Originally posted by tim60 Interesting how measures of old depend on place. Where I was born the oldest churches are less than 200 years. The church I go to now has one item of the communion silverware that is 15 years older than that church. And a church has been on the site for about 1200 years, maybe more. Parts of the building date back to the Norman era and the most recent parts to about 15 years ago. Plans for further additions and changes.
Time is really an elusive concept. We visited a megalithic site, called a "temple," on Malta that predates the earliest Egyptian pyramids as well as Stonehenge. Then I go back to being a paleontologist and realize its age compared to the age of the Earth is like dust atop a 20 story building. Imagine time as a string in which one inch = one million years. To cover the age of the Earth, the string would be about 4,000 inches (333 feet) long. All those megalithic structures, including the single one that's older than the Malta "temple" would be within less than 1/100 of an inch at the end of the string. "Deep time" as paleontologists, geologists, astronomers etc call it is really scary and sobering. Small wonder that vast numbers of humans cannot grasp it and will not accept it.