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The answer is debated amongst geologists, astrologists and palaeontologists - the earliest period in life's history is the Archean eon, when the first proto-cells were thought to have formed. The earliest period there, is the Eoarchean - 4200 - 4400 million years ago. However, the earliest eon is the Hadean, which encompasses the formation of the Earth as celestial body 4600 million years ago, up to 4200 million years ago. The earth was formed by accretion (gravitational attraction of smaller bodies, to form a central object of greater mass, thus attracting more smaller bodies, and so on), within 10 - 20 million years, so, other than describing this period of Earth's history as 'Proto-Earth', there isn't really a way of classifying even earlier stages, unless you are willing to look into the stages of accretion in forming planets. (The earliest stage would probably be a 'proto-planetary disk' stage, which was itself formed as a by-product of the formation of the sun, followed by a kilometre-wide planetisimal, and then a Mars sized 'embryo', growing progressively. In this sense, the Earth and the Sun are descended from the same Giant Molecular Cloud, or GMC.)

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12y ago

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