationism/

Sammartano, M. (2014). Relative Dating of Rock Layers [YouTube Video]. In YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYSeM63Fv0s&ab_channel=MikeSammartano

Tikkanen, A. (2019). Law of superposition | geology. In Encyclopædia Britannica.

https://www.britannica.com/science/law-of-superposition
Definition strategies:

Some of the definition strategies I used in my definition are one-sentence definition, graphs,

examples, and analogy. I used a one-sentence definition in the introduction paragraph to

explain what deep time is. I used graphs to illustrate the cross-session of rock units for

readers to better understand relative dating. I gave an example of a half-time calculation. I

also used an analogy to compare deep time to a lifetime and history to explain deep time is

the Earth’s time scale.