# How long ago is "history"?



## littlemissattitude (Aug 30, 2003)

There is a thread elsewhere on this forum that has been discussing theories of how history will treat the whole Iraq adventure.  This brought up a question in my mind:

How long do you think it takes - how much time must pass - before an historical event can be seen in its proper light and context?

One of the reasons I've been thinking about this is that it seems like the various news media - at least here in the States - more and more tries to create instant historical analysis, making statements about how this or that event will be seen by future generations, or how what has just happened will impact the future.  Personally, I don't think it is possible to do that, simply because events must play out to their conclusion before any real analysis can be made.  My own thinking is that at least a generation, and probably more time than that, must pass before historians can even begin to assess how any event will ultimately fit into the fabric of history.

This is just my opinion.  I'd be interested in what you all think about this.


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## GnomeoftheWest (Aug 30, 2003)

li'l miss

You are sooo right - like calling the whole O. J. thing "The Crime of the Century".  I doubt in a hundred years that it will be brought up at all.

There is no possible way we can know the historical importance of an event as it's unfolding.  And even history is wrong sometimes in placing importance on one event over another.  It's pretty obvious that as a whole we don't learn anything from history anyway.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 31, 2003)

Certainly true - and a point about political events is that there's usually a whole range of government department papers on the issue, that often will not be publicly released until 25-30 years or so have passed. The insights these give to the historian are invaluable.

A particular case in point on this issue is the Hutton Inquiry in the UK - essentially, examining why the UK's chief scientist on the issue of Iraqi weapons killed himself. The main issue is whether the government is to some degree responsible for his death - but as it's linked to the entire question of going to war, we're getting a lot of behind-the-scenes information on that. Essentially, we're seeing government documents on the issue that we would not normally see declassified for decades.

also, the actual context of events is of particular importance. For example, on the recent issue of the Space Shuttle Columbia - we have no idea of what historical impotance this may have on the future development of space exploration. Perhaps at some point the Columbia disaster will be pin-pointed as the moment when manned exploration failed - or perhaps as the moment when we finally learned to properly accept risk. We cannot know until those developments are actually played out, to make a judgement with hindsight.


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## dwndrgn (Sep 8, 2003)

All true...but...as far as to judging how certain events will effect the future may not be something that the newsagents should do, it is definitely something everyone does on a daily basis for their own personal lives and something that big decision makers do quite often as well.

I am quite sure that George Bush weighs what all of his advisors think will happen if we do 'X'.  Then, judging the most likely conclusion makes a decision upon that.

And I am constantly (if not always consciously) making decisions based on what I think will be the result...this is small-scale stuff but exactly the same thing.  All we can do is conjecture and the newsmedia seem to not have anything better to do.

I do think, however, that their use of 'Crime of the Century' and all the other cutesie names they give to current events are way over the top and utterly ridiculous.  They seem to want to make the news seem like a movie instead of real life.

On a similar note, why do they think we want them to interview every sobbing and teary-eyed relative and neighbor on the character of a murder victim?  How about "X was killed at 5pm on Sunday evening while walking in between the blocks of 7th and 8th streets.  X was shot by a .32 caliber bullet at close range.  The police have several leads and clues to follow and we will give you more info on that later."  And that would be that unless the culprit was caught.

Sorry, I went on a bit didn't I?  I really dislike watching or reading the news because of this type of thing.  Pet peeve of mine.


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## littlemissattitude (Sep 26, 2003)

It's interesting...I've been thinking about this issue some more as I do research for a writing project about the baby boomer generation.  As I go back and look at chronologies and news reports from the period beginning with 1946 (which is when the Baby Boom is considered to have begun, at least here in the States), I am struck by the number of issues from that time that are still being played out today.  Terrorism, chemical and biological warfare, nuclear issues - both of bombs and energy generation, environmental issues, famine, race relations, and many other issues, were troubling the world in the wake of World War II just as they are today.  The details may be different, but the reverberations are still affecting us now.

It makes me believe more than ever that we can't be too quick to assign hard and fast meanings to things that may still be in flux.


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## Lacedaemonian (May 27, 2004)

I once wrote an essay at university entitled: What is History?  

It was a painful experience. 

Life is the same, life is always the same.  We kid ourselves that what we do now is different, more important than the lives of our ancestors.  A silly lie.  We just wrap ourselves up in modern contraption and hope to believe that we are somehow better off now.  It is not something that we really want to face, but the truth is there smiling like a sunny day:  We are absolutely insignificant in the scheme of all life.

I did not write this in my essay, the essay was a far duller affair.  Maybe even the very reason I left the course...


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## littlemissattitude (May 27, 2004)

Lacedaemonian said:
			
		

> I once wrote an essay at university entitled: What is History?
> 
> It was a painful experience.
> 
> ...


History was a painful experience, or writing the essay was? 

I think you make a good point.  Things don't really change all that much.  The details do, of course, but the general scheme of things is just the same old same old (SSDD ).  The only thing that I would differ with you on is the idea that we are all insignificant.  I think, rather, that we are all much more significant than anyone wishes to admit.  Not on a worldwide scale, perhaps, but on the personal scale of day-to-day life, everyone - and I mean everyone - has a huge impact, for good or for bad, on the people they come into contact with on a daily basis.  But that feeling on my part may just be my bedrock belief that while community is important, the individuals that make up the community are just as important as the whole that they are a part of.  I would never have made a good Communist, I'm afraid.  Not that I make that good a Capitalist either.  From what I have been able to figure out, both systems tend to elevate the collective over the individual; they just do so in different ways.


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## Lacedaemonian (May 29, 2004)

I love the idea of 'community'.  I feel it is a sorely missed ingredient of modern society.  We seem to function independently from each other with no structure.  

I left my course partly due to essays such as _What is History?_, which was a very painful essay to right.  It viewed history in a scientific light.


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## littlemissattitude (May 29, 2004)

Lacedaemonian said:
			
		

> I love the idea of 'community'. I feel it is a sorely missed ingredient of modern society. We seem to function independently from each other with no structure.
> 
> I left my course partly due to essays such as _What is History?_, which was a very painful essay to right. It viewed history in a scientific light.


I think community is very important.  But it is a fine line to walk, to make sure that both the community and the individual get their due.  I think that it is important for the individual to honor their responsibilities to the community, but I believe that it is just as important that the community not make such large demands on the individual that he or she has no time or freedom to pursue individual interests and express individual ideas and tastes.  I think both conditions are necessary for a healthy, sane society.

As for the idea of history as a science...that is pure balderdash (well, at least that word uses the same first letter as the word I'd really like to use).  In order for a discipline to be a science, it has to provide for replicability of conditions, testing of hypotheses, and reliable prediction of future conditions.  I don't think history does any of those things.  No way to replicate history in any significant and realistic manner.  Hypotheses can only be tested through surveys of the literature, not through any kind of significant experimentation.  And no predicition of future conditions in any significant detail, and even general predictions are really just educated guesses.  No, I see history more as an art and a skill, pretty much storytelling based on facts.  And the problem there is that many times the facts are not even all that certain.  After all, much of history is written by the winners, with a spin that favors the winners and demonizes the losers at the expense of objective facts.  And even when the losers get to write, they spin things just as much as the winners do.  As only one example, how many different versions of the events surrounding the Nixon administration and its participation in and cover-up of the Watergate scandal are out there sitting on library shelves?  At least as many as the number of participants who have written and published books and articles about it.


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## dwndrgn (May 29, 2004)

I agree, but at the same time I disagree.  For the most part, history is a story and yes that story differs by the storyteller and by how close the storyteller was to the actual events being told - like the telephone game - the beginner in the line says something like "Jack went to the store to get some milk" to number two.  Two says to three "Jack went out to get milk".  Three says to four "Jack needed milk and went to get some".  And so on.  The end result being something that probably doesn't resemble the original statement.

However, certain parts of history can be quantified scientifically, natural events that can be recreated like fossilization, the decomposition of bodies, etc.  Forensic science is a good example of this.

Heck, I'm tired I should probably go to bed as this post isn't terribly clear.


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## littlemissattitude (May 29, 2004)

dwndrgn said:
			
		

> I agree, but at the same time I disagree. For the most part, history is a story and yes that story differs by the storyteller and by how close the storyteller was to the actual events being told - like the telephone game - the beginner in the line says something like "Jack went to the store to get some milk" to number two. Two says to three "Jack went out to get milk". Three says to four "Jack needed milk and went to get some". And so on. The end result being something that probably doesn't resemble the original statement.
> 
> However, certain parts of history can be quantified scientifically, natural events that can be recreated like fossilization, the decomposition of bodies, etc. Forensic science is a good example of this.
> 
> Heck, I'm tired I should probably go to bed as this post isn't terribly clear.


No, no, dwndrgn. You're being perfectly clear. And you are right, there are facts related to history that can be quantified scientifically. I think my point is that once those facts are determined, those who tell the story have a persistent habit of interpreting those facts in a way that supports their preconceived notions of what they should mean.

Fossilization is a great example. We've got a certain number of fossils of hominds that have lived throughout history. You've got your australopithecines - _afarensis_, _africanus_, _robustus_ (and any others I've forgotten at the moment), you've got _Homo habilis_ and _Homo erectus_ and _Homo heidelbergensis _and others, you've got Neanderthals. And then there are some that are more recently discovered but maybe older than all those I've mentioned whose species designations I can't recall right now. Those fossilized bones and teeth are there; they are fact. But different paleoanthropologists look at them and see different things, and due to the different things they see when they study them, they've drawn some very different family trees that lead up to _H. sapiens sapiens_ (us). Just as one example, how many times have Neanderthals been read in and then out of the direct line to us? They're out right now, in most anthropologists' minds. But, interestingly, there are still some who interpret the evidence to mean that we do still carry some Neanderthal DNA in us.

I recall one physical anthropology textbook that summarized all the proposed family trees at the time it was published - I think there were nine different possibilities that were regarded as at least possible, based on the evidence available. And there are huge arguments in the anthropological world between those who support one possible tree or another. There's a great book, called _Bones of Contention_, by Roger Lewin, that starts out with a great story about a televised encounter between two of the most famous paleoanthropologists in the world, Richard Leakey (son of Louis and Mary) and Donald Johanson (one of the discoverers of Lucy, in Ethiopia), who have different ideas about the family tree of humankind. To say it got a little tense is a bit of an understatement. I've read books by both of these men, and believe me, they use the same fossils to come to some very different conclusions. Then there are the cases where advocates of one particular tree will deny access to fossils they have control of to other scholars whom they know advocate another version of the tree. Not exactly a collegial free flow of the data.

And that's not the end of the problem. The biologists jumped into the argument awhile back with their analyses of mitochondrial DNA, from which came the Eve hypotheses, which doesn't always jibe with the stories told by the fossils, according to some anthropologists. They've been coming to some accommodation between the biological and fossil evidence more recently, but there are still some controversies there, too. Not even all the biologists agree on exactly what the mtDNA data really means. Dates have moved back and forth, and so on.

So I certainly wasn't saying that the facts aren't there. It's more like scholars tend to play fast and loose with the facts that are there sometimes. It's like statistics - different people analyzing the same set of numbers can make them say all kinds of different things. Those who swear by statistics are prone to say that "the numbers don't lie". Others, who know how numbers can be played with, are more likely to say that there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics." It's like the Bible, too. How many different, sometimes mutually exclusive, theologies have the same set of books been said to "prove"?

Now, I don't know how much sense all that makes. Like you said, dwndrgn, it's getting late. I hope this isn't completely incoherent.


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## Lacedaemonian (May 30, 2004)

The future of history will be written by the losers.  This trend has already began in the UK.  I think the British by nature prefer the under dog, not meaning to stereotype.


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## Blue Mythril (Jun 21, 2004)

> How long do you think it takes - how much time must pass - before an historical event can be seen in its proper light and context?


Well, I think the question that needs to be asked there is can an event ever be truly seen in its "proper light and context"? Honestly, there are so many reasons why we can never truly place an event in such terms, without even touching on the complications of bias. You have problems with the sources, or a lack of sources. Hell, as you say, even when you are living in an event you never understand the entirety of it. There is so much that is hidden, whether intentionally or accidently, about history that it is impossible to even understand what happened, let alone to attatch a 'proper' context to it. 
It's one of the most frustrating things about history 

As to 





> How long ago is "history"?


, thats kind of the same conundrum isn't it? Some scholars would say that History is as far back as th written word, and that anything before history is Pre-history. But the reality is that people existed before then and had their own stories, complexes and lives, we still think of those people as part of human history. 




> So I certainly wasn't saying that the facts aren't there. It's more like scholars tend to play fast and loose with the facts that are there sometimes. It's like statistics - different people analyzing the same set of numbers can make them say all kinds of different things. Those who swear by statistics are prone to say that "the numbers don't lie". Others, who know how numbers can be played with, are more likely to say that there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics." It's like the Bible, too. How many different, sometimes mutually exclusive, theologies have the same set of books been said to "prove"?


 
Thats exactly what I am trying to say  People make history, history itself is confused and never clear cut, varying from perspective to perspective. So I guess I don't think we can ever truly attatch a definate "proper light and context" to any event, as it would be such only by our own standards.


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## Lacedaemonian (Jun 28, 2004)

The history of the future will be so very different from the history of now.  Sociology, psychology and this massively documented world will make history a harder story to tell.  The facts will always come out in the end.


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## zorka (Jun 29, 2004)

Blue Mythril said:
			
		

> Well, I think the question that needs to be asked there is can an event ever be truly seen in its "proper light and context"? Honestly, there are so many reasons why we can never truly place an event in such terms, without even touching on the complications of bias.


 Exactly!

 But it goes back to understanding what is the purpose of history. We look at facts and influences, etc. of some event. Then each person researching it might interpret the event's impact on events that occured later. Each historian might have his own agenda though they might not admit it. I don't believe there is any purely objective interpretation of past events and so that raises the question - is there such a thing as "proper light and context?"

 With this century we do have film, video, and audio that helps us try to see the facts more as they "really" happened.  But even that becomes open to interpretation - the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination is a perfect example. We can view the film over and over, enhance it by computer, but can we really know whence the head shot came?  Thus did Oswald really act alone, etc. 

 Beyond the above technology we rely on what is written or anthropological discoveries and again interpret what is found all through the eyes of many people. Do we take what the majority seems to say to conclude what is the "Proper light?"

 What is even scarier is our ability to alter images today and thus influence historical interpretation. What happens if a hundred years from now one is writing a history of John Kerry and the altered photo of him with Jane Fonda (which didn't occur) is used as a basis of interpretation?

 Little Miss, I don't think we will ever know what is the proper light and context and that is the unfortunate side to the history of mankind.


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