Most generally, the past is a term used to indicate the totality of events which occurred before a given point in timeTemplate:Circular definition. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is accessed through memory and recollection. In addition, human beings have recorded the past since the advent of written language.
The past is the object of such fields as history, archaeology, archaeoastronomy, chronology, geology, (historical geology), historical linguistics, law, ontology, paleontology, paleobotany, paleoethnobotany, palaeogeography, paleoclimatology, and cosmology.
Famous quotes containing the word past:
“Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)