Past

The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is accessed through memory and recollection.

The "past" is also used to define a time that is a certain number of minute before or after a particular hour, as in "We left the party at half-past twelve.

Nineteenth-century British author Charles Dickens[11] created one of the best-known fictional personifications of the "past" in his short book, "A Christmas Carol."

In the story, the Ghost of Christmas Past is an apparition that shows the main character, a cold-hearted and tight-fisted man named Ebenezer Scrooge, vignettes from his childhood and early adult life to teach him that joy does not necessarily come from wealth.

[12] The past is the object of study within such fields as time, life, history, nostalgia, archaeology, archaeoastronomy, chronology, geology, historical geology, historical linguistics, ontology, paleontology, paleobotany, paleoethnobotany, palaeogeography, paleoclimatology, etymology and physical cosmology.