When Does an Event Become History?

And when do we lose our emotional connection to it?

Apologies to my readers (I know there’s at least a handful of you!) for taking so long to put out a new article, sometimes in the new year it just takes a while to get the gears moving again. I’ll do my best to try and have a couple of articles a month going forward, though life being what it is—namely unpredictable—that’s more of a goal, not a promise.

For my third article I’ve decided to think about how long it takes for a significant event to become a historical one. Of course, technically as soon as anything transpires it passes into “history.” But that’s not the sense I mean here. When I ask how long it takes until a historical tragedy or wrong becomes history, I mean how long until it ceases affecting even the direct descendants of those who lived it any more than someone else. 

I think most of us intuitively know when something is history or not. The Moon landing? Not history yet. My parents watched it as children, and hundreds of millions of people around the world are still around who saw it. How about the American Civil War, which ended in 1865? I think most of us would place it pretty firmly in the "history" basket. 

Consider Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul and invasion of Britain, which some of my ancestors were almost certainly directly affected by. It was horrendous for them, with ancient estimates that up to two thirds of Gauls were either killed or enslaved. Even though this number is likely higher than reality, it’s not unreasonable to say that if such occurred today, we would probably label it a genocide. Yet, nobody today cares. Oh, there’s a lot of historical interest in it, but nobody has an emotional connection to any of the suffering and death that occurred. I certainly don’t. This is the sort of thing I’m referring to, when does the emotional connection drop and any remaining interest become disconnected from the lives of the human beings involved?

A counterexample is the Covid pandemic. It affected basically everyone on the planet. Disrupting lives and business, and resulting in a great deal of stress, illness, and death. Even though the main events of the pandemic are now behind us, it cannot be said to have passed into history, because everyone alive still remembers living through it. When then, does something like the Covid pandemic become just another part of history? Specifically, I’m wondering what is the minimum time after which any event, no matter how wonderful or horrible, that it can rightly be called history, and fail to evoke anything more than interest. Not that history (even ancient history) can't evoke emotions, but it isn't the same as having experienced it yourself, or having known someone who did. 

Talking with my family recently while looking at a great photo album my mother put together, we realized how quickly we're forgotten; how quickly we as individuals pass into history. Off the top of my head, I knew the first names of 2 out of 8 greatgrandparents. We have pictures of them, but not of any great-great grandparents. I don't know who any of them were. And so it will likely be with me. My grandkids will know and remember me (fondly I hope). Godwilling I'll even get to meet a few greatgrandkids, who might have some childhood memories of me. But that's it. After they're grown and one day gone themselves, nobody will know who I was. Even if someone looked up an obscure historical document with me in it, or perhaps puts together a family tree, I'll just be a name, a series of facts, and some old photographs.

While at first glance this may seem a bit depressing, it's the way things have gone as long as there have been humans. Really, it's not so bad when you think about it. The people who know you, who experienced you personally will remember you. What does it matter whether strangers (even if they are related) know you or not? 

I think whether an event is history or not comes down to whether there is an emotional connection to people and events, which is how it should be. If there isn’t, it’s just news or history. So how long does it take before something traumatic or eventful (good or bad) becomes history with little or no emotional connection? While debates on this will likely continue to rage, I believe I have a reasonable, commonsense answer. Just as the farthest connections up and down a family tree generally only span four generations (greatgrandparents to greatgrandkids), so it is with personal, emotional connections to events.

How long is a generation? Conventional wisdom says about 25 years, but recent genetic analysis suggests that across the history of our species the number is 26.9 years. Let’s round up and call that 27 years per generation. I suggest that when the youngest person who experienced an event is born, the countdown starts for the event to become nothing but history. When that person's greatgrandkids are born, averaging 81 years later, that's the last living connection to someone who experienced those events and who therefore might feel some emotional connection to them through the connection to their greatgrandparent. Once they're gone, the last living memory with any connection to the event is gone too, and the event in question passes firmly into history. 

How long will those greatgrandkids live? The max average life expectancy right now is about 88 for women in Hong Kong and Macao. In terms of the absolute maximum lifespan, though a few people make it past 110, their numbers are small enough I think we can safely say that after 110 years almost everyone is gone and buried. Incidentally, this view of a generation was shared by the Romans, who created the Ludi saeculares, or Secular Games, to be held every 100 or 110 years. The idea was that anyone would only be able to see these special games once in their lifetime, no matter how long they lived.

Let’s add all this up to figure out the maximum time that there might be a living person with a connection—through their greatgrandparent—to an event. 81 years (youngest person to experience an event till the time their greatgrandkids are born) + 110 years (the maximum age almost any of those greatgrandkids might reach) = 191 years. This is the time after which no one living has a memory of anyone who experienced an event. At this point, we can confidently say that an event passes into history. A couple of centuries essentially.

Certainly, events can become history sooner than this. I mentioned the Covid pandemic earlier, which is definitely not history yet. But does anyone remember in an emotional way the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920? I doubt it. So this couple centuries is the maximum time it takes for something to become a part of history, it can and does happen sooner.

There’s some profound, and perhaps disturbing implications if this is true. I mentioned the American Civil War, which ended 158 years ago, only a few decades shy of the two centuries needed for any event to become history with no real emotional connection. Something else ended in America when that war did: slavery. The enslavement of Africans has undoubtedly left an enormous scar in American society, the effects of which are still playing out today. But a little over 30 years from now, just after 2050, there won’t be any living connections to anyone who could have possibly experienced slavery themselves. What will that mean for American society? It’s hard to say, but I would argue it means something. How about the Holocaust? That is far more recent, with survivors of concentration camps still alive today around the world. But what about in the year AD 2136, a full 191 years after the end of WW2? It’s hard to even ask that question right now, because for me, as for most people today, the Holocaust prompts a visceral, emotional reaction. As it should. But eventually, inevitably, it will pass into history, with no living link left.

None of this means we can’t learn from and appreciate history. The idea that “history is bunk” is ridiculous and even dangerous if taken seriously. But eventually, all things, no matter how wonderful or awful, pass from living memory and into history.

Until next time!