Question: Why the rocks survive centuries and the people die very quickly ?

Hi Mada, that is a very good question! Actually it is even more crazy: rocks can survive for millions, even billions of years, so we humans are gone in the blink of an eye in comparison to that.

I don’t know if i can give you a completely correct answer, since i am no biologist and only know things about rocks, but i will try.

Human beings are made of living tissue. we need air to breath and food to eat and water to drink, all of this is needed just to provide us energy to keep on living. You can compare it to a computer, or a car: you need to keep refueling it with gas or electricity to keep it going. At the same time there are many parts of the ‘machine’ that have to do a lot of work and after a while start to get worse. Your computer becomes slower, starts to get more problems, and at some time doesn’t want to start anymore. same for your car, and the same happens to your body actually. After 60-70-80 years of hard work that your body has to do all the time to keep you alive and kicking things start to wear out, cause problems, you are more vulnerable for things from outside (diceases) and some day your body stops working and you die. With all the really complex processes that happen in your body every second it is actually quite amazing that so many bodies last for such a long time and people get so old.

As for rocks, they don’t live, they don’t need energy, they can just lay there and not too much is happening to them. They don’t have a ‘machine’ that needs to keep going and at some point starts to have problems. you can compare it to a dead body.

But then you will probably say: but hey, dead bodies will rot and will be gone within a few centuries, how come that doesn’t happen to rocks?! And you are completely right! actually what happens to rocks and dead bodies is more or less the same, but with dead bodies it goes much faster. A body is soft and great food for bacterias and other creatures, so it will get more or less eaten over time and return as soil. This also happens to rocks. Rocks get eaten by bacteria, making it the soil the plants grow on, or wind, water or ice will make rocks smaller. The only difference is that rocks are generally much bigger and much harder, so it is much more difficult to ‘eat’ them, or break them. So in the end, the same happens to (dead) humans as to rocks, but with rocks this all goes much slower and that’s why rocks survive much, much longer than people.

I hope this answers your question! if so, please vote for me 🙂 and if there is still anything unclear let me know!