HOW OLD IS CIVILISATION?

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 136, 5 December 1929, Page 18

HOW OLD IS CIVILISATION?

Take a postage • stamp and stick it on a penny. Now climb Cleopatra's Aeedlo and lay the penny flat, postacestamp uppermost, oh top of tho obelisk. Tho height of tho whole structure may bo taken to represent tho time that has elapsed sinco the earth was born. On this scale (according to hir James Jeans, tho eminent mathematical astronomer in his book "The Universe Around Us") tho thickness ox tho penny aud postage-stamp together represents the time that man has lived on the earth. The thickness of the postage-stamp represents the time ho has been, civilised, the thickness of the penny representing the time ho lived in art uncivilised state, t° W pII another posUgo-stamp on top of the first to represent tho next years of civilisation, and keen sticking on postage-stamps until you have a pile as high as Mont Blanc •:-the flrß, t postage-stamp represents what man has already achieved- the pile which out-tops Mont Blnuc ,'epic sents what he may achieve, if hi,T,? lire achievement is proportional to his time on earth. A a T inhabit a„", of he earth we arc living „t , c beginning of time. We Imvo into boniff in tho fresh glory of the aawn and a day of almost^unthink' abo length stretches before „.with