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The Earth began as a twinkle in the Solar Nebula's eye some 4.5 billion years ago and it - along with the rest of the planets, asteroids, meteors, comets - formed, it is thought, through the tendency of matter to clump together, ever more until finally there were substantial bodies, the planets and their moons, sweeping up all left-overs in their orbits. During this era, approximately one billion years long, the newly-borning Earth was pummeled mercilessly by these left-overs. This was the so-called "Hadean Period" (and well named at that!), a "hell-ish" time indeed when the Earth's surface was periodically broiled, flash-fried so to speak. Incoming asteroids of sufficient size would actually vaporize, themselves and the part of the surface they impacted and this would turn into a seering plasma that would tsusami around the globe - not a pretty picture. Not to mention volcanic eruptions.This made it a little hard, one would think, for life to get a toehold on the young planet's surface.