Everything we are today dates from the late Edwardian era. That era set the standards for what we have to work with in science, and most forms of useful technology we have now were in place or at least in their infancy in those days. European literature reached its heights then. The world was fully explored and mapped by then. In short, the Edwardian era defines us. It was the apex of European civilization in the same sense that the era of Pericles was the apex of Ancient Greek civilization. Anything you can’t trace to that era is almost certainly barbarism. Nothing important that wasn’t an obvious downfall has happened since then.