In the same way that we are ignorant of our distant future; they had no
knowledge, no idea, no vision, no dream, no fantasy that two millennia hence there would be an increasingly global and
interconnected culture and
economy of 7 billion people, world wars and holocausts encompassing and killing and making refugees of millions, staggering accomplishments in medicine and engineering and transportation and communication, and the development of sciences and mathematics and technologies that did not and could not exist in their time and that they could not have comprehended.