How Long Ago Did Humans Emerge? Putting Today Into Perspective.

Edited from a timeline in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari:

Years Before The Present
3.8 billion	Emergence of organisms
6 million	Last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees
2.5 million	Evolution of the genus Homo in Africa.  First stone tools
2 million	Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia. Evolution of different human species
500,000	Neanderthals evolve in Europe and the Middle East
300,000	Daily usage of fire
70,000	Emergence of fictive language. Sapiens spread out of Africa
30,000	Extinction of Neanderthals
16,000	Sapiens settle America. Extinction of American megafauna
13,000	Extinction of Homo floresiensis. Homo sapiens the only surviving human species.
12,000	The Agricultural Revolution. Domestication of plants and animals. Permanent  settlements.

Let's put the US experiment in democracy in perspective.  Let's step back from 24 hour cable news that requires sensationalizing the unimportant to keep viewers watching.  Let's step back from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram which make what happened 10 seconds ago the most important event in history.  Until the next post five seconds later.  Sapiens destructive nature has sped up the destruction of the environment that we depend on, but not quite that much.

But let's also pay attention to the fact that where sapiens go, other species go extinct.  I've abbreviated the timeline from Sapiens.  I've left out the last 5000 years.