Does this make sense?

[BjornP]

Im not talking about today’s elites. I was answering the question “Why is there no peasants writing about history throughout history?” The things required to write histories (reading documents, interviewing people, training in critical thinking, not being exhausted because you just fucking tilled fields for 16 hours) were not available.

I think you already see in this thread some of the philosophical reasoning for why that would be: It's of course not that there is some sort of objective measure of "importance", it's that because of the societal mentality for most of history, lower classes simply did not consider themselves worthy of the same sort of attention. Also, for most of medieval and ancient eastern history, the focus on history has been dynastic history and genealogy. For most of history, there were no "historians" in the same way your professor's a historian.

Geneaology and history was used to legitimize land claims, power structures and status. It took more than the printing press to be invented for people to suddenly give a damn about their personal history or geneaology. It took a sense of individuality, a sense that it wasn't just "The Great Man", the elites, who created history. As you no doubt know given your line of study, the idea that history is something that "happens to" those lower on the totem pole, that history is no more than the study of the trickle down effect of whatever decisions made by emperors, kings, nobles, generals and politicians is not one that is common in the study of history anymore.

From the more practical perspective, which is the main reason peasants didn't write volumes of history from their perspective, or about their own lives. You already point out their work hours, so I don't know why you'd ask that? When would they ever find the time? If they found the time, they wouldn't be peasants, since someone else would have to do their jobs, and they'd be the new peasants. Their "place" in the power structure was set, fixed, divinely mandated, considered natural and eternal, same as it was for the different layers of the nobility, clergy, merchant classes and serfs (and slaves).

The idea of individuality, the idea that you had value as an individual, that your place in society was not permanent, caste-like, a natural order, fundamentally changed that structure. Because one of the classes of people who, while not on the bottom rung of society, had been considered lower class and engaged in non-prestigeous work (merchant/trading) suddenly started to gain economic power, then they to send their sons off to study. Those sons wrote works of philsophy that would lead to the Enlightenment, to the notion that it should be the middle class/merchant classes, those who actually produce worth rather than simply collect tithes or taxes simply by "virtue" of station and blood rather than industry and merit.

This is why your history professor was right to call into question your notion that the elites, and those who write history, are one and the same. StA is closer to the truth here, with one elite in conflict with another, the power-as-blood elites eventually losing in most countries to the power-from-merit and industry elites and their way of seeing history.

However, you phrase a question like this:

“Why are most historical sources about political dealings, diplomacy and military engagements.?”

They aren't, really. Historical sources are more than just text. A historical source is also mosaics, church murals, it is archaeological objects, it is anthropological data from the dead of the past. From all of these, you can gain insight into the life of those who a king's chronicler may not speak so much about.

But even in the texts, you can find sources depicting the lives of peasants. Reading medieval law texts, convictions, late medieval taxation papers. All of that, while written by whichever local judge or official appointed that duty, isn't the peasants writing about themselves, but it is a source on their lives, and thus can be useable source for any present day historian who would want to write about what sort of lives they lead. As your will know what makes a source a source is entirely relative to what you are looking for. If you are researching 14th century steel-making techniques, an 14th cent AD Aztec mural depicting a god creating the world or a 14th cent BC Mesopotamian stelea announcing that so and so ruler is so and so magnificant, is not a source.

Even CDs and hard drives won't last more than a few decades (assuming that we could still use them). It requires an extremely durable medium, and a near-perfect storage that won't be tampered with. That sort of thing isn't done for any less than Great Events, unless there's a fluky thing like the Dead Sea Scrolls that get forgotten about for centuries.

The idea that the preservation of history is dependent solely on preservation of the original medium sort of ignores that the way we preserved most ancient books and texts from ancient times to modern times, is through copying them. Also, historians today...and this has been the case for the discipline for over a century, don't concern themselves only with "Great Events" as you call them. Knowing only how the top of any historical society lived, quite simply doesn't give you an accurate picture of that historical society. That is naturally true for present day societies as well.

But about the worry that because you soon won't be able to read CD's, all of the data stored on them will be gone forever, or that what's being preserved is only about "Great People" and "Great Events":

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/about/

[SuburbanFarmer]

Even CDs and hard drives won't last more than a few decades (assuming that we could still use them). It requires an extremely durable medium, and a near-perfect storage that won't be tampered with. That sort of thing isn't done for any less than Great Events, unless there's a fluky thing like the Dead Sea Scrolls that get forgotten about for centuries.

The idea that the preservation of history is dependent solely on preservation of the original medium sort of ignores that the way we preserved most ancient books and texts from ancient times to modern times, is through copying them. Also, historians today...and this has been the case for the discipline for over a century, don't concern themselves only with "Great Events" as you call them. Knowing only how the top of any historical society lived, quite simply doesn't give you an accurate picture of that historical society. That is naturally true for present day societies as well.

But about the worry that because you soon won't be able to read CD's, all of the data stored on them will be gone forever, or that what's being preserved is only about "Great People" and "Great Events":

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/about/

I know there are projects like this, to document our great works and some correspondence, etc. But the vast (VAST) majority of our data will be inevitably lost over time. Future wars might destroy most of these projects, or some group like ISIS might intentionally start erasing the past. It's pretty inescapable that we can't preserve things over large timescales, without losing most of it.

About the copying - so much of the past was lost when we stopped copying. A great plague, a major invasion, society gets knocked down a few pegs, and people are worried about survival rather than maintenance of our records. It's hard to imagine how much we would really have now, if it weren't for the Mongols, Alexandria's fire, the Middle Ages, Bronze Age Collapse, and so on... Probably more than we could ever read.

[BjornP]

Even CDs and hard drives won't last more than a few decades (assuming that we could still use them). It requires an extremely durable medium, and a near-perfect storage that won't be tampered with. That sort of thing isn't done for any less than Great Events, unless there's a fluky thing like the Dead Sea Scrolls that get forgotten about for centuries.

The idea that the preservation of history is dependent solely on preservation of the original medium sort of ignores that the way we preserved most ancient books and texts from ancient times to modern times, is through copying them. Also, historians today...and this has been the case for the discipline for over a century, don't concern themselves only with "Great Events" as you call them. Knowing only how the top of any historical society lived, quite simply doesn't give you an accurate picture of that historical society. That is naturally true for present day societies as well.

But about the worry that because you soon won't be able to read CD's, all of the data stored on them will be gone forever, or that what's being preserved is only about "Great People" and "Great Events":

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/about/

I know there are projects like this, to document our great works and some correspondence, etc. But the vast (VAST) majority of our data will be inevitably lost over time. Future wars might destroy most of these projects, or some group like ISIS might intentionally start erasing the past. It's pretty inescapable that we can't preserve things over large timescales, without losing most of it.

About the copying - so much of the past was lost when we stopped copying. A great plague, a major invasion, society gets knocked down a few pegs, and people are worried about survival rather than maintenance of our records. It's hard to imagine how much we would really have now, if it weren't for the Mongols, Alexandria's fire, the Middle Ages, Bronze Age Collapse, and so on... Probably more than we could ever read.

You're more or less wrong from start to finish.

Compared to the quantity of potential source material left behind by ancient, medieval and early modern societies for modern day historians, the amount of data future historians will have to work with is going to be so vast they won't know where to begin. Will we lose alot of data? Yes. Compared to the data lost from ancient to early modern day, though? It's not even worth mentioning.

ISIS didn't succeed in erasing the past. They just destroyed historical artifacts, not history. There are thousands of documents, photos, video recordings, etc. of the monuments that were destroyed, preserving their history independent of the physical sites. Transferring audio, video and text files from one format unto a next, is not a project that can be destroyed if the data meant for copying is not restricted to simply one, physical server. If it is, sure, that data is gone if the physical server is destroyed and there are no copies. Yet, what's the likelihood of that happening?

When's the last time a war was so severe it meant that society stopped keeping records? Feel free to come up with a historical example. Unless future wars destroy the global electrical grid, and multiple servers in the Western hemisphere, a project like the one I linked to carry on.

"So much of the past was lost when we stopped copying..."

When did we stop copying? It has never been common to copy everything written down and store it for posterity. Never. Ledgers, bills of sale, shopping lists, graffitti, etc. are only preserved by chance and not by choice. Kings didn't stop recording occurances of war, dynastic changes, inheritences, etc. Mongols didn't change that. But laws, decrees, chronicles of the happenings in the kingdom/empire/duchy, etc. that are centuries didn't all survive to this day simply because the books had been kept dry and mold free for all this time.

[SuburbanFarmer]

The greatest example would be the Bronze Age Collapse. We have almost nothing documented from the time, compared to centuries previous. Also, during the Middle Ages, after the plagues, and fall of Rome, there's a dearth of material, other than official records and bible translations.

Whenever humanity gets knocked down, we stop maintaining records, and start growing food. You ask how likely it is that the records could be destroyed, and I say it's nearly inevitable. Again, you have to put the timescale into perspective. In 1,000 years, almost nothing will be left. 5,000 years and we were never here, except for some plastic residue and radioactive sites.

[BjornP]

The greatest example would be the Bronze Age Collapse. We have almost nothing documented from the time, compared to centuries previous. Also, during the Middle Ages, after the plagues, and fall of Rome, there's a dearth of material, other than official records and bible translations.

Whenever humanity gets knocked down, we stop maintaining records, and start growing food. You ask how likely it is that the records could be destroyed, and I say it's nearly inevitable. Again, you have to put the timescale into perspective. In 1,000 years, almost nothing will be left. 5,000 years and we were never here, except for some plastic residue and radioactive sites.

So...never? Societies didn't stop keeping records or writing about their accomplishments in stone during the Bronze Age collapse, either. I know it has the word "collapse" in it, but it wasn't the ancient version of Mad Max or something.

And yet there are hundreds if not thousands of sources going back more than a thousand years that historians use to write about past societies. The Fallout series and similar fantasy universes do not depict a realistic future, GCF. The Bronze Age collapse didn't lead to Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece disappearing from the face of the earth, never to leave any sources detailing their passing behind.

Add to that, that each single country on Earth is civilized, has a written language, record keeping, bureaucracy, mass media, computers, internet. Even if you drop a couple hydrogen bombs on Luxembourg and wipe that city state from the face of the Earth, the act of doing so will still be recorded everywhere for posterity, and so will any data recorded in Luxembourgian, and about Luxembourg that was kept outside of Luxembourg. 2017 AD is not 2017 BC. If a country gets wiped out... someone, somewhere in the world, will write about it and that will be left behind for future historians. As has always been the case.

Humanity hasn't "gotten knocked down" at any point in history. In human pre-history, maybe, back when we were rolling around with our Neanderthal cousins, maybe. But not in historical times.

[SuburbanFarmer]

The greatest example would be the Bronze Age Collapse. We have almost nothing documented from the time, compared to centuries previous. Also, during the Middle Ages, after the plagues, and fall of Rome, there's a dearth of material, other than official records and bible translations.

Whenever humanity gets knocked down, we stop maintaining records, and start growing food. You ask how likely it is that the records could be destroyed, and I say it's nearly inevitable. Again, you have to put the timescale into perspective. In 1,000 years, almost nothing will be left. 5,000 years and we were never here, except for some plastic residue and radioactive sites.

So...never? Societies didn't stop keeping records or writing about their accomplishments in stone during the Bronze Age collapse, either. I know it has the word "collapse" in it, but it wasn't the ancient version of Mad Max or something.

And yet there are hundreds if not thousands of sources going back more than a thousand years that historians use to write about past societies. The Fallout series and similar fantasy universes do not depict a realistic future, GCF. The Bronze Age collapse didn't lead to Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece disappearing from the face of the earth, never to leave any sources detailing their passing behind.

Add to that, that each single country on Earth is civilized, has a written language, record keeping, bureaucracy, mass media, computers, internet. Even if you drop a couple hydrogen bombs on Luxembourg and wipe that city state from the face of the Earth, the act of doing so will still be recorded everywhere for posterity, and so will any data recorded in Luxembourgian, and about Luxembourg that was kept outside of Luxembourg. 2017 AD is not 2017 BC. If a country gets wiped out... someone, somewhere in the world, will write about it and that will be left behind for future historians. As has always been the case.

Ok, prove it. Show me documentation of what happened to the world between 1200 and 1150 BC. That's 50 years - an entire ancient lifetime. Plenty of time to carve something, or record what happened.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

People argue over what exactly happened when there is a ton of information, and the events are still in the living memory of some. Controversy over the end of the bronze age isn't surprising. I don't think that means we have no idea whatsoever what was kinds of things were going on.

[BjornP]

https://www.hittitemonuments.com/kotukale/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peopl ... ry_records

Point is, while the Hittite kingdom broke up, it didn't get annihilated, with every trace of the Hittites expunged from all historical records for posterity. Egypt clearly survived, as well, so did Mesopotamian civilization. Logic also dictates that record keeping continued, as the Egyptian kingdom after all continued to exist for thousands of years onwards and a civilization cannot exist without record keeping and bureaucracy.

[Speaker to Animals]

The only reason we have knowledge of what happened in bronze age Sumeria and Egypt is that they (1) carved their history on to stone and (2) lived in arid environments.

Civilization emerged on it's own, as far as I know, in five places: Euphrates river valley, Nile river valley, Yellow river valley, Mesoamerica, and Andes. We really only have extensive written records of the first two. I will grant you that the Andean civilizations didn't develop a written language like we are used to, but they arguably had something like it in the form of cords and knots. Only a handful still remain. The Mayans developed the most beautiful writing system in all of history as far as I am concerned, and built large libraries of books. Only four Mayan books remain.

Let's consider the Mayan situation. At the time of first contact, there existed enormous amounts of books of all the knowledge the Mayans had developed, including some developments in mathematics and observational astronomy we had not yet learned. We know this because the Spanish scholars who went there learned this information, relayed it back to Europe, and Europeans fixed shit like their calendar and stopped outlawing the fucking zero. But.. because it was assumed the Mayans were pagans and their culture not worth preserving, nobody bothered to make copies of these codices, and we lost many records of one of the most amazing civilizations in history.

It wasn't unique either. We lost much of the culture and written works of the classical European civilization because medieval scholars didn't want to copy works they considered immoral.

Now consider the modern example of ISIS destroying records of Sumerian culture because it's pagan. They are actively destroying knowledge for the same reason our ancestors refused to preserve it. It's quite possible for people to become so hardened against preservation of human cultures they disagree with that they will either let that knowledge rot into oblivion or even actively try to extinguish it as the Muslims do. This happens over and over again. We commit cultural genocide all the time.

That's not even considering the impact of another civilizational collapse, this time global, in which all the media upon which we stored this information will become useless and rot on its own as well.

[Okeefenokee]

Where's the math?

I don't know what that means. Does that mean you want me to prove what I am saying?

I have no proof. I had a mental model about an aspect of reality. I will now keep this mental model in the back of my head. When I read a new piece of Information i will ask "does this information support or refute this mental model"?

It was a joke.