Saeculum

What does the phrase ‘living memory’ conjure for you?
 
Merriam-Webster defines saeculum as the length of time that something can be remembered by people who are still alive. For example, there are many people alive today who can remember 9/11 and what they were doing when they heard the news. However, at some point in the future, there will be no one alive who has a ‘living memory’ of 9/11. Every such event has its saeculum.
 
On a broader scale, a saeculum extends from the birth of oldest person alive today until the death of the last person who is alive today. In brief, at the end of a saeculum there is a complete renewal of the human population.
 
What is the origin of the word saeculum? One theory suggests that the word saeculum has its origins in the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root se (to sew seeds). Another theory suggests saeculum has its origins in Proto-Italic sai-tlo (to tie, to bind; sinew). In any case, Latin saeculum means a span of time, a lifetime, a generation. Saeculum was often synonymous with the beginning and end of a political era or political dynasty during the Roman Empire.
 
Latin saeculum meant the time period of ‘one hundred years’, give or take. In contrast, Latin centuria (the origin of the word century) meant any group of one hundred things of one kind; e.g., one hundred acres or one hundred soldiers—but not one hundred years. The English word century, meaning any period of one hundred years, is from the 1650s.
 
Latin saeculum is the origin of Latin saecularis (worldly, pertaining to a generation or an age) and the word secular (living in the world; belonging to the state not the church) which came to English around 1300.
 
Rebecca Solnit suggests that the life span of trees is another way to describe a saeculum beyond the realm of the human.
 
A thought and some questions: My grandfather told me about a traumatic experience that he had as a child. His story about this experience became part of my memory of him. Does his living memory become part of my living memory? Can a story, like a tree, have a saeculum?
 
Image: A 1,000 year old yew tree, England. Wikipedia.

Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/

Solnit, R. (2021). Orwell’s Roses. New York: Viking, 6.