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It always amazes me why historians and researchers start with the assumption that any tale from the past is fanciful until proven otherwise. We have little to n
by ajbetteridge 8y ago
It always amazes me why historians and researchers start with the assumption that any tale from the past is fanciful until proven otherwise. We have little to no proof that our very distant ancestors sat around making up stories for the fun of it and then passing them on to future generations, when they'd surely be more likely to pass on useful information that keeps the tribe alive. Yes there will be embelishments, but we seem to treat everything from before the last couple if hundred years as total lies.
- labster 8y agoHN, 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18216459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18216459 - Our (most likely) distant ancestor made up a ridiculous story for the fun of it and got it published.
- tralarpa 8y agoThere is a difference between a useful story and a true story. If some distant ancestors sat around making up a story of how women were created from men, then this story was certainly useful to them in some way and reflected their truth (social structure etc.), but it wasn't a true story.
- irrational 8y agoWell, it depends on what you consider a true story. We think a story is true if it accurately represents what actually happened (as if a camera was filming the event). Ancient peoples would think this is ridiculous. A true story is one that gets the "true" message you want to impart across to the listeners. A person who changes names, places, events, etc. to fit their message is not a liar, they are a historian. Of course we look at that and think its nonsense, just as they would look at the works of our historians and think its nonsense. Which one is right? Of course, we are biased to think we are right.
- WalterBright 8y ago> Ancient peoples would think this is ridiculous. How would we conclude what ancient people think?
- irrational 8y agoBecause they tell us in their writings.
- snapdangle 8y agoThe ones we didn't burn and the ones we have bothered to actually treat as history rather than random flights of fantasy that humans went to great trouble to document.
- WalterBright 8y agoFor just one of endless examples, do you believe the ancient Greek gods were real? Some stories may indeed have persisted for millenia. But how does one separate those from the fanciful ones? With corroboration. Because some are true does not mean all ancient stories and myths are true, and one must be careful to not impute meaning that isn't there, i.e. finding pictures in clouds.
- creep 8y agoI don't have evidence the Ancient Greek gods were/are not real. I do believe they are real in a sense. At least in collective unconscious, they will influence humankind.
- WalterBright 8y agoI don't have any evidence that I'm a (buggy) computer simulation, either. But that's not reason to believe that I am one. > I do believe they are real in a sense. Which ones are real, the Greek gods or the Norse gods?
- creep 8y agoBoth
- ajbetteridge 8y agoAnd conversely just because one story is not 100% true doesn't mean that every story is not true, which is what most academics appear to assume.
- watwut 8y agoBecause most tales humans produce right now are fanciful. People in the past told stories for many reasons, survival being one, fun another, their political conflict being yet another. But also, I am quite confident contemporary researches don't take old tales as total lies, but neither as total truth.
- snapdangle 8y agoExcept that in an orally transmitted culture, stories are _also_ told to communicate actual, factual history. So the issue is that we no longer communicate our history through stories told out loud and therefore decided not to be able to conceive of any culture actually doing the same.
- watwut 8y agoAnd those stories transform with needs of each generation. We don't trust what past people wrote about their own history either and not just because of fantastic elements.
- snapdangle 8y agoYou cannot judge another society's approach to history based on how we treat it. The presumption of rapidly shifting history in orally transmitted culture is being debunked by this and other works. The shame is that if people would just for a second stop coming from places of assumption like the one you have written, we wouldn't need to wait for research to prove it is worth listening to before trying to learn from it.
- empath75 8y agoThe ancient Greeks spent a lot of time looking for rational explanations for ancient stories. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerism
- rdtsc 8y agoUnless we think gods, talking animals, totems, spirits are real we've learned that many stories are embellished. Another way to look at it that boring factual recipes and rules were not fun to tell and remember but the ones with drama and extra flourish were. So those are the ones that survived better.
- narag 8y agoEmbellished is not the same as made up. Adam could be a real person, just obviously not the first man, but the first patriarch recorded by jew tradition, so his story was mixed with the creation tale. Egyptians believed that pharaohs were gods. Talking animals might be a misunderstanding, when animal names were actually monikers for some persons or tribes, etc.
- snapdangle 8y agoSo what is your explanation for the spacefaring journeys through the solar system found within ancient Hindu texts? Animals do speak, actually. This is something you might not have come to understand or accept yet, but science is no longer able to assert that animals are not communicating in distinct languages. Everywhere we have studied, we have found one. So the ability to understand an animal and learn its language is absolutely not far fetched, except to the fragile conception of human history that is the Western mind.
- rdtsc 8y ago> Unless we think gods, talking animals, totems, spirits are real we've learned that many stories are embellished. Notice, I prefixed it with "unless we think...". Surprisingly some of us do think, so then the statement doesn't apply there. And I suspect this forum is not appropriate to convince otherwise. > So what is your explanation for the spacefaring journeys through the solar system found within ancient Hindu texts? Right. Well ancient aliens apparently. It was on History Channel after all.
- snapdangle 8y agoMy point is that space travel would have been considered high fantasy aka impossible during previous eras of scientific reasoning. And yet now we know that it is indeed possible, and are close to achieving it ourselves.
- irrational 8y agoWhat I was taught is that ancient peoples did not look at history the way we look at it. When I open a book by a modern historian, I assume the book will be about things that actually happened, how they actually happened, why they actually happened, the correct order in which they actually happened, etc. I expect the historian will tell me when there is ambiguity or uncertainty. Ancient historians would think this is nonsense. The point of writing history is not the events themselves, it is not to get down on paper what actually happened. What kind of idiot would want something like that? No, the point of writing history is to share a message. Often they would draw parallels between two events to explain something. Now they might need to greatly fudge, exaggerate, change the order, etc. of those two events in order to make everything to fit, but that is fine. The actual events that happened is not important, it is the truth (i.e., the point the historian is trying to get across) that is what is important. The events themselves are not the message, the message is served by the telling of the events, even if the telling is not 100% accurate (as we would see it).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- MisterOctober 8y agoand of course, modern 'history' is also suffused with, uh, spin. Classic recent example : the profound differences in Cold War history as told by each 'side' I can also think of a concrete example from when I was in middle school : Shay's Rebellion was presented in history class in a completely different light to the way I've come to understand it from independent reading [i.e., in school we learned that Shay's guys were rogues as opposed to folks [generally Rev. War vets] unjustly dispossessed by (among other economic factors) ill effects of speculative investment in government assets and misguided fiscal + tax policy]
- snapdangle 8y agoWhen the only means of preserving your history is to speak it truthfully, that's what you do.
- irrational 8y ago
- AareyBaba 8y agoWhen the tales violate the laws of physics, the tales are fanciful. Vedic flying palaces for example, involve expense of energy and energy transfer that a high school student can calculate. Tragically, there is no mention of the energy source in the tales or we could solve our current energy needs.
- ajbetteridge 8y agoYou're equating our currently accepted laws of physics as being the only true set of physical laws. How naive to assume that what we know now is the only truth.