Why is it that you can go back in time as you go deeper in the Earth? Where do all the layers of dirt and rock come from? Is the earth getting bigger?  We live in the Holocene era.  This era of time is near the surface.  But millions of years in the future someone will be digging down to our time, to see what we were like, what refuge we left behind, what records of our primitive behaviors, our wars, our industry, our pollution, and our lives and entertainment.

But back to the question, does the Earth get fatter?  Well not really, the Earth is recycling, it brings it’s core through volcanic action lava and ash to layer over the surface.  Water crushes rock and deposits it from rivers and glaciers move boulders, and rock and dirt is displaced, and continents move, creating mountain ranges that give us majestic views.  The layering of one continent over another drives them to grand heights and layers of earth below.  Our planet is living and breathing at a metabolism much lower than we can sometimes comprehend.  But it is alive and it will have its say about our era, and sometime in its lifetime it will bury us deep, deep enough that we will start over and find our way towards a new era, billions of years from now.