HIS129 Varieties in History

2 History, Myth and Identity

What is history?
Time: history is about time, the passing of time.
Psychology: as mortal beings were are preocupied by the
passing of time.
History is a way of dealing with the passing of time.
Recapturing the past, stopping the flow of time,
childhood.
Analogy with taking a photograph of a moving target:
time is never still.
Psychoanalysis: by understanding childhood, one can
understand present states of mind and envisage the future
more serenely.
History is about the here and now.

Why study history?

Like psychoanalysis, history is the investigation of the collective memory for
clues to understand the present in order to help us cope with the future.
The present does not really interest us. You cannot quantify the present. The
present leaves to trace but in our memories. The past however, is omipresent,
it is all around us, through monuments, buildings, ruins, testifying of the
passage of time.
History is like philosophy, the love of wisdom, and it seeks the same answers
that men have always sought, in many ways the only questions worth asking:
Who are we? Where are we from? Where are we going?
In this statement, again you have the past, the present and the future arranged
very neatly in a line. Linear thinking is a characteristic of our civilization. The
idea that something necessarily has to take place before something else occurs,
the chain of cause and effect, is a european concept.
Most human societies, have a circular conception of time: time is a circle and
everything always come back to its beginning. This is true of African cultures,
Hinduism, and China.

Myth and History

From the earliest time, historical writing connected the present
with a mythical past. Genealogies of kings and chronologies
linked the present with the moment of creation. The Egyptians,
Summerians, all saw their current political systems as coming
directly from heaven. The present was not really distinguished
from the moment of creation and rulers were the embodiment
of deities.
Pyramid building, in itself is a way of recording history.
Pyramids were testimonies to the grandeur of past rulers. They
encouraged present rulers to do better, and it also perpetuated a
political system built on slavery. In this respect they made sure
that the present was a perpetuation of the past.

Morality and story telling

From the earliest time, history was first story. A story has a
beginning and an end, and usual a morality. It has heroes and
villains, good guys and bad guys. The Greek myths and stories
are full of heroes and villains. Stories also had a moral
dimension and served as examples.
Early Greek and Roman were preocupied from freeing history
from myth. The idea of 'truth' and the dichotomy between 'true'
and 'untrue' histories emerged. Greek tragedies that depicted
historical events were no longer thought to be historically
accurate. The rewriting of history emerged as a necessity. Each
generation had to rewrite history from its own point of view.

Cicero, De Oratore, II, 62 (106-43

BC)
Who does not know that history's first law
to be that an author must not dare to tell
anything but the truth? And its second that
he must make bold to tell the whole truth?
That there would be no suggestion of
partiality anywhere in his writings? Nor of
malice?

Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Praefatio, 10 (64 BC - 12

AD)
This above all makes history useful and desirable;
it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of
exemplary actions.
Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, II, 6, 43 (23-79)

Owing to a curious disease of the human mind, we

are pleased to enshrine in history records of
bloodshed and slaughter, so that persons ignorant
of the facts of the world may be acquainted with
the crimes of mankind.

Methods of historical
investigation.
The past is a foreign country that is inaccessible, like the remains of a
shipwreck that are washed ashore by the sea, we only have
fragmentary remains recording what happened, the historians is like a
detective, trying to piece the course of events from these remains.
If you had to investigate a shipwreck, what is the first thing that you
would look for? [the logbook].
If there isn't a log book you look for clues in the material evidence
that is left (archeology, material culture).
If by chance, you find a survivor, you can ask what happened (oral
history).
History that concerns us is predominantly the first kind, study of
written evidence. Survival rates of written documents is very poor,
and written records are therefore fragmentary.

History and Myth

In classical Greece and Rome, there was no
distinction between history and myth.
Greek and Roman history is full of heroes,
giants and gods.
Herodotus, a Greek historian, was called the
father of history and the father of lies.

Cicero (106-43 BC)

Everything is meant to lead to the truth, but
in poetry, a great deal is intended for
pleasure - although in Herodotus, the father
of history there are countless numbers of
legends.

History and Narrative

History often takes the shape of a narrative.
History is first story, with a beginning, a
middle and an end.
Like in stories, there are heroes and villains,
winners and losers, and a happy ending with
a lesson to be learnt.

Origin Myths
History served to justify ones position of
authority.
For example, the Romans invented the myth
of the foundation of Rome by Remus and
Romulus to justify their conquest of the
Mediterranean.

Hesiod: The Golden Age (c. 700 BC)

In the beginning, the immortals who have their homes

on Olympos created the golden generation of mortal
people. These lived in Kronos' time, when he was king in
heaven. They lived as if they were gods, their hearts free
from sorrow, by themselves, and without hard work or
pain; no miserable old age came their way; their hands,
their feet, did not alter. They took their pleasure in
festivals, and lived without troubles. When they died, it
was as if they fell asleep. All goods were theirs. The
fruitful grainland yielded its harvest to them of its own
accord; this was great and abundant, while they at their
pleasure quietly looked after their works in the midst of
good things.
Lucas Cranach, 16th

Platos description
of the island of
Atlantis (c. 360BC)
At the centre of the island, near the sea,
was a plain, said to be the most beautiful and
fertile of all plains, and near the middle of this plain
about fifty stades inland a hill of no great size...
There were two rings of land and three of sea, like
cartwheels, with the island at their centre and
equidistant from each other... in the centre was a
shrine sacred to Poseidon and Cleito, surrounded
by a golden wall through which entry
was
Leon Krier, Atlantis seen from the south-wes
1988
forbidden

The Garden of Eden

Gen. 1:28
Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the earth and subdue it;
and have dominion over the
fish of the sea and over the
birds of the air and over every
living thing that moves upon
the earth

Book of Hours, Rouen, 15th c.

The Tower of
Babel

Genesis 11:4
Come, let us build ourselves a city, and
a tower with its top in the heavens

Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-6

History and Identity

Individual and collective identity is
determined by the past.
What distinguishes you from the next
person is your history.
What distinguishes one people from another
is also its history.

Us and Them 1: Barbarians

History is written by the victors.
Romans and Greeks thought they were
superior than their neighbours.
They were civilized (they lived in cities).
They despised barbarians (those that did
not speak their language).

Tacitus (56-115) Germania

It is a well-known fact that the peoples of
Germany never live in cities and will not
even have their houses adjoin one another.
They dwell apart, dotted about here and
there, wherever a spring, plain, or grove
takes their fancy. Their villages are not laid
out in the Roman style, with buildings
adjacent and connected.

History and Morality

In Greek and Roman histories, things
happen for no reason.
Fortune or fate dominates the classical
world view.
History is determined by the whims of the
Gods or the virtue or corruption of rulers.

The Purpose of History

It is the Judeo-Christians that give a
meaning to history.
In the Bible, God rewards the virtuous and
punishes the wicked.
Unlike for the Pagans, Judeo-Christian
history has a purpose: the realization of
Gods plans on earth.

Us and Them 2: Pagans

Like for the Greeks and Romans, JudeoChristian history is written by the victors.
For Christians, the world is no longer
divided between civilized and barbarians
but between believers and pagans.
God is on our side.

Tertullian (160-220) Apologia

What a city, the new Jerusalem! Yes, and
there will be other spectacles too - that last
and eternal Day of Judgment, which the
pagans believed would never happen, which
they scoffed at and ridiculed, when all the
ages of the world and all its generations will
be consumed in one fire.

Conclusion
History emerged from a need to defines ones
identity, often in the face of others.
In the first instance, history was preoccupied with
the origins.
In this search for origins it had to become distinct
from myths.
History was originally conceived as the history of
one chosen people (Jews, Romans, Christians) and
its struggle against the other (Gentiles,
Barbarians, Heathens).