Comment on History is written by historians 💪💪💪💪💪
ivan@piefed.social 1 day agoYeah, but even if we go back to antiquity, reputable historians always acknowledge that sources on military history of that time were often full of shit with things like “yeah, there were 100k of us versus millions of Persians”.
And in political history there’s a lot of discrediting one’s predecessors, and retroactively paitining some personalities as crazies.
And part of modern historian’s job is to point out all the possible conflicts of interest in historical sources, so that we can know that we’re presented specific perspective of events or if it was written hundreds of years after events.
PugJesus@piefed.social 1 day ago
Herodotus, often considered the founder of the Western tradition of history as a discipline, actually is very fascinating on this point - because while he can give numbers that are… dubious… he also often notes discrepancies and where reality intervenes with the stories he’s heard, and engages in rough math to prove and disprove claims at certain points.
“Father of Lies”, because he recorded so much bullshit that was floating around, but “Father of History” because he tried to sort bullshit from fact, and align it in a cohesive narrative. o7
Danarchy@lemmy.nz 1 day ago
So like.. step-daddy of lies