[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Anomalocaris]

if chaucer dined without human companions then his menu is still in principle knowable to any rats waiting to dine on the scrap. :p

I think in principle knowable doesn’t imply any actual sentient knower. it only requires the event to be encoded in some form, for example a collection of photons zipping through space, the maps back to the event in a way that is sufficiently unique such that in principle, if a intelligent knower with unlimited access to all physically feasible means is so inclined, he could reconstruct the details of the event