Seeds

Historically, seeds planted earlier bear fruit later. Poul Anderson makes this point often. In The Time Patrol (New York, 1991), the Roman Empire

"...leaves behind, scattered through the wreckage, books, technologies, faiths, ideas, memories of what once was, stuff for later generations to salvage and treasure and build with again. And among the memories is that there was, for a while, a life not given over entirely to naked survival." (p. 376)

A Time Patrolman based in ancient Tyre is:

" '...convinced that the Greeks developed their democratic institutions under strong Phoenician influence, mainly Tyrian - and where will your country or mine get those ideas from, except from the Greeks?' " (p. 157)

An obscure Pagan goddess influences the symbolism of the Virgin Mary (p. 398).

In The Dancer From Atlantis (London, 1977), Duncan Reid tells Erissa:

" 'A thousand years hence, Athens shines in a glory that will gladden the rest of mankind's time on earth. And its secret seed is that heritage it got from your people.' " (p. 170)

At the end of The Corridors Of Time (London, 1968), Malcolm Lockridge thinks of the Bronze Age:

"...the relics that afterward remained did not show burning, slaughter, or enslavement...the Northern races become one...widely would they fare...America, where the Indians were to tell of a wise kindly god and of a goddess named Flower Feather...the first land the world ever saw which was born strong and free...Through every century to come, the forgotten truth that men had once known generations of gladness must abide and subtly work. Those who built the ultimate tomorrow might well come back...and learn.' " (pp. 222-223)

Rearranging these subtle influences into chronological order, we get:

the Bronze Age;
Minoan civilisation;
the Phoenicians;
the Roman Empire;
Northern European Paganism.