Usshering in the Millennium

by Russell Seitz

The 6,000th anniversary of Earth's creation (4004 B.C. - A.D. 1997) is about to be celebrated by congregations that revere geochronology's founder, the good and great Archbishop Usher. Their enthusiasm seems bound to spill over into their congressional districts, with obvious ramifications for the funding of geophysical research. So it may be prudent to amend geochronology to fit a Biblically Correct 6,000-year format, at least for the fiscal year to come.

25 Oct. 4004 B.C.: Encounter with Nemesis knocks Lucifer out of Oort Cloud.
1 Nov. 4004 B.C.: Earth still largely molten; Adam and Eve invent asbestos waders.
3714 B.C.: The first biotechnologist, Cain, invents cyanobacteria.
3554 B.C.: Komatiitic lava inundates earliest crust; Noah's Ark incinerated.
3264 B.C.: Methuselah begins to notice passage of geological time.
3124 B.C.: Archaean stratiform sulfide deposits form, making Bronze Age possible.
2844 B.C.: Tired of reading graphic granite, Imhotep invents hieroglyphs.
2584 B.C.: Earliest sedimentation; discovery of slate leads to stone tablets.
2444 B.C.: Breathable atmosphere develops; first sermon preached.
2384 B.C.: Descendants of Tubal Cain inaugurate banded Iron Age. Sphinx starts to fossilize.
2024 B.C.: Nimrod the Hunter erects the Geosyncline of Babel.
1914 B.C.: Advent of diapirism; Lot's wife turned into first salt dome.
1794 B.C.: Children of Ham split from Israelites. insisting that the Burgess Shale fauna are kosher; chowder invented.
1704 B.C.: Charshumash the Hittite bitten by first vertebrate; lawyers emerge from slime.
1624 B.C.: Samson attempts perovskite synthesis; laboratory of the Philistines implodes.
1444 B.C.: War of the Chaldean Succession Pangea broken up in accordance with the Treaty of Uruk.
1334 B.C.: Shang Empire abandons efforts to invent compass when China drifts over south magnetic pole.
1264 B.C.: Moses invents hydrofracturing opening of Red Sea rift drowns Egyptian Army.
1194 B.C.: Odysseus runs aground on Gondwanan Riviera; Circe founds Club Teth.
1104 B.C.: Ezekiel see de pterodactyl 'way up in de middle ob de air.
1024 B.C.: Goliath stepped on by irate Barosaurus; David takes credit.
794 B.C.: Jonah swallowed by Carcharas megalodon.
564 B.C.: Pythagoras publishes Air-Earth-Fire-Water phase diagram.
454 B.C.: Marble deposits form in Greece; Parthenon erected.
338 B.C.: Aristotle concludes that quartz is just another polymorph of ice, like diamond or pearls; this is known as the Wisdom of the Ancients.
48 B.C.: All of Gaul is divided into three parts by the collision of Corsica with the European Plate.
The Year Zero: Nothing much happened, there being none.
A.D. 31: Miracle of the Loaves and Ichthyosaurs.
A.D. 70: Paul, formerly Saul the Tarser, undergoes identity crisis on the road to Damascus and writes Epistle to the Cephalopods.
A.D. 344: Vanguard of Attila the Hun perishes when Romans breach Gibraltar escarpment, flooding the Mediterranean Desert.
A.D. 494: Snakes evolve and are driven out of Ireland.
A.D. 974: Lief the Unlucky is lost with all hands when his dragon ship is spotted by an amorous Kronosaurus.
A.D. 1066: William the Conqueror invades England by walking through northern France.
A.D. 1215: Magna Carta eaten by Velociraptor.
A.D. 1324: Gunpowder and plate armor introduced; dinosaurs hunted to extinction.
A.D. 1384: Dante Alighieri describes core-mantle boundary.
A.D. 1444: Flowering plants appear; War of the Roses commences.
A.D. 1484: Leonardo da Vinci designs Archaeopteryx.
A.D. 1492: Mesoamerica emerges, thwarting Columbus's discovery of Japan; the Santa Maria is attacked by ammonites.
A.D. 1522: Hernan Cortes uses asteroid impact to conquer Aztec Empire.
A.D. 1588: Spanish Armada frustrated by continuing absence of English Channel.
A.D. 1636: Earliest primates appear; Harvard founded.
A.D. 1664: An English primate becomes Primate of Ireland; Archbishop Ussher successfully deduces last four out of ten digits of the age of the Earth.
A.D. 1688: Hapsburg Iceboat Armada invades England via London-Bruges canal; Inquisition burns Isaac Newton at the stake for alchemy.
A.D. 1754: Gibbons evolve and write masterpieces like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
A.D. 1776: Washington's Mastodon Cavalry routs Hessians at Battle of Hudson Canyon.
A.D. 1835: Charles Darwin, attacked by giant ratite in Galapagos, returns home a convinced Neptunist.
A.D. 1846: A milestone in ape evolution is passed; birth of a son to Bishop and Lady Wilburforce.
A.D. 1867: COSMOS superstar Alexander Von Humboldt wins the Napoleon III Peace Prize for sabotaging the Baltimore Gun Club's lunar cannon.
A.D. 1894: Awed by extent of glaciation, Cecil Rhodes proposes Capetown-to-Cairo bobsled run.
A.D. 1914: Younger Dryas sea-level rise unleashes U-boats into the Atlantic; Holy Roman Empire wins World War 1.
A.D. 1948: Harry Truman proposes using ice to contain Stalin; Cold War begins, ending Last Interglacial.
A.D. 1954: Glaciers retreat from Fulda Gap; de Gaulle invades Russia.
A.D. 1957: Civil Rights Movement challenges Jim Cro-Magnon laws.
A.D. 1961: Rachel Carson links DDT to Glyptodonts' decline.
A.D. 1969: Last sighting of saber-toothed tiger in Central Park; Elizabeth Taylor divorces Proconsul.
A.D. 1971: Andy Warhol paints Campbell Soup cans on walls of Lascaux caverns.
A.D. 1983: Australopithecus wins the America's Cup.
A.D. 1988: Homo habilis volunteers to serve as Pat Robertson's running mate.
A.D. 1990: Last Neanderthals perish in siege of Kremlin.
A.D. 1991: Saddam Hussein discovers fire; Holocene tar sands form in Kuwait.
A.D. 1997: Citing black smoker emissions, the EPA bans continental drift. Thermophilis wins Nobel Prize for sequencing its own DNA while trapped in amber.
N.B.: As all dates except the first are +/- 2.3 billion years, the author strongly advises against using this chronology for purposes of exegesis or the calibration of carbon-14 dating.
Inspiration for this column was a remark made at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union Inst spring by the late Cesare Emilinni, a renowned geochemist. Russell Seitz works on issues related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.