Historical consciousness first appeared in human beings as a form of narrative consciousness. The author discusses Piaget and his discussion of primitive thought in children and infants. Piaget also proposed a typical sequence of developmental stages. Most important for the author, however, is Piaget’s notion of temporal consciousness. Piaget discovered that children could not understand both the reversibility of actions and the irreversibility of time. To understand time, one must be able to detach oneself from the present and anticipate the future based on regularities constructed in the past. Children tend to learn the term “before” sooner and more easily than the term “later.” The author states that one could demonstrate children’s experience of time, irrespective of the social constructions of time based on cyclic or linear nature, in relation to their understanding of “before.” For children this understanding of the past as the past, which is grounded in the understanding of the reversibility of action, would provide evidence of an ontogenetic origin of historical consciousness.