Page 214 - A Historical Lie: The Stone Age

A HISTORICAL LIE: THE STONE AGE

lates his perception of time by comparing the "present" moment with
what he holds in memory. If he doesn't make this comparison, he can
have no perception of time either.
Renowned physicist Julian Barbour defines time in this way:
Time is nothing but a measure of the changing positions of objects. A
pendulum swings, the hands on a clock advance. 82
Briefly, time comes about as a result of comparisons of data
stored in the brain. If man had no memory, his brain could not make
such interpretations and therefore, he would never form any percep-

tions of time. One determines himself to be thirty years old, only be-
cause he has accumulated information pertaining to those thirty
years. If his memory did not exist, then he could not think of any
such preceding period and would experience only the single "mo-
ment" in which he was living.

Our Concept of the "Past" Is Merely Information in

Our Memories
Because of suggestions we receive, we think we live in separate
divisions of time called past, present and future. However, the only
reason we have a concept of "past" (as explained earlier) is that vari-
ous events have been placed in our memories. For example, we re-

call the moment we enrolled in primary school and therefore
perceive it as an event in the past. However, future events are not in
our memories. Therefore, we regard these things we don't yet know
about as events that we'll experience in the future. But just as the
past has been experienced from our point of view, so has the future.
But because these events have not been supplied to our memories,
we cannot know them.

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