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Comment by ajbetteridge | Hacker News Reader

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.

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What 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).

and 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]

The bias you are falling for is the assumption that what you are reading when you open said history book is not just generally about things that actually happened, but far more importantly not just "how they actually happened, why they actually happened" but what has been omitted and left out intentionally to frame a certain narrative that is not in line with the interests of those who make you believe the history book you are opening is 100% accurate.

The difference being that far more in the past where there was an inherent interest in preserving the accuracy of certain classes of events where self-interests demanded and required accuracy, today what you think you are reading, whose accuracy is assumed by proximity to criteria that are surely far more accurate (i.e., order of things that were not fantasy), there is an inherent incentive to distort the perspective because those who record and disseminate the "history" are far less likely also self-interested in actual accuracy of the history. It's essentially the "to the winners go the myths and legends" problem. The accuracy of events actually goes down in many different ways when you start muddling interests as modern society has. Do you ever think, e.g., that we would have written a history in which the enemy is the "good guy", but we just happened to win the war? Reality though is that the history you read assumes an accuracy through formality or deliberateness ... it is the same reason that so many people are conned into thinking that NPR and the mainstream media are somehow inherently more accurate or right, let alone just not devious, because they talk in a deliberate and calm and precise tone.

In many ways the very precision the western world has obsessed about is contributing to the very corruption of its soul because we are obsessed with procedure and process to such a blinding and OCD degree that we miss the underlying message and lessons. It's a rather mentally unhealthy mentality that insists on the "accuracy" that "not all of those who want to conquer us have killed us yet...", thus, post hoc ergo propter hoc, "...our enemies are also just like us because they say they are and we believe their words over their actions". It's an odd obsession with formality and process that has totally negated spirit and emotion and just plain and simply most fundamental and instinctual self-preservation.

So here we are and instead of having learned a history that makes us realize that "socialism" is not about being social and friendly, and communism is not about being a community even if specific details are not perfectly captured; we say, "well, since they have not been done properly we will give it all another go."

When the only means of preserving your history is to speak it truthfully, that's what you do.

That might be the main difference. They would have considered the idea of "preserving your history" to be not worth considering. It didn't seem to be something they valued (at least in the sense we understand it).

That's entirely the cultural bias of treating other humans as savage and primitive and not listening to a word they say.

They were hardly primitive, they just valued things differently than we do. Having a different value system doesn't make them savages.

Unless 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.

Embellished 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.

So 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.

> 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.

My 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.

What is your explanation of for the ancient spacefaring journeys through a distant galaxy found in the works of the modern sage Lucas?

There 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.

Well, 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.

> Ancient peoples would think this is ridiculous.

How would we conclude what ancient people think?

Because they tell us in their writings.

The 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.

For 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.

I 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.

I 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?

Both

And 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.

The ancient Greeks spent a lot of time looking for rational explanations for ancient stories.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerism

Because 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.

Except 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.

And 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.

You 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.

HN, 4 days ago: 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.

When 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.

You'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.

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