Ancient Historians v. Modern Historians

Comments

• MutantTailThing@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Ye olde version of looking up a weird specific software problem and the guy answered his own post with just ‘nvm fixed it!’

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  • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    (exactly the problem you’re having)

    [Deleted by Creator]

    Thanks! That worked perfectly!

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    • ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I had the same problem and this forum post solved it: (link to a website that no longer exists)

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    • Karjalan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Too many damn times…

      I was promised an immortal repository of knowledge in my youth. Now most of my bookmarks are dead links and finding answers is just like your example half the time.

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    • dalekcaan@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      [Removed by moderator]

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  • RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    “Read the wiki” but the part of the relevant wiki page for the subject was removed years ago and the edit history was purged after the server ran out of disk space.

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    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Return to thread and complain that people are clueless and directing you to a useless resource. Mod locks thread and threatens you with a ban.

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  • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Ugh, yes. I try to always remember to update with what I did to fix it. Although if I’m honest, what probably happens 95% of the time is I just forget about the post entirely.

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    • MutantTailThing@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      ‘Eh, I’ll copy these writings later’

      Diotrophes of Miletus, probably.

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  • Hupf@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Wisdom of the Ancients

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• Carl@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is why archeologists and anthropologists love boring people. Researching Alexander the Great is fine, but we already know the broad strokes. The actual useful “how people lived from day to day” information is almost always found in some boring person’s journal.

  {Date} I walked down to the market to get more salt, flour, vinegar, and some wool thread to darn my socks. The morning walk took approximately 20 minutes with the sun at my back. The fish seller has increased his prices to {amount} due to the war. I saw an interesting flock of birds today during my walk back from the market, I believe they may be passing through the area. I decided to make my dinner bread with a slightly different recipe today. {Full recipe listed below}. It was nice, but I’ll probably only use half as much salt next time, like I normally do. The dairy cow has produced a lot of milk this year because of the heavy rain making the grass grow well. So I’ve had a lot of butter to put on my bread. The neighbor has agreed to trade some of my excess cream for fresh veggies. I’ll probably make them into a stew for tomorrow’s dinner {recipe listed below}.

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  • robear@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If we actually had surviving material like that it would be amazing.

    Before the early modern period it was rare for people to write down boring or mundane shit because writing was hard and expensive.

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    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Now writing is very easy, though I’m somewhat glad the whole bullshit going on on social media is rather easily lost as well. 🫠

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    • BenevolentOne@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      People probably used a lot of slate+chalk or wax tablets for regular note-taking.

      Similarly, archival grade paper and printing is STILL really expensive and folks STILL aren’t doing that for their grocery lists and honey-dos. Not to mention that nearly all of our digital writings are extremely ephemeral. Wont somebody think about the future historians!!!

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    • iocase@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We’ve uncovered less than 1% of the Assyrian/Babylonian tablets that are thought to exist. Theresa a lot of stuff out there that’s well preserved thankfully even if we haven’t uncovered it yet.

      Whats cool is cuneiform could be written phonetically so a Babylonian scribe could write down any language even if they don’t understand it. They apparently could also write at the speed a person speaks so they acted like stenographers in court or executive assistants for rich merchants or elites.

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  • hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The Spectrum Through The Ages.

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    • Amir@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      “autism was invented by modern liberals to fake a diagnosis”

      Journal from ancient mesopotamia:

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  • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Wait, is this someone’s actual ancient journal??? How incredibly exciting? And what was that slightly different recipe?

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  • cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This mofo sold me shitty copper. Ea-Nasir, you’re on my shitlist for eternity, you hear me!

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    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      en.wikipedia.org/…/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nāṣir

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  • treesapx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Highly suggest Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror for all of you who like this stuff. All her work is great.

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  • cloudshouter@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And then you get someone like Thomas Thistlewood. Just an average slave owner.

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• Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s sad to think that probably about 90% of writing from antiquity is lost. Then again, 100% of all history from before writing was invented is lost. And that’s by far the largest part of human history.

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  • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    100% of all history from before writing was invented is lost

    Not entirely true. Some aboriginal oral traditions have accurately described the Budj Bim and Tower Hill Eruptions that happened 37k years ago, and the dramatic rise in sea levels 7-10k years ago.

    The oral traditions of aboriginal tribes is kinda crazy. During the European colonization of australia there are times where you get to see encounters from written documents by Europeans and the history recalled by oral and dance traditions recorded by aboriginals. They tend to match in everything but perspective and often the aboriginal depictions are often more detailed.

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    • DarkSirrush@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The local Aboriginals to me have oral stories about the most recent ice age.

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    • ol_capt_joe@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      What happened to the Celts’ oral traditions? How are indigenous Australians’ historical depictions still stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive?

      (Is it because ignorant bozos like me are oblivious to them?)

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    • Malyca@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s actually amazing that information that old survived the telephone game

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    • sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Holy shit that’s crazy. Oldest oral history I knew of was only 14,000

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  • hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Same for fossils. Heavily forested areas often had soil too acidic to create fossils at all. Fossils take some real luck and the right conditions to make. Otherwise, bones just slowly disintegrated. I’ve seen estimates that 90%+ of species that ever existed left no fossil evidence.

    It’s also why there’s large gaps in the Human and Great Ape fossil records. Australopithecus fossils appear in Chad, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Africa… And no where in between. But is not like none of them existed in the lush jungles of central Africa. The soil dissolved the bones. Same with gorillas. There are no gorilla fossils.

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    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We could fossilize a gorilla. We should fossilize a gorilla.

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  • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And that’s by far the largest part of human history.

    Eh… Depends how you measure the amount of ‘history’.

    If just going by length of time, yes. But if you also take into account how many people exist at that time (how much history is happening per unit of time), then there’s an argument to be made that modern history is a much more significant portion, since our population sizes are so much larger than the relatively tiny populations in prehistory. The vast majority of people who have ever existed lived during the period of modern recorded history.

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    • Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      the vast majority of people who have ever existed lived during the period of modern recorded history

      You sure about that, this says that 117 billion people of our species have ever lived. Writing is around 5,000 years old, and initially was used for accounting so history doesn’t come around until later, whereas the species is 200,000 years old.

      Idk what your classifying as the period of modern recorded history though. Maybe you could say that period started in the 2nd or 3rd millennium BC in the middle east, but that doesn’t mean it started everywhere. At that time there were tons of people who lived without writing, and that continues on until very recently. So even after history was “invented” only a fraction of people lived under societies that practiced it until ~200 years ago.

      I’m not going to do all the math but it seems to me a majority of people who ever lived, were not a part of societies that recorded history.

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  • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Australia: 😂

    Explanation: Australian oral histories have survived for tens of thousands of years, far longer than any European written histories. Australia has had the best historians in the world for longer than European civilisation has existed.

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    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Which raises the question, is this just the percentage that’s left?

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  • Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I recall a story where a historian visited ireland and heard a song with what the people singing called gibberish, but the historian recognized as an ancient language.

    Im unfortunately too lazy to look it up and link it

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  • hostileempathy@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I often wonder how much was lost just in the Library of Alexandria. Start combining that one place, with countless wars, fires and natural disasters throughout time and it boggles my mind thinking about it.

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  • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You never know. It might well be there are some ancient alien Bracewell probes out there that have been recording Earth’s Funniest Caveman videos for millions of years.

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  • sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There is a native american (i forget the exact group but located in near colorado) who’s oral tradition accurately recounts glacial floods from many thousands of years ago. I wish I remembered how many but I read this in a textbook last year and only half recall it. Either way it isn’t all lost, just 99.999% lost

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  • Malyca@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Lost and waiting to be found. Instead we spend money on wars 🤷

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• Z745812939054@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Just wait until all the information that was born digital disappears without a physical copy in existence

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  • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Someone’s probably out there right now transferring PragerU videos to glass plates along with instructions for decoding them. We’ll all be remembered as far-right nutjobs.

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    • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      We’ll all be remembered as far-right nutjobs.

      I certainly hope so.

      I really hope that future society is leftist enough to view even today’s “left” as being very conservative.

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• rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Better than the current practice in journalism where everything in every article is devoid of context

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  • BonsaiBoo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Good thing we sold all our media outlets to billionaires who either use them explicitly to promote fascism or just use the modern first to eyes slop written for profit fear porn and trash entertainment “reporting” you used to find exclusively in tabloids. Defunding public service journalistic outlets sure did fix things, huh?

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  • inari@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This has always irked me, especially when I was young and tried to read articles on politics or the economy. NO context whatsoever.

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• daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Future guys trying to loon up how something of current era works and they get hit with the old classic forum comment:

  “Ask on our discord”.

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  • Caesium@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I hate every day that discord destroyed forums

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  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You can replace future with current.

    The worst I found was a bit readme saying to just join their discord.

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• Setiyeti93@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is precisely why all of my school essays painfully recounted every detail of any persons vaguely attached to the subjects entire life story. Including tangentially related anecdotes about what may or may not have been there favorite meals.

  Not just to pad the word count, but to make sure that future generations would know about how Charles Dickens is experiences a child influenced his writing. On the off chance that every other reference was destroyed in the apocalypse and for some reason a paper copy of my essay magically survives said apocalypse.

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  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Let’s be honest; it was mostly to pad the word count.

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  • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Bruh, the paper copy of your essay didn’t even survive a day past when the teacher finished grading it.

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• FluidBeef@quokk.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Who’s the laughing guy with Ryan Reynolds?

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  • LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Gosling

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• RePsyche@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  …and that wraps up the complete, and anotated discussion of the solution to the Foxworthy Conundrum.

  I knew a guy who would start lecture recordings this way. It was hilarious at the time.

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  • dharmacurious@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Help me out? Google foxworthy conundrum, only seeing the modern comedian. I’m assuming this isn’t that lol

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    • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I think it’s a made up problem for exampling purposes.

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• cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Here’s Ada Palmer explaining why this happened on the Dwarkesh podcast. The reason is they saved religious texts over everything else because monks were in charge of copying over the scrolls.

  www.youtube.com/shorts/eVqgRfRFsMc

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  • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Monks were the og RAID array

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    • bhamlin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Religious Archive of Important Documents

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• ol_capt_joe@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I was fully expecting ≥2 people in the comments to share some relevant and interesting info about diotrophes of miletus…

  Where are ü now that I need ya? 🥺

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  • raspberry_confetti@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think the OOP made them up, because there’s a Diotrephes mentioned in the bible and nowhere else, and there’s a Dionysius of Miletus, whose works are known. I think it’s just a placeholder name for memetic value.

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  • DmMacniel@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Where they roommates?

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• SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  On a long enough timeline every modern historian becomes a ancient one.

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• Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  If this was a known text throughout history (not lost and rediscovered), does that mean there was at least one generation of educated people faking that they knew what these texts were before someone realized they were lost? 🤔

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