Elon Musk: “Earth is about four and a half billion years old.”

“But that we haven't actually seen any evidence, so I'm not aware of any, suggests that consciousness is extremely rare. If we believe the archaeological record and the standard model of physics, Earth is about four and a half billion years old. Civilization as measured by the first writing is only about 5000 years old. So archaic pre cuneiform in roughly 5500 years ago was the first writing.” (04:40–04:43)

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.