I have never researched the timeline properly to understand at which point the concept/code got ditched, but it was part of Stonebraker's 1985 vision: https://dsf.berkeley.edu/papers/ERL-M85-95.pdf
> POSTQUEL allows users to save and query historical data and versions. By default, data in a relation is never deleted or updated. Conventional retrievals always access the current tuples in the relation. Historical data can be accessed by indicating the desired time when defining a tuple variable.