The value of history - Keys to ages gift-wrapped in time

IF YOU say something was active in 1,200 BC, it is difficult to get your head around the absolute immensity of the time gap; when you say something or someone was active 3,207 years ago, it becomes even more difficult.

Something as remote and distant as an active community from more than 3,000 years ago challenges our ability to comprehend that we are part of the same continuum. That challenge is so difficult that some people have taken comfort in the belief that humanity was created at 2.30 on a Tuesday — or was it eight o’clock on a Thursday? — about 2,300 years ago.

If you try to define the gap in terms of lifetimes, generations or even the briefest consideration of the range of human achievement, it is bound to lead to a conclusion that a single lifetime is a terribly transient, fluttering thing; the tiniest trembling in an immense project.