A socially defined place, like a single city or an entire country, is limited in space, surrounded by a boundary or a border. It is also limited in time because it has a beginning and an end. We live through only a very small fraction of the history of a city. However, a regime within a city can have a very short duration. The Paris Commune of 1871 lasted for 72 days, just over 10 weeks.
A Time Patrol historian can:
travel to any moment of that 72-day period;
live through the entire period several times in different disguises both within and outside of Paris;
study, in person, the entire build-up to and outcome from the Commune.
Thus, with time travel, it would be possible to spend many years in intensive study of a single event, its consequences and significance.
3 comments:
Cities don't -necessarily- have ends.
Eg., Jericho has been inhabited since 9000 BCE -- more than 11,000 years -- and still is now.
When Jericho was first inhabited, you could still walk across "Doggerland" to get to what's now Britain -- and could for another 2,500 years before it flooded.
Jericho was 6,500 years old when the Pyramid of Cheops was built.
That is amazing but Jericho will eventually have an end.
Kaor, Paul!
But possibly not for a very long time.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment