If we compress the entire history of the Earth into one year modern humans appear

• A. A few seconds after midnight on New Year's Eve
• B. A couple of minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve
• C. On New Year's Day
• D. Several hours before midnight on New Year's Eve

Answer: (B)

On a year-long timeline of Earth’s history, events unfold over billions of years, but humans have appeared only very recently. Modern humans emerge roughly 300,000 years ago, which is a tiny fraction of Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history. That tiny fraction translates to only a few minutes before the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve when you compress the entire history into one year. So the best fit is that humans show up a couple of minutes before midnight, not earlier on the calendar year, not at the very end as if just a moment before midnight, and not on New Year’s Day. This illustrates how recent human history is in the grand scale of planetary time.