How do we really know about all the history stuff?

My God, what is with the idiots on DL this morning?

OP, are you we tall did?

First you haVe to decide what you consider to be “sufficient proof” for you to believe anything at all. How do we know that anything about the current day is true? Could all our politicians be actors, and the moon landing be fake? If you accept that things can be known beyond a reasonable doubt at all, then you assemble facts, one based on top of another. The less supported facts are called theories or hypotheses or guesses.

That’s how math works. You start with some basic facts that you specify are true because they are self evident and you need something to start with. Then you start proving simply concepts, and using groups of simply proven concepts to prove larger ones.

So, we know Washington existed based upon letters, portraits, financial contracts, pay records, and witness recollections, etc. no one can be an expert at everything, or even at much, so we have to defer to experts we trust, too.

Why does this question get asked every week on DL?

Couldn’t someone just be making it all up?

For the same reason we know the Bible and Jesus to be true even though there are no photographs or videos.

Yeah, that's completely the same, r4.

R4, it would have to be a conspiracy, not one person.

An interesting question is the myth of the “good German”. The myth is that the bad NAZIs numbered in the few, and mislead or intimidated the good Germans. It was a necessary fiction because you cannot i prison an entire country. You have to draw a line, and get your bloodlust from one side, and sweep everything under the rug on the other.

After everyone and their grandchildren are all dead from that era, we’ll read more about the popularity of the Nazis, when they were winning.

Here’s another myth, of the innocent USA prior to 1942. Well, maybe blameless, but not innocent. The US was lending and leasing to the allies in large quantities, keeping the UK and USSR in the fight. Likewise, in retaliation for Japanese aggression in China, the US had embargoed most petroleum from Japan. The Japanese needed to take the Dutch East Asian oil fields, and to do so, had to knock out the US at Pearl Harbor. So, not innocent.

Likewise, Hitler then declared war on the US, because he felt the US was already effectively at war with Germany, and would be distracted in Asia anyway. Oops.

That’s stupid. Stories about people can be made up, but it’s hard to fake the existence of a person like George Washington. If millions of people have seen him, and all match a similar description of him, then obviously he’s real.

We know about history because of matched details in recordings such as writing. What an inane question.

OP how many times are you going to start this same thread? It's never been funny.

When I was in school, it was equally evil of the Japanese to have attacked America; as it was to have attacked on a Sunday morning, [italic] when everyone was in Church! [/italic] No kidding.

I think it’s a more interesting question to ask how they know about natural history, such as the Big Bang, or what a fossil is.

One of the few things to survive in the US from early days are legal documents, such as land records; birth, marriage, and death records; and law suits. It might seem like our Pilgrim fathers were suing each other a lot, and they were, but it is mostly that those records were recorded and saved, unlike, say, birthday cards.

Usually, contemporaneous records are the most accurate, being recorded at the time by eyewitnesses and relatives; however, their reliability is not always the case. An ancestor of mine had her maiden name recorded incorrectly in her death record, and it took a lot of digging to verify that the entry was incorrect.

Can we please ban millennials and those younger than them from posting on DataLounge

All those legal documents could have been forgeries.

[quote] R3: First you have to decide what you consider to be “sufficient proof” for you to believe anything at all.

Yes, everything can be forgeries. Including your own birth certificate. Nothing can be known for certainty. However, I think that’s silly and that things can be known, and that most such documents are probably not forgeries. Believe what you want. It’s optional.

We don’t have photographs or videos of these people, no, but historians have gleaned a great deal looking at their Twitter feeds.

R15 How do we know that this site is mostly eldergays, when it could be majority millenials and Gen Z pretending to be eldergay?

Sure, Jan...

Yes, George Washington was a mass hallucination.

How do we know that you exist, OP?

We'll be waiting, but not for long.

OP, what else are you flunking besides History? I’m guessing Geography and English (fiction vs non-fiction). You have not earned that Propellerhead you’re wearing.

It’s all just a little bit of history repeating.

Yeah, R23. I love this video. I used to watch it at night, before bed.

OP, how do you know the Earth isn’t flat? You do know that don’t you?

How did Trump find his way to DL? He's the only person stupid enough to trot a dog this dead.

[quote]An ancestor of mine had her maiden name recorded incorrectly in her death record

She probably had VERY little to do with that.

R27, Tom Hardy har har.

I think the deal was that she died at age 92, and her family had moved out of town. So, when they entombed her, maybe there was no one present who knew the maiden name? They scribbled-in the last name of the family’s tombmates, another unrelated family, but that was wrong.

It’s interesting what scientists can deduce now. They use ice cores and sea cores to figure out temperatures in the distant past, and the affect of those temp changes on life. They wouldn’t know about Climate Change without looking to the past.

OP, there’s a great 2-hour History Channel show about the formation of the Earth. It’s called “How the Earth Was Made”. You might catch it on YouTube. It tells you a little history, such as who discovered something, like plate tectonics, then goes on to show what we know today. They explain some of the evidence supporting the theory. It’s fascinating, really.

It was so successful, it inspired a 2 season show, covering things like Krakatoa, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Lakes.

For millennials, history began last Tuesday, which explains, but doesn't excuse their stupidity.

Didn't we just have this thread about two weeks ago? Seriously, I thought we had, but now I can't find it. Feels like a lot of threads the last couple of days have been repeats.

To a certain extent, history is written by the winners, and as such things get skewed or even lied about in history books. There are lauded books about historical figures and events written by people who have an agenda or a personal favorite and they write the things they wish had happened rather than what did. And there are mistakes and things omitted on accident.

Ultimately to know anything you have to get as close to the primary sources and possible and piece it together yourself. I love doing that but I've been yelled at several times for just suggesting someone go to Google or Wikipedia instead of guessing or making things up, so I know most people don't.

As far as the broad strokes go I think we've got it right enough, honestly.

Churchill wrote something like “History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it.”

Caesar wrote Rome about his campaigns and as a result, the people liked him and we have his side of the story, and he is an oversized character in history. I don’t think the Gauls or Germans wrote about it.

[quote]OP, there’s a great 2-hour History Channel show about the formation of the Earth. It’s called “How the Earth Was Made”.

That’s hogwash. Or you could read a little book called the Bible, Genesis to learn how the earth was really made in 6 days.

So Faye didn't really slap the hand of that little homosexual boy?

I KNEW it!

How do we really know the refrigerator light turns off when the door is closed?

How do we really know if it doesn't?

How do we know what a refrigerator is?

If Pluto and Goofy are both dogs, how come Pluto can't speak?

Why was Pluto a planet one day and the next day not?