There’s a meant-to-be-humbling metaphor that if the age of the earth equalled one year, then humans only appeared 10 minutes before midnight at year’s end.

でも, I object to that analysis on the grounds that it is reductionist and misleading. 

When you consider humans as a ‘leading edge’ of life’s evolution, then we represent 12 hours on that 24-hour clock. Going further with this thinking: it took 21.28% of the entire life of the universe itself to produce human life on Earth. The formula is in the Subject line.

That’s a monumentally long period of time.