The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” Mark Twain once said, a reference to the patterns of history, perceived anecdotally. Today, a new field is coalescing around the notion that historical patterns are, to some degree, measurable, and that the future can, also to some degree, be predicted. Researchers involved in the field call it “cliodynamics” after Clio, the Greek muse of history.

With just a glimpse, early Earth could almost be mistaken for a contemporary — but lifeless — landscape. A vast ocean swept shores in cycles, wind and rain chipped at cliffs, while vents and volcanoes leaked fresh compounds. Yet Earth’s features and rhythms both above and below its surface did differ, often operating much more chaotically than those they’ve settled into over the eons.

Richard Lenski has a front-row seat in the arena of evolution. Back in 1988, he put 12 genetically identical strains of the bacteria E. coli in 12 flasks. He and his students then kept the bacteria on a glucose diet while the separate populations reproduced at a rate of more than six generations per day. Every 500 generations, they captured samples from each population and froze them for later comparison and experimentation.