Monday, 5th of Sol, 1012 A.C.
Magically amplifying his voice, the New Canterlonian professor began to dictate to his class,
"Greetings, students. Today is an exciting day, for we have some raw material to go over, a genuine primary source that was just recently discovered and translated from Old-Equine. Currently, no journals or academic papers have published anything on these documents so any insights we have in this classroom will be one hundred percent original. Very exciting stuff, really. I myself haven't gone over them in detail yet as I thought it would be a good experience if I heard this new information at the same time as all of you. Before we get started, I'd like to speak a few words."
A murmur spread throughout the lecture hall as the university students in the historical studies department realized that they were witnessing a new addition to the annals of time, something that happened rarely, if ever in a pony's lifetime.
Ahem...
"Ponies in space.
To say such a thing is no longer the silliest of notions- with recent advancements in magic and technology, ponies have been able to accomplish things only dreamed of as fantasy, perhaps never even dreamed of at all before the current century. Once upon a time it was only the strongest of unicorns who could bear themselves for a few moments against the pull of gravity, to observe what was happening beyond our atmosphere. Even then, the most powerful of magic could only perform as a shield for a few moments against the harsh environment of space before that pony had to touch down against the surface of our planet. Remember, we're talking about ponies who had advanced to the 5th and 6th order of magical prowess. Think about that! These days, any ordinary earth pony can board a craft and, with the proper training, use instruments capable of measuring fluctuations in energy and radiation that are unobservable to the naked eye. Progress is astonishing and simply makes the way of life in the past more fascinating."
After the cataclysm, much information was lost about the era of Celestia. It is true, some writings survived to help us get to where we are, though some is still just being discovered! Amazingly enough, we're dating these documents to the very year of Celestia's disappearance, what we call 0 A.C."
Understanding events from an historical context is important. Until recent discoveries, only legends ever told us about what was happening during the last millennia, when somepony named Celestia was liege over all of Ponity. Most of what we truly know about her and her rule was found a few years ago in the fragmented documents of her protegee, Twilight Sparkle, though the the decay of time prevented her full works from being recovered. As helpful as those papers were towards our understanding the past, her focus was mainly on the expansion of magical theory and the combination of magic and technology. Those contributions are why we have many of the things that we benefit from today, but her forte was not in the recording of events and much of what we assume about the past is taken from the context of her work, rather than her direct words, thus there is much that we do not know."
Recently, certain manuscripts were found in a large tomb, along with the full treasures of a nation of Buffalo (creatures that common wisdom told us were illiterate and savage, when they still existed!) sealed in around them. Obviously, if these manuscripts are before us now, conventional wisdom is probably mistaken and this look back into the history of Equestria could shed details on the Age of Celestia that we never knew about."
So! Let's take a gander, shall we?"