No, not the planet, this time. Hibernicus' cousins thread made me think of this, starting, oddly enough, with his comment about a knight's move being across and then down. From another perspective, the knight could be thought of as moving across and up. My question is:
why do we say "down through the generations" and "down through the ages"? The numbers are getting higher, right? I would rather think of us as generations leading up to whatever pinnacle awaits, not down through the generations, as though there is some unimaginably horrid and final bottom we're going to hit.