Critical Faculties

A not-so-brief history of time

Historian Dan Smail wants his colleagues to push the clock back — way back.

Time clock. (Dan Zedek) Dan Zedek

By Christopher Shea

February 26, 2006

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DAN SMAIL, a medievalist who arrived last month at Harvard's history department, is a time revolutionary. Historians, Smail says, are in thrall to a chronology of the human race that is, by now, embarrassingly out of date. He wants to move the start date of introductory history courses back, oh, 100,000 years or so. (Full article: 869 words)