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There are not many of them, all things considered: the truly old. Even on this planet, in this age, when people consider a mere hundred years or a thousand, to be an unusual span.
There are, for example, less than ten thousand humanoid individuals alive on this planet today who have personal memories of the saber-toothed tiger, the megatherium, the cave bear.
There are today less than a thousand who walked the streets of Atlantis.
There are less than five hundred living humans who remember the human civilizations that predated the great lizards.
There are roughly seventy people walking the earth, human to all appearances (and in a few cases, to all medical tests currently available), who were alive before the earth had begun to congeal from gas and dust.
How well do you know your neighbors? Your friends? Your lovers?
-- Neil Gaiman. The Sandman: Brief Lives
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Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
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