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At what point does knowledge of history breakdown?

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Real blank

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At what point does history meaning our knowledge of it really break down as an idea? We have only scraps of sources on ancient Egypt, Greece, and even the Roman Empire. How confident should we be in what we know, and how much has simply been lost?
 
99.999999999999999999999999999% is lost.

Why do you think we keep repeating it?
 
"History is written by the victors." - Winston Churchill
 
Real blank said:
At what point does history meaning our knowledge of it really break down as an idea? We have only scraps of sources on ancient Egypt, Greece, and even the Roman Empire. How confident should we be in what we know, and how much has simply been lost?
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Ancient Egypt:
  • Abundant Material Evidence: Archaeological sites, monuments such as pyramids and temples, artifacts, and objects provide a rich source of information.
  • Written Records: Hieroglyphics, papyrus scrolls, and tomb wall inscriptions contain a wealth of information about ancient Egyptian society, religion, government, and daily life.
  • Recent Discoveries: Recent discoveries, such as papyrus fragments detailing the construction of the Great Pyramid and the recent discovery of the tomb of Thutmose II, continue to enhance understanding.
Ancient Greece:
  • Significant Written Literature: A considerable amount of ancient Greek literature has survived, including epic poems, historical writings, and philosophical works, offering insights into their society, values, and ideas.
  • Archaeological Discoveries: Excavations reveal insights into ancient Greek life and culture through architecture, sculpture, pottery, and inscriptions.
  • Challenges: Many texts are incomplete or biased, and archaeological evidence can be patchy.
Ancient Rome:
  • Documentary Evidence: There is substantial documentary evidence, including papyri from Roman Egypt, numerous stone inscriptions across the empire, and wooden tablets.
  • Historical and Legal Texts: The works of Roman historians and legal texts, while often existing only through later copies, provide crucial information.
  • Less Than 5% of Total Documents: It is estimated that a small fraction of the original documents created by the Roman Empire remain due to the perishable nature of the materials and historical events like fires and sackings.
In summary, extensive evidence exists from all three civilizations. The nature and volume of preserved historical records vary, impacting the understanding of different aspects of their history.
 
I've been in the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Vagtican Musseums, The Capitoline Museums, and the Nationa Roman Museum all in Rome. Haven't had the opportunity to get to Greece to see those but the ones I've seen, and seen numerous times are quite impressive. These are just a few of the extensive network of museums and library that have vast holdings. I can't understand why you don't think we have much information.
 
We don't have knowledge when we don't bother to study the extensive historical data available, or when we don't bother to teach it in our school systems.
 
I was just talking about where the limits of our ability to truly grasp those times come in. Yes, we have information, but how accurate can we truly consider it? Given the limited information we actually have compared to what we could of had.
 
Real blank said:
I was just talking about where the limits of our ability to truly grasp those times come in. Yes, we have information, but how accurate can we truly consider it? Given the limited information we actually have compared to what we could of had.
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You are right, I don't understand what you want. We have lots of information, we have lots of scholars studying and writing about the large amount o artifacts and documents as well as ruins from those civilizations. What do you doubt is accurate?
 
Integrityrespec said:
You are right, I don't understand what you want. We have lots of information, we have lots of scholars studying and writing about the large amount o artifacts and documents as well as ruins from those civilizations. What do you doubt is accurate?
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The sources are so limited though. Look how much we lean on Tacitus for our understanding of the early Roman Empire a lot of what he writes simply cannot be cross referenced.
 
The writing and the study of history is a human process and is thus as prone to distortion from bias or ignorance or even duress as any other facet of human pursuit of knowledge. The distortion starts with the questions which we ask ourselves, for our biases, ignorance, fear - which causes self-censorship and those skewed questions shape the information which we search out, recognise as important, collect and how we weigh and evaluate those collected findings to arrive at historical conclusions. Aggregate enough historical conclusions and you have the beginnings of a history. However since those conclusions are a function of the fallible biases, ignorance, fears and the questions which we pose ourselves, those conclusions are always suspect and thus so are our aggregate histories. Therefore History is an aggregate body of flawed conclusions which we have used to build a widely accepted mono-myth about who we are, how we got here and where we came from. Histories are the myths we all agree to tell ourselves salted with many selected historical facts and built out of suspect conclusions.

Science is much the same in terms of its fundamental reliance on human flaws. So it's not that historians are biased, craven ignoramuses who can't ask good questions. The problem is humans are biocentric thinkers peering through the keyhole of short lives and limited perceptions in a discipline which spans millennia and has a glut of data. History therefore changes over time, either by revolution or evolution as biases, knowledge, values, ethics and questions change after being reflected and distorted back at us in the fun-house mirrors of our earlier iterations of our histories.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.
 
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Real blank said:
At what point does history meaning our knowledge of it really break down as an idea? We have only scraps of sources on ancient Egypt, Greece, and even the Roman Empire. How confident should we be in what we know, and how much has simply been lost?
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Lots have been lost, but we also have a lot of information.

But the point is simple...when Christianity started to manifest itself in the Roman Empire and places like the Great Library of Alexandria was destroyed. We lost so much history and knowledge due to this.

Add to this the very conservative methods and ideas of modern historians and archaeologists refusing to even think they are wrong about something...then you have a dangerous combination.

Case in point the Piri Peis map. A map drawn by a Muslim Ottoman Admiral in 1513. He based it off much older maps saved by the Muslims and Jews during the Christian purges. This map clearly shows Antarctica and South America long before bothe were mapped or "discovered" by white Christians.. but to this day the official discovery of Antarctica in 1820...

Many historians have zero explanation of pyramids in Asia and South America that pre date those in Egypt .. it is basically ignored.
 
Real blank said:
At what point does history meaning our knowledge of it really break down as an idea? We have only scraps of sources on ancient Egypt, Greece, and even the Roman Empire. How confident should we be in what we know, and how much has simply been lost?
Click to expand...

Good question.

We know that much has been lost and consequently we take what we know with a grain of salt. The same thing is understood that history is written by the winners. That obviously slants almost everything outside of Internal Introspection. These are pretty basic Historian Perspectives.


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True historians recognize when they hit a wall in understanding. Understanding history is a process of cross-referencing data and then incorporating new data if possible. That's why we can have a crap-ton of historical information, but may not have the ability to understand it. Or not just yet. Like not understanding much of antiquity until the Rosetta Stone.

The danger with history is with those who choose to suppress and re-write it to fit their own agendas.
 
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