> I'm aware, but it seems silly to me to say oral traditions aren't durable and that writing is the only way to get at history.
no one said that
but there is a definitional issue here - to reiterate the previous poster's point:
> Historians use “history” as a technical term for events recorded in written and other durable records.
That's how the word is defined by historians. It's not a value judgement on oral traditions.
Your post is using the word "history" in a different way. You have some good points to make, but as long as you're using "history" in a different way to everyone else you're not going to get very far in conversation.
It's those kinds of paradigmatic biases that someone has written the satire, "Nacirema", to illustrate how "everyone else is saying it" can lead to blind spots.
Yeah, maybe. Like I said you have some good points to make.
However, using the word "history" in a way different to historians is not going to uncover any blind spots.
I'm just jumping in on someone else's thread with my comment about Nacirema; those other points are made by other people.
'However, using the word "history" in a way different to historians is not going to uncover any blind spots.'
Yes it does. There are non-written, non-durable sources that would suggest a different story. A great example is the story of the Seven Sisters. Among oral traditions collected from around the world in different cultures, that story has remarkably high degree of agreement across variants of that story -- probably owing to the one of the Pleiades growing too dim to see with the naked eye, and witnessed around the world.
Even written sources can be overlooked because of narrative biases. I grew up with an Euro-centric world history only to find out that lands connected by the Silk Roads had a much longer history as the center of the old world.