The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection

by Tamim Ansary

What all these social streams and cultural currents shared was a tendency to view the world in terms of progress and regress. In this narrative, time was linear but had no endpoint. The momentum of history was forward flowing but could at times slip backward. When it did regress, humanity had to stem the slippage, reverse the direction, and get the forward motion going again. What was slippage and what was forward motion might be open to argument, but progress was the ultimate goal of human effort, and there was no final destination: tomorrow could always be better than today, always. Progress was at the core of the faith that began to knit together a new civilization here at the western edges of Europe. No doubt many people still believed sincerely in a day of judgment—when they thought about it. But how many people thought about it as a normal part of their everyday lives? Fewer and fewer, one suspects. Whereas progress? Pretty much everyone was focused on making progress, all day, every day—and on stemming regress when they felt slippage happening.