* Only a few hundred years ago, the general belief in the West was that the Earth was a few thousand years old, and that all the organisms of the Earth had existed in their present forms from the creation of the world. By the early 19th century, this abbreviated and static vision of the world was beginning to erode; by the end of that century, it was understood that the Earth was immensely old, and that the organisms on the planet had emerged through changes -- by evolution -- from a common origin of life. This document provides a history of life on Earth.
