We humans tend to have a warped conception when it comes to time. For example, we like to lump all ancient past events together while failing to appreciate how much time has passed between those events. Or because we perceive a notable person who died 6 or 7 decades ago as being young because they died at such an early age, it blows our mind to think that there are elderly people alive today who were their peers at that time. Here’s a side-by-side comparison that really puts time in perspective.
Oxford University came into existence before the Aztec Empire (by centuries!)
By the time the Aztec Empire was formed and its people were carving the famous sunstone in 1325, professors at Oxford University had already been waxing philosophy for more than 200 years. The world-renowned academic institution first opened its doors in 1096.
The time that passed between the extinction of Stegosaurus and the first appearance of the T-Rex is greater than the period between the extinction of the T-Rex and when modern humans first appeared
Contrary to popular belief, not all of the dinosaurs roamed the Earth at the same time. For example, the Stegosaurus, beloved by children because of the badass spikes on their tails and the upright plates along their back, lived during the Late Jurassic period and vanished around 150 million years ago. Meanwhile, the Tyrannosaurus Rex didn’t first appear until 70 million years after that. They went extinct roughly 65 million years ago, while modern humans have existed for 300,000 years, meaning the gap between the extinction and existence of Stegosauruses and T-Rex respectively is 5 million years greater than the T-Rex and humans.
Queen Elizabeth II is three years older than Anne Frank
Anne Frank, the Holocaust victim made famous posthumously as a result of her diary, in which she documents her life in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, will forever be remembered as a teenage girl. But while she would be almost 92 years old today, she would nonetheless still be 3 years younger than Queen Elizabeth, who at 95 years old is the oldest British Monarch in history.
When the Egyptian Pyramids were built, woolly mammoths were still doing their woolly mammoth thing
The ancient Egyptians finished building the Giza pyramids around 4,500 years ago. Meanwhile, in 2019 woolly mammoth fossils dating back 4,000 years were discovered on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. In other words, the giant, hairy elephant-like creatures still existed for at least another 500 years after the famous pyramids were built.
