When thinking of how long ago is actually "ancient history"

Remember that two overlapping lifespans can range from 140-200 years.

This means that a person born 200 years ago could have spoken to someone still alive.

200 years is how long a firsthand experience can live passed from one person to just one other.

We need to understand and comprehend that up to 200 years ago, for practical purposes, should be considered recent history.

Doing this would help us understand our society better.

If we thought of "recently" as a much larger block of time than we do, we would be more attuned to large scale trends and could trace the effects of policy more clearly to their origins.

That our concept of "olden days" begins so close to now hinders us.

When we think of things in the distant past, we detach ourselves from them.

Those histories seem to involve a totally different kind of people with totally different lives who thought totally different kinds of things.

But they weren't.

They were just like us.

That people from 200 years ago (despite a lack of our technology) were not noticeably different from us wouldn't seem like a particularly interesting take if we thought of 2020, 1920 and 1820 as all "recent history"

Cause it was.

If an act taken by someone born 200 years ago could have directly and personally impacted a person still living today, then the events of 200 years ago are recent.

They're active.

They're less "history" than scenes from the last episode.

From an appropriately broad perspective, America as a nation was born just a little beyond recently.

It's not very old at all. And what we think of revered, time-honored traditions are historically a flash in the pan.

And when you think of it that way things make more sense.

Slavery ended 150 years ago.