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Why do we take snapshots of life at any place and time? Why do we study history at all? Because those who come after will benefit from knowing from whence they

Why do we take snapshots of life at any place and time? Why do we study history at all? Because those who come after will benefit from knowing from whence they came.

newswasboring 6y ago
This is weird. History, at least as it's colloquially used, is a accounting of important events in the past. We study history so we don't make major mistakes. Surely you are not implying everything online is important?
- PeterisP 6y ago
  History does study and consider important records and artifacts that inform us about daily life of ordinary people in that time and place, it's not limited to "important events" according to some measure of importance. For example, we consider valuable early writing on clay tablets that refers to accounting records, recipes and personal letters of ancient Mesopotamia (e.g. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/214-features/cuneiform/4368-cuneiform-letters https://www.archaeology.org/issues/214-features/cuneiform/43...) which provide insight on how these people lived even if they provide no information on any specific major event.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > This is weird. History, at least as it's colloquially used, is a accounting of important events in the past. We study history so we don't make major mistakes. Surely you are not implying everything online is important? That's an extremely limited, pretty old-fashioned view of history. There was literally a post just the other day about Latin grammatical genders that mentioned that linguists obsess over a few fragments of graffiti because that's all that's left that hints at how Latin was actually spoken by the commoners whose speech became the Romance languages. Other historians spend their time studying contracts and receipts from transactions involving cattle and grain of long dead Sumerian traders. There are many schools of history that are more concerned with how common people lived in ordinary and extraordinary times than great men and "important events" (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History#Social_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History#Social_history). An important function of history is satisfying people's curiosity about the past.
- andrewzah 6y ago
  History is not only for important events. It's also important to understand the daily lives of past civilizations. A lot of mundane stuff was simply never written down, so we'll never know in a lot of cases. One unique problem of our era is storing things digitally. If a huge event were to occur, wiping out humanity, archeologists won't be able to study ssds in thousands of years like we can study physical artifacts today.
deleted 6y ago
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Why do we take snapshots of life at any place and time? Why do we study history at all? Because those who come after will benefit from knowing from whence they came.

newswasboring 6y ago

This is weird. History, at least as it's colloquially used, is a accounting of important events in the past. We study history so we don't make major mistakes. Surely you are not implying everything online is important?

PeterisP 6y ago
History does study and consider important records and artifacts that inform us about daily life of ordinary people in that time and place, it's not limited to "important events" according to some measure of importance. For example, we consider valuable early writing on clay tablets that refers to accounting records, recipes and personal letters of ancient Mesopotamia (e.g. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/214-features/cuneiform/4368-cuneiform-letters https://www.archaeology.org/issues/214-features/cuneiform/43...) which provide insight on how these people lived even if they provide no information on any specific major event.
tablespoon 6y ago
> This is weird. History, at least as it's colloquially used, is a accounting of important events in the past. We study history so we don't make major mistakes. Surely you are not implying everything online is important? That's an extremely limited, pretty old-fashioned view of history. There was literally a post just the other day about Latin grammatical genders that mentioned that linguists obsess over a few fragments of graffiti because that's all that's left that hints at how Latin was actually spoken by the commoners whose speech became the Romance languages. Other historians spend their time studying contracts and receipts from transactions involving cattle and grain of long dead Sumerian traders. There are many schools of history that are more concerned with how common people lived in ordinary and extraordinary times than great men and "important events" (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History#Social_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History#Social_history). An important function of history is satisfying people's curiosity about the past.
andrewzah 6y ago
History is not only for important events. It's also important to understand the daily lives of past civilizations. A lot of mundane stuff was simply never written down, so we'll never know in a lot of cases. One unique problem of our era is storing things digitally. If a huge event were to occur, wiping out humanity, archeologists won't be able to study ssds in thousands of years like we can study physical artifacts today.

deleted 6y ago

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