aha! But what is early on? We're at 4.5 billion years right now, and that seems like a very long time indeed... but think about what our perspective is... a piddly 90 years... maybe even 5000 if we look at recorded history... let's be generous and say 20,000 since we got to the tribal stage (spore spore spore... I bloody breathe it). So our frame of perspective, our sense of 'early' and 'late' could pass by entirely something like 200,000 times since the very beginning. This might make us think it's well under way but what if a system takes something on the order 20 billion years to stabilize.
Actually, I trust what you've said and think that despite the perspective thing we are indeed well under way. But it's neat to think of the alternatives.
