History

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC – 425 BC). He is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. He is almost exclusively known for writing The Histories (a word that passed into Latin and took on its modern meaning of history) a record of his "inquiries" into the origins of the Greco-Persian wars.

What is history? Is history a concrete fact or a chain of logical theories? We can examine this question by reviewing historical events, such as the rise and fall of Romans, Greeks, and Persians empires, inquisition in church dominated middle ages, the period of French and industrial revolutions, world wars, great epidemics, natural disasters, great discoveries, and other events that shaped the world. We may even consider unwritten/ discovered artifacts and evidence that began with a hypothesis (later to be proved as a fact) such as the big bang, disappearance of dinosaurs, and evolution, as history. In general, everything that happened in the past and has life shaping effect on the world and human, can be considered useful history. However, we have to be careful that a statement that is expressed by someone is merely that person’s perspective. A witness or a concrete evidence does not exist and an evidence or a witness is always in question. How many cases of criminal convictions do we know in which more evidence were brought forward later that the convicted or the executed criminal was proven to had been innocent, or at least the certainty of the crime became questionable? Therefore, it is important what is reliable history. Reliability has a direct correlation with the timing and source of the event. You know what you did ten minutes ago, but whatever I think what you did ten minutes ago is nothing but theory and speculation. Even you, yourself, cannot account for everything you do in every moment, set aside thinking about what you have done 20 years before. Knowledge of the past is more or less accurate depending upon the individual’s knowledge in relation to a certain event. As further back we go through time, the more distant the accuracy of our information would be, as the society and those living in that society become more removed from us. Less evidence and fewer documents would result in deficient information as well. We can summarize levels of accuracy of sources of data as following:
1) No matter how foggy the memory is, a person would know what he or she did in the past (say 20 years ago) more than anybody else who was present at the time of the event.
2) The second most knowledgeable person about that event would be the one who witnessed it, experimented it, or somehow had a close understanding of it.
3) The third knowledgeable person would be the one who was not present at the time of the event (say something that happened millions of years ago) but he or she could gather enough information, data, and evidence to build a theory about it. This information includes interviewing witnesses, reading notes or memoranda of the witnesses, examining the effect or the influence of the historical event on surroundings that can be compiled and examined today (such as crime evidence, DNA testing, fossils examination), and finding tested to be accurate artifacts and documents. Therefore, history is nothing but speculations and theories; some stronger and some weaker (with more or less evidence). The best historical evidence is observation (recording auditory or visually or both) and documentation (writing about the event in detail). It is also helpful to have some physical evidence, such as a sample. Investigation and interview of the witnesses have been proven useful. The history that Tabari wrote, especially the section related to the prophet and his followers was systematically organized by sending his pupils to interview descendants of those who lived at the time of the prophet and his followers, and socialized with them. His fact finding style was unique for the time, to call his book justifiably “the mother of histories”.

What is the oldest historical record? We have cave art that dates back to 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. Of course, the oldest written historical document had to be after 'writing' itself was invented. Until recently the oldest historical record had been the one discovered from Sumer (present day Iraq), appointing Sumerians inventors of writing. Carved in the limestone of a desert cliff in Egypt is a 5,250-year-old tableau of a victorious ruler, perhaps the so-called King Scorpion. The archaeologists who discovered the tableau say it may be the world's earliest historical document. More than that, they say, the inscribed scenes and symbols bear a strong resemblance to later hieroglyphs. The tableau, measuring 18 by 20 inches, was discovered in 1995 by John Coleman Darnell, a Yale Egyptologist, and his wife, Deborah Darnell, also a specialist in Egyptian archaeology, while they were surveying ancient trade routes in the desert west of the Nile.

History discloses events that explain formation of galaxy and origin of the first organism. Recent recorded history describes human actions in progressing to the present stage. Unfortunately, most of the history contains stories of kings and emperors and those with military power, not the populace. Reading pages of history explains how rapidly we have been evolving. We learn from history that with all the supernatural beliefs and all the crimes committed and criminals ruling nations, human being has been rapidly excelling, culturally and scientifically. Our thoughts are narrowing down to the direction of welfare of all. When we aim at satisfying the needs of all, we can achieve the democracy. Science of the past combined with historical theories are the best tools to guide us through a bright path that increasingly improves on the human understandings. Without the knowledge and understanding of the past events and their outcomes, any struggle in democratization of societies would be in vain. When atom was theorized by Democritus 2500 years ago, the impact of that was not known for hundreds of years. Natural selection concept opened a window that led a storm of knowledge in, that will take years to digest it all. Computing machines have advanced so rapidly that we cannot find any technology improving so fast. Information system has grown so quickly that we can no longer avoid being bombarded with information every minute (many software applications are written as a shield to protect us from un-wanted information). Map of genome was organized and biology has advanced so much that many health problems can be detected and fixed at its roots. DNA classification has become a common practice, and it is used for identification purposes, as well as other scientific reasons. All of these advancements in science, that have been achieved using the historical documents in learning experimentations and observations of predecessors, represent the trend of the society. Any part of the history, whether scientific discoveries or stories of kings and eunuchs are necessary in order to organize our thoughts in studying ways to achieve our goals in the future.