Humans are still infants

A lot of people like to think of humans as a highly evolved species. In fact, humanity has just emerged from its infancy on this planet. In their book New World New Mind, Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich place this into astonishing perspective in one mind-boggling paragraph:

Suppose Earth’s history were charted on a single year’s calendar, with midnight January 1 representing the origin of the Earth and midnight December 31 the present. Then each day of Earth’s “year” would represent 12 million years of actual history. On that scale, the first form of life, a simple bacterium, would arise sometime in February. More complex life-forms, however, come much later; the first fishes appear around November 20. The dinosaurs arrive around December 10 and disappear on Christmas Day. The first of our ancestors recognizable as human would not show up until the afternoon of December 31. Homo sapiens-our species-would emerge at around 11:45 P.M. All that has happened in recorded history would occur in the final minute of the year.

Sure is a different perspective... what do you think?