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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 27 Dec 2023

Taken: 13 Dec 2023

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Cointents •
From •
THE ENDS OF THE WORLD •
Author •
Peter Branan •

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Walking back - one step at a time

Walking back - one step at a time

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Let’s begin our walk; we’ll start in the present and head back. As you life up your heel – there’s no Internet, one-third of the earth’s coral reef reappear, atomic bombs violently reassemble, two world wars are fought (in reverse), the electric glow on the night side of the planet is extinguished, and – when your foot lands – the Ottoman Empire exists. One step. After twenty steps, you stroll by Jesus. A few paces later the other religions begin to wink out of existence: first Buddhism, then Zoroastrianism, then Judaism, then Hinduism. With each foot fall the cultural milestones get more staggering. The first legal systems and writing disappear, and then, tragically, so does beer. After only a few steps – before you can even reach the end of the block – all recorded history peters out, all of human civilizations is behind you, the wooly mammoths exist. That was easy. You stretch your legs and prepare for what couldn’t be much longer of a walm. Perhaps it’s short stroll to the dinosaurs, and a little farther still to the trilobites. No doubt you’ll be at the formation of the earth by sundown. Not so.

In fact, you would have to kep walking for 20 miles a day, every day, for four years to cover the rest of the planet’s history. Clearly the story of the planet Earth is not the story of Homo sapiens. Almost all of that wlk would be through a forbidding landscape with no complex life on it whatsoever. Not in the deep sea, not atop the mountains, not in the tropics, nor on the endless barren granite interiors of the continent. Save for the wind and the waves, ours was a silent planet for the most part during this nearly eternal preamble to animal life. . . . Page 15

THE ENDS OF THE WOROD
4 months ago. Edited 4 months ago.

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