Why can’t the actions of people of the past be assessed from the standpoint of the present?

Because in the past there were other orders and moral norms, in this connection, they cannot be judged from the position of modernity. For example, even in hoary antiquity in Babylon it was considered normal that any serious misconduct was punished with the death penalty or bodily harm, since the laws of that time said that the victim had to inflict the same injuries that he received from a criminal. True, on the other hand, such laws supported the bribe system.