Soil is currently facing serious pollution, erosion, and degradation owing to global change, threatening the ecosystem stability and food security of China. Quantifying soil formation and evolution (time, rate, etc.) is a critical scientific issue in Earth sciences. Meteoric radioactive isotope ¹⁰Be (hereinafter referred to as meteoric ¹⁰Be) serves as a natural tracer, and its inventory in soil is controlled by soil age, surface erosion, and chemical weathering processes. Therefore, meteoric ¹⁰Be is an effective tool for quantitatively tracing soil formation and evolution over ten million years and has broad application prospects. First, this study summarizes and reviews the latest progress in the production, delivery, and deposition of meteoric ¹⁰Be in the Earth atmosphere, as well as its accumulation and migration in the soil profile. Reasonable estimation of the long-term deposition rate of meteoric ¹⁰Be and its migration to weathering zones are important challenges that urgently require resolution. Second, this study introduces the main methods used by meteoric ¹⁰Be to estimate the soil formation (residence) age and formation rate, indicating soil erosion and transportation on hill slopes. The key premise for applying meteoric ¹⁰Be technology is an understanding of the geological and environmental processes in the study area and a rational assessment of the calculation model. With the rapid development of accelerator mass spectrometry analysis capabilities in China, the widespread application of meteoric ¹⁰Be technology in quantitative research on soil evolution has helped solve problems such as predicting environmental ecosystem evolution and soil conservation on arable land.