"[The Mbuti] might be able to give mankind a fresh start; and, though we should then have lost the achievements of the last 6,000 to 10,000 years, what are 10,000 years compared to the 600,000 or a million years for which the human race has already been in existence?"
- Arnold Toynbee, 'Civilization on Trial and the World and the West'
It is not just in terms of human history that civilisation is a blimp on our map. The earth itself inhabits vast timescales which make human history a mere wave in the universes time-ocean.
The processes of continental drift, earth crust displacement and reversal of the magnetic poles are on scales we can scarcely imagine. When are we going to learn our place in this scale?