How can hundreds and even thousands of years of history, which includes entire civilizations, discoveries and characters, so confidently be explained? Not all of it could have happened the way it’s being taught to modern society, right?
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Multiple sources, first hand being the best. With enough, you can even see the context of why a source was written. Julius Ceasar led an army into Gaul, defeated multiple tribes, and spent years consolidating his conquest. We know this because he wrote to Rome reporting what he did. We know he didn’t make it up, because Roman legions kept very good records, and many people on that expedition wrote about it later. We even know why he wrote the way he did (propaganda), because of of all the other people from many perspectives who wrote about it as well.
No, not all of it happened the way it’s being taught. Because there are missing pieces.
And the missing pieces are mainly things that were simply too “every day” to be included in art and literature. Let’s look at a contemporary example. If you looked at the New York Times’ food section, you would get a very skewed idea of what we, as a country, actually eat. Most of what they cover is far more exotic than what most people in New York or especially the whole country are actually eating. But that’s what’s written down.
In 2012 an 85-year-old woman named Marylin wrote an earnest (not a tongue-in-cheek) review of Olive Garden for a paper in Grand Forks North Dakota.
The internet found this and lost its MIND.
She wrote it, as she had written many other reviews for chain restaurants in her area because, well, there wasn’t anything else in the area. And it was a big deal when anything moved in. For the folks on the internet, it was “Well, everyone knows what an Olive Garden is! Why write about it?”
But Anthony Boudain came to a realization. Her reviews, over the decades, were what people, by and large, ACTUALLY ATE in this country when they went out. And she, unlike everyone else, was actually recording the experience. So he helped her publish a book of those terribly mundane dining experiences (including, I believe, a Taco Bell).
So much gets erased historically when it comes to the everyday. Because it’s not worth mentioning. It’s everyday.
When you picture a city in the U.S. circa 1900 how many peanut vendors do you picture? In Medieval times paper was expensive, so that snack you bought from a cart–it was either on a stick or wrapped in inedible pastry (when I say inedible, I mean it!)
So much of what we know from history are the extraordinary and the notable. It takes more digging and research to find the everyday. While it isn’t impossible to find, it gets more difficult.
This is just one aspect of how things get lost. I think other people will cover other aspects.
It’s good that you are asking that question. That’s critical thinking. When you read a history textbook, it all sounds so neat and tidy as if we are reading an eyewitness account. The truth is that we are relying on fragmented, often contradictory sources, and very often we only have sources that were written by the victors. You can make a guess about how unbiased their chroniclers really were.
We do know the general trends of history because various branches of science, like archaeology and anthropology, confirm that historical sites existed, battles really happened, kings were buried in crypts or cathedrals, etc. We are definitely murky on the details though and many things we think we know are probably mistaken assumptions.
You’d make an excellent history student with this kind of question! You should major in it, if you haven’t gone to college already.
We don’t even have accurate reports of what’s happening today. You can be sure all your history textbooks are full of propaganda
Archaeology and writings, there is an enormous body of literature going back an awfully long way, there is so much of this material that they can be compared with each other to remove any inconsistencies.
What about the hieroglyphics in Egypt and how do we know exactly who was who and the exact eras these Pharaoh’s and their families lived? Egypt is one huge excavation site and there are so many things we don’t even know or seen yet! This completely fascinates me in the sheer magnitude of what we really don’t know vs what we think we know.
The short answer, is yes; right. Honestly you could the same thing about modern times too. Ultimately they do the best everything available to work with to put it all together as documented or claimed. I can’t be certain of what your reason for asking is, but I’ll never feel bad for recommending Descartes’ Discourse on the Method. It delves a fair bit into the questioning of these things, but more aptly, truth in general.
I…don’t think I understand the question?
If you’re assuming that historians are 100% confident about everything, then you’re making an incorrect assumption. There is, in fact, quite a bit of disagreement and controversy about how to interpret *many* areas of history – just as there is in *any* scientific discipline. And (again, just like in other sciences) the historical consensus changes over time, as new evidence comes to light and new research is done.
Perhaps you’re basing your sense of history on, like, history documentaries made for general audiences (like you and I)? Because, yeah – those documentaries *do* tend to present pat, tidy explanations for things. But that’s because they aren’t *attempting* to communicate every nuance, or to cover every side of every controversy. They’re just trying to communicate the outlines to laypeople. They simplify actual historical research for mass consumption.
There are many ways to know. Firstofall, writing. Humans love to do it. A lot of what we know about egypt, for example, is known because we deciphered their writing and translated their language (Which was possible mainly thanks to a stone found in Rosetta that contained the same text in 3 languages, 2 of which we already knew at the time, hence the term Rosetta Stone) and found thousands of pieces of writing detailing wars, religion, census data, harvests, pretty much everything. Humans love writing things down. Before writing was widespread though, its a lot more difficult. Often enough, eras before this are based off speculation. For example, you may find the skeleton of a person, alongside, say, a sickle. This is a good indication that the person in question was a farmer. By comparing it to other sickles, you may then be able to identify cultures, as closely related peoples would likely manufacture things in a similar way. You could also analyze the remaints you have to draw conclusions about the lifestyle of the person. Teeth, for instance, are a treasure trove. Badly rotten teeth for example indicate wealth, as the type of foods that cause your teeth to rot arent available in big amounts for most people. You could compare their height to other fossils in the region to make some conclusions about the food they ate. Generally speaking, if you eat more meat, youre taller than your more vegetarian peers. You may examine the fossil for damage to see if, per chance, the person in question shows any signs of being attacked with a weapon, which, if such is frequent for any given group of individiuals, points to armed conflict.
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