4 ms·

I've been having a tough time wrapping my head around how little recorded history there is. All individual people have rich lives and have been around for, wha

I've been having a tough time wrapping my head around how little recorded history there is. All individual people have rich lives and have been around for, what, 200,000 years? But only like 2.5% of that is covered by any written history at all (some inheriting from older storytelling tradition no doubt). What entire cultural trends and phenomena have we totally forgotten? What were we even doing the other 97% of the time -- just trying to find enough food and not die?

vharuck 5y ago
I was amazed to learn that the Japanese people didn't use a writing system until the 4th century, and even then it was just Chinese. Not an adaptation of Chinese characters, which came later, but the Chinese language. Japan had agricultural residents since the 4th century BCE. To go 800 years without writing, despite depending on long-term planning and trading to survive, is incomprehensible to me.
gilbetron 5y ago
It is crazy to think about, I agree. Additionally, before 200 years ago, nobody even owned anything written, except for a tiny amount of people. We spent the vast majority of our existence knowing nothing, at least how we think of knowledge now. But we still had these awesome brains - instead we had it filled with local knowledge - people, places, and things from the environment we lived in, which was pretty small. Can you imagine the detail we understood back then? And yet nobody knew the answers to what we consider important these days. It's really mind warping to contemplate this. Even now compared to 30 years ago or so is weird. Prior to the internet, largely speaking if your immediate group didn't know the answer to something, you just largely didn't know it ... ever. I mean you could find out if you really wanted to, probably. But there were things we just didn't have the answer to. "Remember that episode of Three's Company that had that one guy in it? What was his name?" Guess what - we never found out that answer! The lyric of that song? Never found out before the Internet. Even today I still find myself remembering things I wanted to know growing up but the knowledge was inaccessible back then, but now I can find out in seconds. Such a weird time we live in if you think about it. We have this weird mono culture, in a way, but within that mono culture we're getting all these tiny nano-cultures embedded in it. My son (13) loves some of the most obscure things and is able to find people also excited about it (Not just SCP, but SCP maps and mods done in Garry's Mod, for instance - there's like 100 people in the world that like that combination). Now I'm just rambling, but yes, the vast majority of our existence we were isolated (globally speaking) and ignorant in profound ways. And now we are just the opposite.
- potta_coffee 5y ago
  What does "SCP" refer to in this context?
  - mherdeg 5y ago
    "Secure Contain Protect" -- https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ -- a community sourced wiki full of stories about a secret quasi -government facility that hosts cursed sci-fi and fantasy objects. Kind of like a MOO but for the Warehouse 13/Friday the Thirteenth the TV Series universes, and hosted in a wiki. Spawned a series of spinoff media including a bunch of games. Very popular although I hadn't realized the fanbase was similar to me reading Goosebumps novels growing up -- huh. My favorite small communities in the 90s was the 2 or 3 servers that hosted active games of the Quake 2 mod 'Gloom', which never took off and I think had maybe tens of players; and various MUDs which had maybe hundreds of thousands of players and are now down to maybe tens.
    - potta_coffee 5y ago
      Interesting. I think my son was trying to tell me about this the other day but I didn't understand where he was going with it. I love stuff like this.
choxi 5y ago
I recently learned that everything we know about Alexander the Great comes from ~5 accounts written by people who lived hundreds of years after Alexander died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Alexander_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Alexander_th...
- Leary 5y ago
  https://www.livius.org/sources/content/oriental-varia/a-contemporary-account-of-the-battle-of-gaugamela/#:~:text=On%201%20October%20331%2C%20the,of%20the%20Esagila%20temple%20complex https://www.livius.org/sources/content/oriental-varia/a-cont....
hindsightbias 5y ago
In the future, 99% of knowledge will be from 1991 on. Those stacks of books in the library, all that knowledge, don't exist unless they can be hyperlinked. The medium is the message, and Wiki is History.

vharuck 5y ago

I was amazed to learn that the Japanese people didn't use a writing system until the 4th century, and even then it was just Chinese. Not an adaptation of Chinese characters, which came later, but the Chinese language. Japan had agricultural residents since the 4th century BCE. To go 800 years without writing, despite depending on long-term planning and trading to survive, is incomprehensible to me.

gilbetron 5y ago

It is crazy to think about, I agree. Additionally, before 200 years ago, nobody even owned anything written, except for a tiny amount of people. We spent the vast majority of our existence knowing nothing, at least how we think of knowledge now. But we still had these awesome brains - instead we had it filled with local knowledge - people, places, and things from the environment we lived in, which was pretty small. Can you imagine the detail we understood back then? And yet nobody knew the answers to what we consider important these days. It's really mind warping to contemplate this. Even now compared to 30 years ago or so is weird. Prior to the internet, largely speaking if your immediate group didn't know the answer to something, you just largely didn't know it ... ever. I mean you could find out if you really wanted to, probably. But there were things we just didn't have the answer to. "Remember that episode of Three's Company that had that one guy in it? What was his name?" Guess what - we never found out that answer! The lyric of that song? Never found out before the Internet. Even today I still find myself remembering things I wanted to know growing up but the knowledge was inaccessible back then, but now I can find out in seconds. Such a weird time we live in if you think about it. We have this weird mono culture, in a way, but within that mono culture we're getting all these tiny nano-cultures embedded in it. My son (13) loves some of the most obscure things and is able to find people also excited about it (Not just SCP, but SCP maps and mods done in Garry's Mod, for instance - there's like 100 people in the world that like that combination). Now I'm just rambling, but yes, the vast majority of our existence we were isolated (globally speaking) and ignorant in profound ways. And now we are just the opposite.

potta_coffee 5y ago
What does "SCP" refer to in this context?
- mherdeg 5y ago
  "Secure Contain Protect" -- https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ -- a community sourced wiki full of stories about a secret quasi -government facility that hosts cursed sci-fi and fantasy objects. Kind of like a MOO but for the Warehouse 13/Friday the Thirteenth the TV Series universes, and hosted in a wiki. Spawned a series of spinoff media including a bunch of games. Very popular although I hadn't realized the fanbase was similar to me reading Goosebumps novels growing up -- huh. My favorite small communities in the 90s was the 2 or 3 servers that hosted active games of the Quake 2 mod 'Gloom', which never took off and I think had maybe tens of players; and various MUDs which had maybe hundreds of thousands of players and are now down to maybe tens.
  - potta_coffee 5y ago
    Interesting. I think my son was trying to tell me about this the other day but I didn't understand where he was going with it. I love stuff like this.

choxi 5y ago

I recently learned that everything we know about Alexander the Great comes from ~5 accounts written by people who lived hundreds of years after Alexander died: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Alexander_the_Great https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Alexander_th...

Leary 5y ago
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/oriental-varia/a-contemporary-account-of-the-battle-of-gaugamela/#:~:text=On%201%20October%20331%2C%20the,of%20the%20Esagila%20temple%20complex https://www.livius.org/sources/content/oriental-varia/a-cont....

hindsightbias 5y ago

In the future, 99% of knowledge will be from 1991 on. Those stacks of books in the library, all that knowledge, don't exist unless they can be hyperlinked. The medium is the message, and Wiki is History.