Imperfect Genius

This post came about while I was pondering on Story of the World. The author mixes religious and cultural myths with historical data and lots of people have expressed reservation about this. At first I was hesitant, too, but I was able to sort out my concerns and we now use SOTW. Here are my thoughts about history and this thing we call myth.

History is a not a perfect science. History is gained through our efforts to explore the events, people, and places of the past. We were not present for every moment in history, hence we must rely on what we discover and the things that are related to us. This poses two problems.

First, our view of recorded of history can be skewed depending on what we uncover. Who created it? Why? What purpose it serve? Regardless of whether it’s a scroll, piece of pottery, or a building someone, or maybe many people, created and left their stamp on. Secondly, we must interpret these discoveries, which is where an additional layer of perspective gets added.

Usually archaeologists and other historians can agree on what purpose artifacts served, the chronological order of events, and how people lived. But not always. And our knowledge is limited to the clues we have at hand; sometimes it’s hard to form a complete or accurate picture because we do not have all the pieces to the puzzle.

In many ways history, especially ancient history, is very mythical. If you and I were to attend the same event we might give conflicting accounts of it. You might notice things I did not, and vice versa. Our opinions, worldview, and experiences would influence our perception. We might have very different reasons for writing down our thoughts and we might be trying to convey a particular message through doing so. You might try to give a detailed summary of the event, whereas I might purposefully weave it into a fantastical story.

What if one record was destroyed shortly after it was written and the other was found three hundred years later? No one alive today would be able to give a first hand account. So all we have are stories. Perhaps they are written first-hand accounts, or perhaps re-tellings by people of a later time about what took place years before.

We might be able to establish with great confidence that someone was elected to office or that another person lived from 1543-1597. Sometimes there is an overwhelming amount of conclusive evidence which can be corroborated from a variety of sources. But beyond this, things move into a gray area. And the further back we go, the less precise our knowledge of historical events, people, and places.

Even relatively recent history is skewed by perspective. We have Christopher Columbus day to celebrate his legacy, yet there is little discussion about his involvement with slave trade or that records show he never set foot on our continent. Children are told stories about Sacajawea and Pocahontas but less happy events of the same time periods are rarely mentioned.

Is this creating myth? Yes. We choose what parts of history to pass down through the generations. We retell old stories in new ways. We play up the parts that are meaningful to us. We remove some details and invent others, perhaps to fill gaps in our knowledge or because we think it will make the story more interesting.

A myth can tell us so much; it reveals aspect of our world that a dry recounting of history cannot. Why was this particular story important? What do we learn by retelling it? Has it changed over time? How has it shaped our world today? Why was a story considered factual at one point and mythical at another? These are important questions that provide insight to both the ancient and modern world.

I don’t mind myths, in fact I enjoy them very much. To me, myths are as important as the idea of a ‘factual’ history. Myths abound in all cultures, times, and places. They are the stories of our lives, our ancestors, and our future. They are the collective history of our human consciousness.