We are at the very beginning of the Earth, also known as the Hadean Eon, which started 4.6 BILLION years ago.

The reason this time in our planet’s history is called Hadean is all to do with Hades – that’s the name of the ancient Greek god of the underworld, and you can see why it was given that name!

At this time large parts of the surface would have been molten – that’s really, really hot lava! – with frequent volcano eruptions and rocks from space crashing to earth!

Not a great place to live. Which is fine because our earliest ancestors won’t appear for a few billion years yet! No rocks on the earth are quite this old, except for meteorites.

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