Knowledge of dates is, primarily a tool for the organization
of facts. While dates are arbitrary in themselves---for a given event might have
fallen the day before or after on chance---when assigned to a collection of
events they provide the basis for chronology which then allows for notions of
logical progression and from there a story – the most persistent structure for
human memory storage. Nassim Taleb’s denunciations of the human fixation on story-making
aside, if we want students to learn history, they need, as in all other areas
of learning, a meaningful framework on which they can seat new ideas. Stories
provide such a framework, and dates are instrumental to their formation when
the parts of those stories, given piecemeal in books and lectures, must be put
back together.
