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> than most history-writing accounts for Historical accounts are necessarily a subset of actual history. Just like the fossil record is necessarily a subset of
by skookumchuck 7y ago
> than most history-writing accounts for
Historical accounts are necessarily a subset of actual history. Just like the fossil record is necessarily a subset of the actual flora and fauna.
I'm sure there's an awful lot of important stuff we don't know about history, just because nobody bothered to write it down, or their manuscripts got lost.
Nobody knows whether King Arthur existed or not, for example.
- _ph_ 7y agoYes, the known history is neccessarily a subset of the actual one - but I think we often don't imagine how large the gap is and also often make the mistake of assuming that this gap is smaller than it is. Consequentely, our "models" of ancient societies or the biology of the dinosaurs are far too limited.
- Mirioron 7y agoI think one reason for us not understanding this gap well is the way history is taught. We learn about the earliest civilizations. We assume that we know a comparable amount from later periods in other regions about other civilizations, but we often don't. In Europe we have a wealth of information about ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, but we know relatively little in comparison about Scandinavia even hundreds of years later.
- toyg 7y agoI was with you until you mentioned King Arthur. We might as well wonder if Gilgamesh and Beowulf were real people, at that point - at least they were local tales.
- skookumchuck 7y agoKing Arthur is illustrative of the yawning gap in our knowledge of British history after the Romans left, because nobody there at the time seems to have written anything down.
- toyg 7y agoI understand, but my point is that it's not even a local legend - it's a French story written for French audiences, mostly for entertainment purposes, so there is no point considering it in a historical context. It's like wondering whether Othello was a real Venetian general.