This is the famous opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point." (1)

Márquez is taking us back to the beginning of time. "The world was so recent" that even language hadn't quite developed yet—it's like going back to prehistory. The village of Macondo was built on a river bank "that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs." That word "prehistoric" is there for a reason.

Márquez is telling us that he's not only going to rewrite Colombian history, or even South American history: he's going to rewrite human history. And he's going to go back right to the beginning of time to do that.

This passage really messes with our sense of time. The novel begins, "Many years later…" Already, those three words throw us off. Many years later than what? From Colonel Aureliano Buendía discovering ice? Or from something else? Then there are the references to the world being "recent" and to "prehistoric" stones. We are in a time that we recognize and don't recognize at the same time. It's a time that's familiar (after all, we know what adobe houses are), but it's also a prehistoric time.

Márquez is doing this on purpose. History, as imagined by colonizers, is a linear process. A happens, and then B happens, and then C happens, and then D happens. This linear sense of time is very Western. Different cultures have very different understandings of time, and many of them are cyclical, meaning that people believe that time moves in cycles or patterns rather than in a straight line. By messing with our sense of time in this passage, Márquez is taking us out of the sense of historical time that Europeans impose on colonized cultures.