Friday, July 28, 2006

Is History Dead?

People no longer read histories? They read only excerpts of histories. The details are found in the writings of Tacitus, Plutarch and Josephus, Voltair, Livy, and others who actually wrote histories. Now it is common for a reasonably educated person to think that people back in the days of Christ were generally nincompoops. We think they're idiots because we don't know anything about their great feats of architecture, battles, fleets, armies, war machines philosophy and mathamatics. In actuality we're the idiots because we refuse to study the dead masters. We refuse to aknowledge that there were perhapse smarter people than us at some point in history.

Perhaps people are no longer interested in the details of ancient cultures or individuals. They will read novels set in imaginary world. Why not read a true story? It means more to me, why doesn't it to others? The amount of detail is amazing. Try reading this story of Caesar by Plutarch. Or read some of the works of Josephus (Jewish Historian around the time of Christ).

In my home state California there are histories of the indians, of great floods in the central valley, of merchant ships, and others that give details of what our state was like a hundred or two hundred years ago. Take for example the book Two Years Before The Mast by Richard Henry Dana. This is the story of a sailor who sailed all the way from England to the area of San Clamente on the coast of California just below Los Angeles. This is a very facinating history. Buy it at Amazon.

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