The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (AD 787), Sess. 6: “In the year 5501 Christ our God came to mankind and lived with us for thirty-three years and a little less than five months.”

Anthony,

If you are still praying the Divine Office, and if you pray Prime on December 24th, and if you read the Martyrology, you will find this exquisite and heart enkindling entry:

The Twenty-fifth Day of December

In the year five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created heaven and earth;

In the year two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven from the flood;

In the year two thousand and fifteen from the birthday of Abraham;

In the year one thousand five hundred and ten from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;

In the year one thousand and thirty-two from the anointing of David as king;

In the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;

In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;

In the year seven hundred and fifty-two from the founding of the city of Rome;

In the forty-second year of the rule of Octavian Augustus;

In the sixth age of the world, when the whole world was at peace: [here the voice is raised:]

Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, being pleased to hallow the world by His most gracious coming, having been conceived of the Holy Ghost, and nine months having passed since His conception, having become Man, was born at Bethlehem in Juda of the Virgin Mary.

[All prostrate themselves: at the signal of the superior, they arise.]

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh. A totum duplex feast of the first class.

I'm sure that most people believed in a relatively young earth until a couple hundred years ago.  It was Charles Lyell, a buddy of Darwin, who came up with the old earth nonsense based on bogus geological principles.  There's correspondence between the two men demonstrating that their chief motivation was to debunk Sacred Scripture, and they admittedly made up all kinds of nonsense toward that end.

Old Earth goes hand in hand with evolution.  If evolution happened through random mutations, the possibility and odds of such mutations leading to the complexity of life on earth were so ridiculous that even the layman would figure this out, so they had to throw dates in the (at first) millions and then billions of years out there, numbers so big that people start to imaging that randomness could work itself out into today's complexity of life given enough time.

Modern scientists (the honest ones) have come to realize that even billions of years would not suffice to make it even remotely possible for life to have evolved, so they have now come up with "multiverse" theory, where there are an infinite number of different universes, and we just happen to live in the one where life evolved by chance.  It would take an infinite number to make the odds remotely workable.

Yes, if one were to assume that organic life developed the way it did from random chance, 4.5 billion years, 6 billion years, and many billions of years longer, would not nearly have been enough time for that to happen.

I found this in a Paula essay:

Chronology [B.C.]*

Creation ………………………….. 4004-3
Adam dies………………………… 3073
Enoch translated………………….3016
Seth dies……………….………….. 2961


*  Some dates are approximate.  Most dates are from Ussher and from Ivan Panin, Biblical chronology. Vancouver, 1950. Dates for Abraham and Joseph from David Fry, Hebrew Sages of Ancient Egypt. 2nd ed. American Archive Books, 1997. "Only on Christmas Eve does the Church adopt the Septuagint chronology, according to which the birth of our Savior took place 5000 years after the creation, whereas the Vulgate and the Hebrew texts place only four thousand between the two events. The Church allows liberty on this question." (Dom Guéranger. Liturgical Year. Volume I. Advent. Note on p. 511, for Christmas Eve.)

Noe born……………………………. 2947
Global Deluge……………………... 2348
Tower of Babel and Dispersion.. 2250-2198     
Job …………………….…………. 2100-2200
Noe dies……………….…………. 1997
Abraham born…………………….. 1995
Abraham in Pre-Dynasty Egypt 1896
Abraham dies ..…………………… 1820  … 1765 Hammurabi, King of Babylon (extols Marduk)          Joseph born……………………….. 1744
Joseph Vizier[Egypt 2-3rd Dynasty] 1715  … King Djoser (Zoser) 2-3rd Dynasty
Joseph dies…………….…………. 1634
Moses born ………………………. 1546
Moses at 49         … approximate date of Rig Veda
            6th Dynasty .....………. 1506
Exodus ...........……….………….. 1466    …[Crombette has 1226 for this date]
David born .......……….………… 1060
Saul reigns......…………………… 1031
David dies .......…………………… ..990
Solomon begins to
          build the temple.………… 986
Solomon dies .....………………… 950    … Homer (9th century)
Elias taken………………………... ..854    … Hesiod (8th century)
Hezekiah dies ....…………………. 667    … Thales (624-545)
Manasseh dies ..……….…………. 612    … Anaximander (611-546)
          Isaiah         … Anaximenes (586-526)
Babylonian captivity……………… 556    … Pythagoras (581-497)    … Heraclitus [c 500]
          Jeremiah      Daniel                … Anaxagoras (c 500-428)  … Parmenides [c 515
          Ezechiel           … Democritus (c 460)
Babylonian captivity ends……….. 487    … Plato (427-347)    Aristotle (384-322)
          … Aristarchus (310-230)  Euclid (c 300)
Maccabees ........………………….. 167  … Archimedes (278-212) Hellenistic period (300 BC -
Rome takes Jerusalem…………… 63   to 1453 AD in East)
The Incarnation……………………. 4 or 3 [B.C.]

Chronological Chart of Old Testament Patriarchs and the Cainite Parallels

    Age at death

Adam 930
Abel      -        Cain
Seth 912
Enos 905 Henoch
Cainan 910 Irad
Mahalaleel 895 Maviael
Jared 162
Enoch 365
Methuselah 969 Mathusael
Lamech 777 Lamech

Noe 950                                            Ada      Sella
    (500 years old at the Flood)
                                                                                                   
                                                                                        Jabal        Tubalcain           

Sem 600                                          Jubal
  Arphaxed 338
      Sale 433
      Heber 464
    (Heber remained faithful to God at Babel) Nimrod
        Phaleg 239
            (in whose time the
            lands were divided)
        Reu 239
            Sarug 230
        Nachor 148
                    Thara 150               
                        Abraham 175

The dates of the Sethite patriarchs show clearly that the longevity of men declined drastically after the Flood, whether due to climate changes or other causes is uncertain.

Sem and His Descendants, with the Lands They Settled *

Sem (Shem)

Elam -- Shushan

Asshur -- Assyrians

Arphaxad -- Selah -- Eber ............ Peleg  -- Nahor  -- Abraham -- Israel

        Joktan -- list  includes Sheba

Lud -- Upper Euphrates and Tigris

Aram -- Uz, North Arabia

Crombette says ‘that after the Dispersion, Sem went into the curve of the Euphrates and into the East.

Descended from the Semites are:
Hebrews
Arabs
Syrians
Assyrians, who conquered the original Hamites.
Babylonians, who conquered the original Hamites.
Persians

Ham (Cham) and His Descendants, with the Lands They Settled

Ham (Cham)
Cush ---- Seba --- South Arabia
Havilah --- East of Edom
Sabtah --- South Arabia
Raamah -- Sheba, Southwest Arabia
                  Dedan, Northwest Arabia
Sabtechah
Nimrod  -- founded Sumerian cities
Mizraim
Ludim -- Lydiana
Anamin  -- Northern Egypt -- the Philistines
Lehabim  -- Lybians of Northwestern Egypt
Naphtuhim --  Egyptians of the Nile Delta
Casluhim
Caphtarim  -- Island of Crete*
Phut
Canaan
Sidon, Cyprus and Sidon
Hetti, Hittites in Northern Syria
Jebusite, around Jerusalem
Amorite, from Egypt to Babylonia -- Hammurabi was one of their kings
Girgasite, western Palestine
Hivite, in Gibeon
Arkite, Northeast of Tripoli in Lebanon
Sinite, Phoenician coast
Arvadite, Northern Phoenicia, whaling center, and across into Atlantis and from thence
            to the Americas, a very old world (Cf. Solange Hertz, The Battle for Amerindia)
Zemarite, also Phoenician
Hamathite, on the Orontes River

Descendants of the Hamites are:
Sumerians Chinese
Hittites (from Heth) African Negroes
Phoenicians Mongols
Ethiopians American Indians
Egyptians Eskimos
Canaanites Etruscans

Japheth and His Descendants, with the Lands They Settled

Japheth
Gomer
Ashkenaz -- Indo-European
Riphath -- Indo-European
Togarmah -- Armenians in Asia Minor

Magog -- Mongols, Tartars, Parthians, Huns northeast of the Black Sea

Madai -- Medes south of the Caspian Sea

Javan -- Elishah -- Hellenic Greeks, Corsicans, and Sardinians

Tarshish -- Spain

Kittim -- Island of Cyprus

Dodanim -- Greeks in Hellespont or Rhodes

Tubal -- Northeastern Mesopotamia, and Tibarians

Neshech -- Muski

Tiras -- Western Asia Minor - notorious pirates (!)


Descendants of Japheth

Indo-Europeans Celtic peoples

Russians Greeks

Nordic peoples Latins (Romans)