Rewriting History

Historians aren't all the same, but the good ones are perpetual students trying to learn more about the subject of their own specialty. They are often assisted by scholars in other disciplines in the search for better, more complete knowledge and understanding of the past. No one can fully know and understand completely even events that they witness for themselves.

What was the world like 3000 years ago, and how can we ever know?

We can study the surviving writing of people who lived during that time, or shortly thereafter. One problem is how much value we should place on those writings. Some may be no better than gossip, the 1000 BCE equivalent of the National Enquirer. Writing from authors who were highly regarded in their own time for writing history tends to be valued more than sources that frequently indulge in obvious propaganda, speculation, or given to fabulous explanations. Unfortunately after 3000 years most of what we have are fragments, and some cases all we have are a few quotations from an ancient historian's work. We also have large numbers of documents that represent bills of lading, business transactions, government proclamations and even some correspondence between ancient governments. There is ancient graffiti and inscriptions on public monuments. Many ancient cultures were illiterate, or they used languages that have been lost in time. Scholars have deciphered some of those languages, but how perfectly can we know a language that hasn't been spoken in over a thousand years? We still haven't a clue about what is written in Linear A, though Linear B can be read by a few specialists. All of these sources of knowledge have drawbacks, and none of them give more than a tiny glimpse of what actually was happening in any given time/place.

These specialists write, sometimes terribly unreadable manuscripts, that have little interest beyond those who share the specialty. Even so discoveries pile up over time. Some are very important to improving our knowledge of the history of a particular time and period, but most are little discoveries. Over time the understanding and knowledge grows and influences historians outside of a particular specialty, and so their work and writing is influenced. Popular writers and those who write textbooks eventually catchup and older works are discarded as no longer useful. Writing history is just as much a process as the events and historical actors themselves.

Of course, more people are interested in knowing more about events, trends, motivations, etc. in more recent periods. People who read the newspapers and follow current events are seeing history unfold before their eyes. If their sources are the National Enquirer, or a campaign biography their overall understanding will be limited. Even when an event is recognized as historically important (and many important historical events go un-noticed at all) our knowledge and understanding is limited and very likely mistaken. The assassination of JFK has been studied by thousands of experts. Really exhaustive Government investigations have been conducted and thousands of pages of reports published on the subject. We have film fragments of the events, and many of us witnessed the assassination in person or on television in real time. And yet, there are still numerous conspiracy theories and myths about what happened in Dallas. Imagine the difficulty that historians will have interpreting the assassination of JFK a few hundred years from now or, a thousand years from now. We are too close to the event to see clearly what and how it happened, and our evaluation of its importance may not survive even another 100 years. Who can know what will be deemed important after the a long interval filled with other events and trends that we can't even imagine yet?

This is the second link:

http://www.victorborg.com/html/rewriting_history.html

I hope it works now

Oh Asherman I agree with you! But, my question still stands.

Great post!

This is the view (two days old) to an archeological excavation in a nearby town (Paderborn):



The want to construct a new bank building, demolished some houses, found this.
This site is just ouside the cathedral district as well as outsite the the 750/1000 settlement area. It was commonly known as "bishop Meinwerk's quary", because the stones for the cathedral came from there.

Now, however, they found a lot rather precious objects, dating from 1100 until 1750 ... and not destroyed (as would have been when this area had been a "rubbish place" later) plus all those various stairs, steps, walls.

So, that history has to been rewritten.
When? Noone can say it - you need to "built up" some new ideas.


Back in the late sixties I had some archeological practising when helping with the excavation of the Kaiserpfalz there: there are still some publication referring to that time (about 1970) and the findings (though nothing revolutianary new).

There is a constant process, by those who did the "digging", PhD-students, local hobby-historians, etc etc.

All sums up: a bit is published (results, essays), a bit is talked about (from small talk to seminaries) etc etc.
And then a major work is published, critised. Someone else publishes something. ... And finally, some/most agree.

Even more difficult: you don't have archeological eveidence or only a mistrusted one ... like the place of the famous Varus battle.

I see what you mean Walter thanks.

In this case Walter the who would be the country that finds the new evidence? Or, do other countries become involved? After all in the last archaelogical process it is making it known.

The simple answer is yes.

History, however, is not a science, and its study is anything but simple.

However, there is one good example. The only place that Pontius Pilate is mentioned is in Christian texts, and one brief notice in Tacitus. The works of Tacitus are known to have been vandalized with interpolation--an interpolation is when a text is copied, and the copyist adds material to the text. A famous passage in Tacitus which Christians point to as evidence that the putative Jesus existed has been shown (to the satisfaction of historical scholars, at least) to have been an interpolation. A copyist in the Vatican at some time in the 15th century added text to a copy of Tacitus (the passage is not known to have existed before the 15th century), and the page from which it was copied disappeared.

Therefore, the mention of Pilate by Tacitus was also suspect as a possible interpolation. However, in 1961, an Israeli archaeological team was excavating at the site of Caesarea Maritima, which was the administrative center from which Iudaeae (Judea) was governed. There they found an inscription in an amphitheater which names Pilate.



This doesn't prove any of the Christian stories about Pilate and the crucifixion of the putative Jesus. But it does prove that there was a Roman official named Pilate who lived at that time. The incomplete inscription reads:

TIBERIEUM,,

-TIUS PILATUS

-ECTUS IUDA-

This is reasonably assumed to read: "Tiberieum (a part of the dedication to the Emperor Tiberius), [Pon]tius Pilatus, [Pra]fectus Iuda[eae]--[to] Tiberius, [by] Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea."

So, no one now questions that Pilate actually existed.

Thanks Setanta.

Hmm. It's certainly seen through the glasses of the country where something was found.

But fortunately, historians from other countries look at it as well.

Some examples:
- the latest "place" of the Varus battle (now discussed again) is where a British hobby historian thought it was,

- a nearby abbey and (formerly) more unknown museum [though famous by the paintings of the Master of Liesborn [in the National Gallery] got some national reputation because of a different focus by it's director, an American,

- Eugen Weber, the UCLA historian who died a couple of days ago, is most famous ... in France, due to his books "Action Frangaise: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France" and "Peasants Into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914".

So, yes it takes time, and in that time new evidence may come up to verify it one way or another.

If I understood that educational article correctly I would like to know more on their say in the matter.

Thanks guys

Setanta has elsewhere noted that P. Pilate was a Prefect, not the Proconsul who actually governed the province. That makes Pilate's condemnation of Jesus of Nazareth a doubtful claim. Maybe he did play some role in the crucifixion, but we can't be certain what that role might have been. We are left with a single source that maybe both self serving and added later to the story.

Rewriting history can be taken two ways. One, that I presumed you were talking about, is revision made necessary as new facts are discovered, or better analysis of facts are worked out by the community of serious historical scholars. That is an endless search and refinement of what knowledge we have. The second sort of re-writing history, is the cynical revision of history to serve some social or political ideal. This sort of re-writing may be illustrated by the Ministry of Truth in the dystopian novel "1984", and practiced by Stalin and his political heir in the old Soviet Union. In a more benign form history is re-written to shift emphasis from the great names and events of traditional history to highlight the more mundane lives of the masses, of women or other special interest groups whose historical roles may have previously been under valued. In this form, high school student might spend much more time learning about figures and events that in more traditional historical writing been devoted to "important" dates, figures and events. Personally, I think that is not as profitable use of the limited time spent teaching history to youth as the more traditional focus on pivotal figures and events. But then, I'm just a teeny bit conservative.

Walter, how long has this discovery been waiting?

Will you please let us know if it's history gets rewriten in our life time. I really want to know.

Thanks

The natural progression of rewriting history as new evidence is unearthed is a process that can WITNESS years of academic argument and symposium fodder, ultimately it occurs through a gradual reinforcement by assimilation of even more corroborating evidence. In the US, some more recent "settled science" has been the reinterpretation of Jamestown and its surrounds. Also, we are now beginning to be advocates of a " perhaps Folsom wasnt first" concept in the peopling of the continent. If one would have said something different as recently as 20 years ago, one would have been laughed at. Only since Shoop, Meadowcroft , Cactus Hill and kenewick Man, and Monte verde, and detailed forensic re-evaluation of evidence have we been so bold as to ask the questions in a more "bold, and "careers- be- damned" attitude of scholarship. ( The burgeoning of numerous funding sources, many of which are delighted more by exposing novelty than actual scholarship are more available to fund some of the more iconoclastic research)

However, the scope in which I read your second link(a blog with its own ax to grind) wasnt so much interested in this natural progression , but was more a blog about "revisionism" in which "history" more than not, represents a nationalistic anthem. How many years did we learn in history that the US was founded on the precept "That all men are free" .Only through the deeper researching into our own legislative and oral history have we been exposed as , not unlike any other country with a strong underscore of nationalism, a bunch of "state sponsored" history book writers who didnt spend much time in bothering early 20th century students with more truthful accounts ofour early governments . In fact, since the early days of more public access to mass education, we have been strongly influenced by the religious institutions and under whose imprimatur were the early histories (and sciences) written to, primarily, be more representative as monuments to a Christian "founding" ethic and not a confusing mass of facts that could inconveniently wreck the beautiful legends that wed been fed. In those days,Contemporary events, once digested through histories small intestine were shat out as nice fecal pellets of "fact" that had much of the truth removed.