They tell me the World of life, starting with the Achaean Period, is about four and half million years old.
When I studied Ancient History which had the traditional syllabus of Greek history broadly across the fifth century BCE (496 – 404) and the Roman Period of 122 BCE to 14AD there were some thinkers, and soldiers, whose minds and ethics one read about and thought, ‘I could sit down with these individuals and talk to them right now.’ Like Artists and thinkers who have lived over the last 1000 years of human history from any country any culture, there is a sense that some of them are above their age, open to new ideas and the wonders of thought.
This is why I never think very much of the passing of years and the marking of birthdays even though my friends do mine this weekend. Fifty is nothing. It is not even a nano-second of time.The whole of one human life does not even register. It can never be the length of time that is important but the content of the mind. Because ideas live forever.
And because everyone who has ever lived has been a Modern.