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Deep time is the concept of geologic time first recognized by James Hutton in the late 1700s that Earth is very old. In Hutton's words, that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. Later discoveries by physicists and geologists have established the age of the Earth as billions of years old with an exceedingly long history of development and change. The comprehension of geologic history and the history of life requires an understanding of deep time which is not easily grasped without deep thought and study. Deep time contrasts with creationism and some other creation mythologies which view Earth history as occupying only a few thousands of years.
The phrase deep time was apparently first used by writer John McPhee in his 1981 geologic book Basin and Range ISBN 0-374-10914-1. Deep time is the subject of a book by physicist Gregory Benford, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia, 1999, Avon, ISBN 0-380-97537-8. It is also the subject in a different view by Henry Gee, In Search of Deep Time Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life , 1999, Free Press, ISBN 0-684-85421-X.
Deep Time is also a phrase used in experiential deep ecology workshops run by Joanna Macy, to express the approach of using guided meditations to visualise contact between ancestors and descendants of those involved in the exercise.
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