3008: Proterozoic Rocks

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Proterozoic Rocks

Title text: These rocks are from a time before eyes, brains, and bones, pieces of a land warmed by an unseen sun.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BLIND PROTEROZOIC BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Proterozoic eon rocks such as the 1.1 billion-year-old rocks in the comic were formed 2500 to 538.8 million years ago, some of them surviving tectonic movements until today. Proterozoic rocks which were formed from sediment at the bottom of an inland sea such as the former Western Interior Seaway would be in North America today.

The first animal eyes are believed to have developed on trilobites half a billion years ago, around the transition between the proterozoic and phanerozoic eons at the start of the Cambrian period. This transition began a great proliferation of biological diversity known as the Cambrian Explosion.

In the next panel Cueball talks about feeling a connection to the rock, which spans "a vast abyss of time that stretches back as far as the eye can see." This could be interpreted as expressing the need to connect to something that exists vastly beyond the current turbulent era, to put it into perspective and to find strength in knowing that nature transcends human troubles. The title text extends this theme.

The distant past, before the emergence of complex eye-bearing life, is illustrated by the final panel in black. This is purely figurative, as light existed^{[citation needed]} and would have made the Earth's surface visible, had there been eyes to see it. The dark far past may also be an analogy for the darkened far future, as there may be no life on Earth with eyes in around 250 million years. This timeline is far beyond the immediate cares of the current world, applying perspective to any and all present worldviews.

The sketch might also serve the purpose of comforting some after the 2024 election results.

2013: Rock also compares the age of rocks to milestones in the development of life.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Cueball is seen at a distance, walking amid a rocky landscape.]

I love being near Proterozoic rocks.

These ones are 1.1 billion years old.

That's so, so old.

[Cueball standing next to a rock.]

Eyes evolved half a billion years ago. The first time a rock was ever looked at, these rocks were already 500 million years old.

[Cueball sitting atop a large rock.]

People say geologic time makes them feel small. But when I touch this rock, it's like I'm a part of it, spanning a vast abyss of time that stretches back as far as the eye can see.

[A completely black panel except for text in white lettering.]

And then 500 million years farther.

Trivia

This comic was published on the day when Donald Trump's re-election as president of the USA was announced. Randall was vocal in his support for the opposing candidate Kamala Harris; the xkcd homepage featured a drawing with a "Vote for Harris" sign during the run-up to the election.

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Discussion

So the last panel refers to the unseen birth of a rock? How are rocks even born? 172.71.148.124 (talk) 06:44, 7 November 2024 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Farther - does is mean father back, or further ahead in time? If ahead it could mean Randall do not think there will be any eyes left to see in 500 million years time. Which is not unlikely. Earth will not stay inhabitable much longer than that (probably 800 million years, then the seas will have evaporated). --Kynde (talk) 08:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

A few ways. Fusion likely formed many elements, and neutron star death possibly the rest of the naturally occurring ones. When those started sticking together they would form rocks. The type likely being referred to here is probably sediment being compressed and former a cohesive stone, magma crystalizing, or compression of the latter two types of rocks into different types of rocks. 172.71.124.222 06:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I think in this context it was by up welling magma and they are only rare because plate tectonics and erosion has recycled 99.9X% of them. RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 07:58, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

First the mommy rock and the daddy rock fall in love... 172.71.175.16 15:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

A stork with a very strong neck is involved.172.70.162.161 09:54, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I think there's a cabbage patch involved somehow, but I'm not sure where it fits in. 172.71.31.46 14:51, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Makes me think of the manga Houseki No Kuni (Land of the Lustrous) and how effortlessly it depicts thousands and millions of years passing in a blink. 162.158.159.228 08:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Guess Randall didn't want to acknowledge the results. Can't say I blame him. Caliban (talk) 08:16, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Well it did end in an all black panel... Like his mood. --Kynde (talk) 08:30, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Maybe he thinks she can still win? 172.71.31.39 13:05, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

She can still win. Certain states, like Oregon, changed their voting laws and are still counting and will be a week from now as they wait for mail in ballots, which by law can be counted as long as they were postmarked within 8 days of the election, to be counted. In addition to that, as Vice President in charge of the Senate, she could refuse to certify the election. Seebert (talk) 19:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Refusing to certify the election isn't the same thing as 'winning' (even if certain people might think it is...).172.70.90.199 16:47, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I think everything in this comic speaks that Randall is acutely aware of the results. Meditating on eon-old stones is a mental health exercise. I feel him. - and gave the explanation a try. Transgalactic (talk) 13:49, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I like that title text. It has a poetic quality. (It refers to when various part of animal anatomy first evolved, but does so in a really nice way.) --162.158.74.24 08:47, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd suggest that the explanation should at least include the other interpretation of "farther", namely "farther back in time". I think that's the more obvious one, personally: he's saying these rocks are a billion years old, eyes evolved 500 million years ago and that vast abyss of time "stretches back as far as the eye can see ... and then 500 million years farther" [back]. As in, these rocks existed for 500 million years in a world where there were no eyes. Right? I don't know how the future got involved, it seems to be pretty clearly about the past.ModelD (talk) 14:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that description of 'farther back in time' really seems to make more sense here, since the comic talks about how the rocks were there for roughly that long before eyes existed, and it keeps with the poetic, reflective nature of the rest of the comic, while the future interpretation feels like a bit of a jump from one theme to another. UnbiasedBrigade (talk) 15:03, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I concur. This is the interpretation I had before coming to explainxkcd. I think that efforts to make the cartoon be about current events impose a meaning on it that the cartoonist is not yet ready to express. The cartoon appeared very late, and (speaking of imposing a meaning on a cartoon) I imagine Randall struggled mightily to come up with an idea that was not some variation on a fireball of wrath consuming the USA and everything in it. I would also remove the climate-change reference as an overreaching interpretation. For what it's worth, Randall's living depends on computer use by his audience, and computer use is a massive contributor to anthropogenic climate change. I have read repeatedly that, in order to persuade someone to adopt a desired behavior, the proponent has to model it. In this case, by massive reductions in personal energy usage ... which will simultaneously make your life miserable and put you out of the public eye, where no one can see the correct behavior you're modeling. How I learned to stop worrying and love carbon dioxide. 162.158.42.96 15:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Possibly that was my own doomsday mindset. I see it's been edited to correct this. :-D (N.B.: Fwiw, Randall depending on computers does not mean he can't be worried about and active against climate change.) Transgalactic (talk) 17:21, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Many (most? all?) of us (profess to) worry about topics such as climate change, and sell actions we (think we) have taken to promote "correct" policy and behavior. My point is that, if the actions we sell do not conform to our daily practices, we present ourselves as clueless at best, and deliberately, and self-servingly, hypocritical at worst. Speaking of last Tuesday ... A Doonesbury cartoon, some (egad) decades ago, which I wish I could find, forcefully made the point, by having a Black man respond to Michael D's pontifications about climate change, "You've [deleted] the world with your energy use, so now we don't get to have any?" Ultimately, we will say and do anything that makes us look good to our homies ... until it means me. 172.71.150.179 18:31, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Most of those ideas to promote "correct" policy are stupid. The POINT of prevent climate change is to ensure our civilization can continue. If we stop living, figuratively OR literally, who will we be preserving the climate for? I don't really care what shape we leave the Earth in for cockroaches, besides, they won't mind either, they can adapt. Therefore, we need to find a way how to make climate better (or not as bad as currently predicted) WITHOUT destroying ourselves. Most likely it means new technology, because new technology solved MUCH more problems in history than appeal to people's altruism and better self. -- Hkmaly (talk) 20:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I invite consideration of where the energy, and the raw materials (both heretofore abundant, now no longer), for this miracle new tech are going to come from. Being mindful of this site's purpose, I write no more. 172.68.23.82 15:30, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

What about seawater? There's 33 grams of deuterium in every cubic metre of seawater, and quite interesting amount of gold, copper and other metals. Or maybe we will finally start being able to get energy from Sun, I heard there is some progress in that area :-). Or, we can continue appealing to people's better self until people who don't make us extinct. Europe may be willing to commit economical suicide in name of fight with climate change, but China doesn't show any signs of that and is not alone in that. Or, well, cockroaches. -- Hkmaly (talk) 04:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

There's really no good reason for imaginging the "further" is "further forward" if you've just been talking of looking back. Imagine being given directions to go back towards where you noted a prior landmark and then go further, that wouldn't mean return to here and then go onward again. As such, I've reworded the "future extinction" bit entirely in the other direction (it might mean a different treatment of the "mood explanation" now in the Trivia, but meshes with the comic itself). I pondered adding that, even before 'eyes', there were different phases of light/illumination (and/or shadow) sensitivity that would have meant that day/night (or at least hot vs. cold rocks) and things such as looming predators or overhanging shelter would still have been 'sensed', so being "dark-blind" would have been not necessarily a thing, but instead I just alluded to the Sun still shining (or glowing lava still illuminating, as with the Moon and its pre-fragments whenever they were up above) to aid an actual visit to that era by a time-tourist, and that it's just a selective regression (or a limited degree of retro-posession of any contemporary entity) that leads to "having nothing to see with/by". But to properly expand these extended philosophies in the Explanation would probably clutter up the existing text too much. 172.70.160.219 16:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Um. Pretty sure this comic has nothing to do with the 2024 election. 162.158.174.23 15:14, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems at least mildly relevant. It's a huge, recent event; of a sort that Randall is known to care a lot about; and the meditative mood being evoked seems appropriate. I wouldn't call it an "election comic" or anything, but the trivial is certainly relevant. 172.69.58.132 16:18, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I would not be surprised to see this sort of thing unrelated to the current events (it shares a viewpoint given in such as 1198: Geologist, which is almost worth an in-article back reference), but I also think that it's not unlikely that the "mood" of the piece (looking back into "the black", perhaps) is prompted by what we can assume Randall is feeling about current events. Not quite the old "Sad Comics" category, but reflective, and different from what we might have seen under more jubilant (for Randall, at least, but also for many others) times down the different trouser-leg of time. 172.70.160.219 16:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Oops, I read the 16:14 version https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3008:_Proterozoic_Rocks&oldid=356138 , decided to edit the article and didn't notice that it had already been changed. I don't know if I should remove my edit or merge the 2 edits? Rps (talk) 16:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

If this was my edit (regarding the "Further back"), I might remerge (to my satisfaction) if you haven't already.

I've noticed, recently, that there's occasionally an inadvertent way past Edit Conflicts without a warning (though I got one just here and just now, because of your edit just above!), which I'm sure used to be better handled. But could just be one of those things. 172.70.160.219 16:53, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I removed the climate change stuff from the Trivia section, since it seems so far removed from this comic. Tying the meditative mood of the comic to the presidential elections was a stretch, in my opinion, but I left that portion there, as I could see someone making that connection, especially given Randall's political opinions. 172.71.154.141 (talk) 18:48, 7 November 2024 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This comic shows how rocks are the second-coolest thing ever. (The coolest is obviously SPAAAAAACE) -P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 13:45, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

This is so poetic (and accurate, except for the numbers), that even a Young Earth Creationists cannot stop from saying, "awww." BTW, for those earliest times we repeat extremely ancient oral tradition, saying that "the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep." Totally consistent with this comic. Yamaplos (talk) 16:56, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I was completely baffled/ confused by "2500 to 538.8 million years ago" - what I read was "2500 years ago to 538.8 million years ago," BUT what it means is "2500 million years ago to 538.8 million years ago". I'm a newbie here, so I don't feel like I should edit the actual page Tarlbot (talk) 20:00, 8 November 2024 (UTC) note: four tildes to sign, not three or five