It's more typical to keep older versions of your document inside your current revision (either as JSON or, often, as an attachment). For the JSON case;
{
"_id":"foo",
"_rev":"3-fsfsfsdf",
"foo":"current value of foo",
"history": {
"2": {
"foo":"previous version of foo"
},
"1": {
"foo":"initial version of foo"
}
}
}