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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.
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.
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.
I assume the big one not the little one. It would be anticlimactic for it to be “you know it got quite a bit colder for a little while before you all showed up”
Yeah, some of the stuff that has been able to be confirmed via geological studies is just insane. It’s crazy to me how they aren’t more widely known for disrupting the idea of prehistory.
I wouldn’t say the idea of prehistory is disrupted per se. But we have to accept that it’s region-dependent. In any given region (recorded) history started when the oldest still available account was preserved.
Some regions are far better at preserving very old accounts than others.
That’s not how we classically define prehistory though. Technically pre-history is defined as the period of time beginning when the first humans started using stone tools and ending when different cultures developed writing systems.
My criticism is that western scholars put too much importance on the written word.
That’s my point: The classical definition makes the assumption that written records are the only records with any kind of reliability, which doesn’t hold everywhere.
Well, cultures that heavily relied on oral traditions developed systems that prevented a telephone type scenario from happening. Aboriginals combine oral traditions with ceremony, song, dance, and different medias of physical art. They also had respected leaders whose whole position was telling the right stories during specific times, at specific places, and to specific people in the tribe.
Aboriginal cultures have very advanced psychological technology which they use for the preservation of knowledge and the organisation of society. To white people, technology just means machines. But under a more holistic view, technology can be an idea that you use as a tool to do work. And Aboriginal cultures have very advanced mental tools. These tools have preserved knowledge for much longer than any book or clay tablet ever has, thanks to the expertise in psychology which was used to invent them.
Karl Marx referred to the economic organisation of cultures in Turtle Island and Australia as “primitive communism.” But there’s nothing primitive about it. Ask Me about Aboriginal farming.
And it’s funny to call it primitive communism when the Iriqouian peoples were significantly more politically advanced than Europeans, especially when it came to fair distribution of power and resources.
While the aboriginals underwent and still endure settler colonialism it hasn’t been as long or quite as thorough as the Roman occupation and then christianization that the celts went through. Australia is also so much bigger than the UK, so it would be hard to complete a very effective act of genocide against spiritual or tribal leaders as they did to the druids.
Even so some Celtic oral traditions were still going on strong up till the 19th century, often being little changed over thousands of years.
Ahh, my bad. I am remembering from old American text books from my college days that utilized Aboriginals and Aborigine, both of which i am discovering are incorrect, outdated, and offensive.
My college days were a long time ago and I don’t get many opportunities to speak about aboriginal people, so I’m not surprised I’m behind the times. Thanks for the update!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
We could fossilize a gorilla. We should fossilize a gorilla.
Quick, where’s Harambe?
Probably still Cincinnati
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.
The local Aboriginals to me have oral stories about the most recent ice age.
I assume the big one not the little one. It would be anticlimactic for it to be “you know it got quite a bit colder for a little while before you all showed up”
I have been told they described the formation of glaciers, so definitely the big one.
Yeah, some of the stuff that has been able to be confirmed via geological studies is just insane. It’s crazy to me how they aren’t more widely known for disrupting the idea of prehistory.
Blame the people who don’t look like them but run the country. Anglo fragility won’t give brown people have a chance.
I wouldn’t say the idea of prehistory is disrupted per se. But we have to accept that it’s region-dependent. In any given region (recorded) history started when the oldest still available account was preserved.
Some regions are far better at preserving very old accounts than others.
That’s not how we classically define prehistory though. Technically pre-history is defined as the period of time beginning when the first humans started using stone tools and ending when different cultures developed writing systems.
My criticism is that western scholars put too much importance on the written word.
That’s my point: The classical definition makes the assumption that written records are the only records with any kind of reliability, which doesn’t hold everywhere.
I could’ve phrased it better.
That was also my original point when I said it disrupted the concept of prehistory.
Collision Course, or the spinoff, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild?
If I had money I’d spend all my time learning from these people
That’s actually amazing that information that old survived the telephone game
Well, cultures that heavily relied on oral traditions developed systems that prevented a telephone type scenario from happening. Aboriginals combine oral traditions with ceremony, song, dance, and different medias of physical art. They also had respected leaders whose whole position was telling the right stories during specific times, at specific places, and to specific people in the tribe.
Fascinating, these people are remarkable
Aboriginal cultures have very advanced psychological technology which they use for the preservation of knowledge and the organisation of society. To white people, technology just means machines. But under a more holistic view, technology can be an idea that you use as a tool to do work. And Aboriginal cultures have very advanced mental tools. These tools have preserved knowledge for much longer than any book or clay tablet ever has, thanks to the expertise in psychology which was used to invent them.
Karl Marx referred to the economic organisation of cultures in Turtle Island and Australia as “primitive communism.” But there’s nothing primitive about it. Ask Me about Aboriginal farming.
And it’s funny to call it primitive communism when the Iriqouian peoples were significantly more politically advanced than Europeans, especially when it came to fair distribution of power and resources.
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?)
Wiped out by Christinaity, for the most part.
While the aboriginals underwent and still endure settler colonialism it hasn’t been as long or quite as thorough as the Roman occupation and then christianization that the celts went through. Australia is also so much bigger than the UK, so it would be hard to complete a very effective act of genocide against spiritual or tribal leaders as they did to the druids.
Even so some Celtic oral traditions were still going on strong up till the 19th century, often being little changed over thousands of years.
Hey just a language note, Aboriginal is not a noun, we don’t say “aboriginals”. We say “Aboriginal people”.
Ahh, my bad. I am remembering from old American text books from my college days that utilized Aboriginals and Aborigine, both of which i am discovering are incorrect, outdated, and offensive.
My college days were a long time ago and I don’t get many opportunities to speak about aboriginal people, so I’m not surprised I’m behind the times. Thanks for the update!
No worries, mate. Progress comes from teaching one person one thing at a time!
Well… The Romanisation of Europe happened.
Which could be described as a genocide of Celtic people
And so many more cultures.
Holy shit that’s crazy. I didn’t know we had oral histories from that far back.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population?wprov=sfla1
According to the wiki about half of all humans have lived in the last 2000 years.
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.
Which raises the question, is this just the percentage that’s left?
What if some of the surviving neolithic monuments were shitposts?
Judging by the amount of dicks drawn on walls in Pompeii, shitposting tradition spans millennia. I wouldn’t discount it.
You might enjoy reading about Göbekli Tepe.
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
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
Lost and waiting to be found. Instead we spend money on wars 🤷
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.