Why is studying the earth’s origin relevant in the study of History?

Question

please help me with this.. i just can't think of something from my mind.. and i've been sitting here for 6 long hours and no answer can come up my head... help me please.. thank you.

Answer 1

"Why is studying the earth’s origin relevant in the study of History?"

Because History is about the PAST and the earth's origin is apart of that PAST!

Answer 2

I don't believe that it is, because History as a discipline is directly related to the study of human beings and their successive societies, with an underlying correlation to the present.

The Earth is about 4 billion years old, and its origin is irrelevant in this context, in that human beings have been on the Earth for at most 1.1 million years and the present species, Homo Sapiens, has been on the Earth for only about 50 000 years. History has no relevance if it is not relevant to people.

At best, maybe you could argue that it merely provides some perspective as to human beings not being the only species ever to inhabit the Earth, but rather one of many species that come and go with the ticking of the cosmic clock.

Answer 3

As an engineer that spent much of his life looking for oil reserves,  I found it absolutely necessary to know what had happened in the past because shallow & fertile seas or swamps tended to lay down peat deposits that eventually produced oil.

Knowing past climates gives us an idea of where differing flora & fauna would enhance development of differing species (humans being one) might have lived.  One could hardly expect to find a civilization built on an ice shelf, but ancient sea coasts, or fertile delta areas are likely to produce civilizations. Humans typically build near a fresh water supply & a sea coast.

By studying plate techtonics we've determined why past extinctions happened in local areas & why some civilizations may have waned or disappeared. Movement of the continents tells us why some animals, that affected human history, appear in some areas, but not others (the horse).

We know iridium is very rare on the Earth's surface, but something spread a thin layer of this rare metal over the earth's surface some 65 million years ago,  astroids & meteorids are very likely to contain a lot of this rare metal. Therefore we are searching for means to divert large objects that may threaten our existance.

We now know what affects the Earth's magnetic field & how this field works to protect us... we also know this field has briefly stopped & reversed polarity in the past.

Answer 4

We cannot study the earth's origin directly - since noone was there to observe it.

What we do is look at evidence that exists in the present and try and work out what might have happenned in the past.

This involves making assumptions. There are two main worldviews about origins, with different sets of assumptions.

One is that there was a big bang billions of years ago, and that life evolved from non-life, and humans evolved from ape-like creatures, slowly becoming intelligent modern humans.

Human history revolves around the alleged evolution of man kind.

The other is that God created the universe recently, and created man fully intelligent.

Human history revolves around the eye-witness account in the Bible.

Completely different histories based on different worldviews.

I find the evolutionary tale completely unconvincing - it utterly fails to explain what we see around us. The Biblical account of the Fall, the Flood and dispersion at Babel explains why we live in a world which is now full of bad things, it explains why the different kinds of animals and plants are distinct and don't change/breed one to another, it explains the origin of languages and different people groups.

The Biblical account is fully consistent with recorded history, with anthropology, with science. It is rejected by some for religious reasons.

Check out some of articles on history here:

http://creationontheweb.com/content/view...

Answer 5

Because the earth originated 4.55 Billion years ago!

That's a lot of history...

Answer 6

because some people view humanity as a science, while most see it as product of their beliefs. they cannot connect the two for some reason.

Answer 7

One thing mankind, a decidedly self centered organism, can claim is the mental ability to contemplate not only our own existence but that of the very Universe in which we are such an absolute insignificant part.

It is the frontal cortex of our cerebral hemisphere that allows us to consider ourselves, correctly so, more advanced than Neanderthal and all subsequent primates.

We are so advanced that we can consider our origins, most people don't get it right because they are too lazy to gain the education and background to make intelligent assumptions.

The ability, however, is there in most of us, even the ones who insist upon being...dumb!

I imagine that both religion and philosophy were invented by our predecessors, sitting the the mouth of a cave somewhere tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years ago. I like to call him/her Ogg or Ogges, son/daughter of fire.

Can you imagine someone without a language sitting in relative safety, (not the norm back then), in the mouth of a cave contemplating the sun set or the moon or a lightening storm.

No wonder a magic invisible person in the sky was invented and handed down to the first society in Mesopotamia or China. We, even back then, had the ability to question; we just didn't have the knowledge to get a reasonable answer.

Maybe that's just me.