“All these were honoured in their generations, and were the glory of their times.”
Ben Sira, c. 180 BC · Jerusalem scribe, author of the Book of Sirach
Chapter 5
On Those Who Came Before
“Enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers.”
Book of Job, c. 500 BC · the speech of Bildad
Asked what they had learned in a long life that the young should know, more than a thousand Americans aged 65 and older pointed to relationships, time and honesty far more often than to money or career.
Cornell Legacy Project, 2012 · Karl Pillemer's interviews with over 1,000 Americans aged 65 to 100 and beyond
“No one shall ever persuade me that your father and your grandfathers would have attempted such lofty deeds, had they not seen in their minds that future ages concerned them.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 44 BC · Roman orator, writing in the voice of Cato the Elder
“An old man was in the world before a chief was born.”
Akan proverb, 1916 · Asante, Ghana, collected in the field before 1916
“The ancients see not the modern moon; but the modern moon shone on the ancients.”
Chinese proverb, 1875 · collected in north China in the nineteenth century
“He who is greedy of credit after his death does not consider that they by whom he is remembered shall soon be dead, and they likewise that succeed those.”
Marcus Aurelius, c. 175 AD · Roman emperor writing privately to himself
Among the Hadza of Tanzania, the harder a grandmother foraged, the faster her daughter's children grew. Researchers proposed that the long human life after childbearing exists because grandmothers feed the young.
Kristen Hawkes and colleagues, 1998 · the grandmother hypothesis, based on Hadza foraging data
In Finnish and Canadian church records spanning two centuries, women who lived on after childbearing had more grandchildren who survived. For every decade a grandmother lived nearby, the family grew.
Mirkka Lahdenpera and colleagues, 2004 · analysis of pre-industrial Finnish and Canadian parish records
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