One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite professors (that I'm about to butcher) was
"No one in history thought they were living in history. They were just... living; it's easy for us to look back in the present and think of two people in history as contemporaries and ask 'why didn't he learn from the mistakes of this guy? Surely they knew each other, they're both right here together in this book. Why didn't he just run over to page 43 and ask if it was a good idea to invade in the winter?"