Gneiss

This metamorphic rock is pronounced just like “nice,” which is quite fitting as it is, indeed, very nice. It also can be very old. There’s an outcropping of gneiss in a remote part of Canada that, at over 4 billion years old, is the oldest piece of the Earth’s crust geologists are aware of to date. That chunk of gneiss doesn’t just predate humanity; it predates ALL life on Earth, by a long shot. Before dinosaurs, fish, plants, or even paramecia, before anything you’d recognize that makes the Earth our home, that gneiss was there. It was even there before our planet had oxygen, meaning no atmosphere and no blue sky. The Earth has changed beyond recognition since then, and that gneiss was there for it all. As if in celebration of its billions of birthdays, gneiss is generally found with bands of alternating light and dark, making it look rather like a layer cake. Maybe, after all these years, it decided it deserved a party. What’s far more likely is that this rock is old enough and wise enough to have finally sorted itself out.