Why is history always about humans?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/07/13/why-history-always-about-humans/kXSi8rJLcfQKYR1P3EDUIM/story.html

by Petiver • 8 years ago

63 57 8 years ago

bostonglobe.com

ohiovr• 8 years ago

What will make the writer really mad is that the world began with humans, and nothing else, for a basic reason. Before us, there was no one to give the world, or anything else, a name. Some say the beginning of wisdom is understanding the meaning of words. I believe the most essential difference human beings have over all other creatures is the development of stories. And those stories can last for thousands of years.

fcbrooklyn• 8 years ago

If you haven't read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, you'd probably dig it. He makes a very good case that storytelling is a cornerstone of the evolution of society as we know it.

zwkrt• 8 years ago

Douglas Hofstadter has made a career out of arguing that human consciousness is founded on the ability to interpret analogies. "This is like that except..." Kind of like a generalization of the story theory.

kody• 8 years ago

Combine that with Debt: the First 5000 Years and you have your bases covered

whatshisface2• 8 years ago

If you add up every thing that an author has argued is a cornerstone of the evolution of society the picture starts looking more and more like the grains of limestone in a concrete foundation.

stevewilhelm• 8 years ago

You might be interested in

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

and

"Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History" by Kurt Andersen

Both focus on how humans are unique in their ability to concoct stories, share plans, and propagate fantasies.

blackflame7000• 8 years ago

To refine even further, its the ability to record knowledge for our posterity to start slightly better off. Not as good as genetic memory but still one of a kind in the universe that I know of

pests2• 8 years ago

I feel like this is splitting hairs with words, but you may be wrong here.

Some people consider Neanderthals as a subspecies of human (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) vs completely distinct (Homo neanderthalensis)

So depending on how you decide on that question there may have been non-humans to give names and record history; as mentioned in the article the oldest cave paintings are thought to be from Neanderthals.

lainga• 8 years ago

Because elephants are notoriously shoddy about leaving primary sources for us to use?

1996• 8 years ago

They have great memory, they are just not good at writing.

kolpa• 8 years ago

For humans, elephants are write-only memory.

rectangletangle• 8 years ago

They prefer to paint instead.

gnarbarian• 8 years ago

Typical ignorant cis hetero normative imperialist colonialist literate racist belittling of the elephantile communication distortion field.

lurquer• 8 years ago

They also dislike long stories, as evidenced by their short tails.

cyberpunk0• 8 years ago

Why is history always about wealthy humans?*

Because history is written by the victor and most of those with wealth and power have historically exploited and destroyed everyone around them to obtain their position.

ellius• 8 years ago

Counterpoint: Karl Marx and Howard Zinn both wrote history.

afarrell• 8 years ago

As did the survivors of the Mongol destruction of Baghdad and the Viking destruction of Lindisfarne.

History is written by those with the time and skill to write things others will read, often moderately wealthy elites but thats less true now.

legostormtroopr• 8 years ago

Karl Marx, son of a wealthy Lawyer, was in fact wealthy. That's what afforded him the time and luxury to pontificate about the lower classes.

briandear• 8 years ago

Have a look at the animal kingdom. That isn’t uniquely human. It’s called Darwinism. Want to write the history? Then win.

dredmorbius3• 8 years ago

Frequently, yes, but not always:

https://scholars-stage.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/history-is-wri...

jlehman• 8 years ago

I find that history is best viewed as a phenomenon of consciousness—the mind's awareness of itself. With awareness of oneself comes awareness of the eventuality of death, the discovery of the "future" and its opposite, the past. In this sense history is a discovery of conscious beings of which humans are the most advanced by probably orders of magnitude (which is a difficult thing to quantify to say the least).

It's not so much that history is "about" humans; it only really applies to humans in the first place. To have a history of "elephants" is just to have a history of elephants as understood by humans—unless it's elephants that are communicating it.

The best explanations I've heard of this concept are in Jordan Peterson's Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories lecture series, available on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQD_IZs7y60I....

His book Maps of Meaning is also fantastic: https://www.amazon.com/Maps-Meaning-Architecture-Jordan-Pete...

luke0016• 8 years ago

Are paleontologists and paleobotanists different from "animal historians?"

mirimir• 8 years ago

Maybe "history" is mainly about humans, but there's also "natural history", which is about animals and plants.

dabbledash• 8 years ago

It’s the thumbs.

ravitation• 8 years ago

I find this article pretty amusing, because, despite its title, it focuses on anthrozoology (the intersection of humans and animals), which is still fundamentally about humans. It doesn't actually focus on things that are fundamentally about animals, like zoology or paleontology.

simondedalus• 8 years ago

always unfortunate when not only 1) is the article title a clickbait "provocative question," but 2) the question has an obvious answer.

andrewstuart2• 8 years ago

The word "history" is literally "his story" - stories about people by people.

drb91• 8 years ago

This is an illusion; “his” is a Germanic word but “history” is derived from the Greek word “historia”.

andrewstuart2• 8 years ago

That's a pity. Seems to make so much sense.

dredmorbius3• 8 years ago

late 14c., "relation of incidents" (true or false), from Old French estoire, estorie "story; chronicle, history" (12c., Modern French histoire), from Latin historia "narrative of past events, account, tale, story," from Greek historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry; an account of one's inquiries, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE * wid-tor-, from root * weid- "to see."

https://www.etymonline.com/word/history

mixmastamyk• 8 years ago

Visit your local "Natural History" museum.

emodendroket• 8 years ago

I mean, you can cast this as a recent trend if you want, but what are fields like paleontology if not a kind of "history" of animals other than humans?

whorat• 8 years ago

The title of this story indicates I would probably not enjoy reading it. :yawn:

pests2• 8 years ago

You were welcome to continue scrolling and not leave a comment.

Koshkin• 8 years ago

Easy: animals do not have a history - just like humans did not, say, 50,000 years ago. In the sense that not much changes or happens in the course of millennia that would be worth having a record of.

watwut• 8 years ago

The article contains a lot of animal history through. And how that history affects humans and vice versa.

Pica_soO• 8 years ago

Why is recently everything about animals?

Is it just another cowardly attempt to withdraw a way from the uncomfortable huge problems and their solutions ("You probably should be out there in the street, protesting the government not doing something against your lifestyle and demanding the destruction of your job, your car and your luxerys") into a controllable little niche - which gives everybody the feeling of doing good, while accomplishing ultimately nothing on the grand scale?

If you save a dog now, the world goes to hell, its grand-grand-descendants will still have to suffer and if it has history books - its archeologists will Marvell at this strange "elder species" who was nice to individuals but nasty to the whole ecological system.

Emotionalize that away, you socially isolated, anthropomorphic romantics.

@Regarding elephant Programmers: Imagine a Keyboard for a trunk.. it would look like a bowl with keys..