Gigasecond facts for kids

A gigasecond (symbol: Gs) is a very long unit of time. It means one billion (1,000,000,000) seconds! To give you an idea, one gigasecond is about 31.7 years.

If you think about even longer times:

• About 3.16 Gs is roughly one century (100 years).
• About 31.6 Gs is roughly one millennium (1,000 years).

This page will help you understand how long a gigasecond is by looking at different events and periods in history, from a few hundred years to thousands of years.

Times in Gigaseconds

Events from a Few Hundred Years Ago

• 369 years – This is how long it has been since the famous Taj Mahal was built in India.
• 413 years – This is how long it has been since the King James Bible was first published.
• 532 years – This is how long it has been since Christopher Columbus first reached the New World.
• 569 years – This is how long it has been since the first Gutenberg Bible was printed, which was a huge step for books!
• 790 years – This is how long the Zhou Dynasty lasted in China. It was the longest dynasty in Chinese history.
• 1,945 years – This is how long it has been since the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.

Events from Over a Thousand Years Ago

• 2,024 years – This is how long it has been since the birth of Jesus, according to historical calculations.
• 2,067 years – This is how long it has been since the assassination of Julius Caesar, a famous Roman leader.
• 2,346 years – This is how long it has been since the death of Alexander the Great, one of history's greatest military commanders.
• 2,422 years – This is how long it has been since the death of Socrates, a very important ancient Greek philosopher.
• 2,461 years – This is how old the Parthenon is, a famous ancient temple in Greece.
• 2,776 years – This is how long it has been since the city of Rome was founded, according to legend.

Ancient Times and Natural Lifespans

• 3,200 years – This is roughly how long ago the Bronze Age collapse happened in Greece, leading to the start of the Iron Age.
• 3,800 years – This is about how long ago alphabetic writing first began. This was a big step in how people communicated!
• 4,200 years – This is how long ago the ancient monument of Stonehenge was completed in England.
• 4,569 years – This is how long ago the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt, one of the oldest wonders of the world.
• 4,851 years – This is the age of the oldest known living plant, a bristle-cone pine tree named Methuselah.
• 5,715 years – This is the half-life of Carbon-14. This is important because scientists use it to figure out the age of ancient things.
• 6,500 years – This is about how long ago the wheel was invented, which changed transportation forever.
• 11,000 years – This is how long ago the city of Jericho was founded, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
• 12,000 years – This is about how long ago the Pleistocene Epoch ended and the Holocene Epoch began. It also marks the start of the Neolithic Age, when humans began farming.
• 21,000 years – This is how long ago the Last Glacial Maximum occurred, which was the coldest part of the last ice age.
• 29,000 years – This is how long ago Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) became extinct.