As a character says in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Crossing. He was simply a messenger. He had no faith in the power of men to act wisely in their behalf. It was his view rather that every act soon eluded the grasp of its propagator to be swept away in a clamorous tide of unforeseen consequence. The acceptance of deep time also means the end of history as a narrative of the struggle for a better world.
History ceases to be a story, and disintegrates into myriad stories with no unifying centre.
In this situation, historians can be bards or statisticians, elegists or satirists, lyricists or moralists, but they cannot pretend that their discipline is able to confer meaning on the past and hope for the future in the grand ways that were once taken for granted.