  The angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system was initially dominated by
Earth's rotation with a short solar day of around 5 hours duration. Since then,
Earth gradually transferred angular momentum through tidal friction to the
orbit of the Moon, resulting in an increasing orbital radius and a deceleration
of Earth's rotation. Geologic observations of tidal deposits can be used to
verify and constrain models of lunar orbital evolution. In this work we
reexamine the oldest tidal record suitable for analysis from the Moodies Group,
South Africa, with an age of 3.22 billion years. Time frequency analysis of the
series of thicknesses of the sandstone-shale layers yields a periodicity of
15.0 layers, taking into account the possibility of missing laminae. Assuming a
mixed tidal system, the duration of two neap-spring-neap cycles was 30.0 lunar
days for dominant semidiurnal or 30.0 sidereal days for dominant diurnal tides.
We derive the relationship between this observation and the past Earth-Moon
distance and re-visit related published work. We find that the Earth-Moon
distance 3.2 billion years ago was about 70% of today's value. The Archean
solar day was around 13 hours long. The ratio of solar to lunar tide-raising
torque controls the leakage of angular momentum from the Earth-Moon system, but
deviation from the assumed ratio of 0.211 results in only moderate changes. A
duration of a postulated 21-hour atmospheric resonance shorter than 200 million
years would be consistent with our observation; it would significantly alter
Earth-Moon distance.
