I Once Knew a Man Who Knew a Man...

"I once new a man whose father was born when Jefferson was president of the United States."

This interesting, if somewhat prosaic statement, actually holds a wealth of historical promise. In fact, the man I knew, c. 1940, was my great-grandfather at about age 90. His father was born in 1803 during Thomas Jefferson's first term. Looking at the past in this manner demonstrates that three individual lifetimes link someone living in 2011 to almost the entire time span of our Republic.

I consider this simple chronological approach to history as using what might be regarded as giant steps through the wilderness of days keeping the past from us. Consider:

That 1803 man might have known a woman who also had known an elderly grand-parent and that person's parent was born when Shakespeare was writing King Lear and MacBeth in 1605 . Thus the addition of only three more human existences gets us back to the Golden Age of the Elizabethan Era. So now we have just six people and the continuity covers almost five hundred years of Western history.

Add three more long lived ancestors; it's 1415 and the English forces are victorious over the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

Just three more and, viola!...it's 1215 and Magna Carta!

In summary:
Three human lives starting with the author's own in 2011 covers US history back to the founding fathers.

Six lives takes us to Shakespeare.

Nine to Agincourt.

and twelve lifetimes...the Magna Carta. The beginning of much we hold dear in the history of the West.

I've only touched upon our own Western History. Scholars and history buffs everywhere might use the same technique to retreive their own ages from what appears as a dauntingly remote and arcane past.