Has history ever happened?

[Rantrex]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no...

Seem you don't get what I wrote. I meant a PROOF.

Well, I was in museum, and than another, and one more. Seen a lot of stuff, but how can you prove, that they existed before?

[kinngrimm]

if you see history as a science and would read all the old books, which are open to interpretation and filtered by those over and over again from perspectives out of other times, you can definetly argue about certain aspects of history.

I but have more a problem of the concept of time as most of use it and even physicists define it.

f.e.: there is the method to find out how old stuff is, radio carbon method i believe it is called.
Now the further back in time you want to date something the fuzzier it gets.
What is with material which was created with our solar-system together or materials before that, or before our galaxy.

or:
If it would be possible to fly around our earth with 4x the speed of light, wouldn't we be just being incredibly fast and taking that distance 4*times the speed of light, why would it have an influence on time at all.

or:
if there wouldn't be anything outside our universe (big bang theory), and time didn't exist before, why would it now ... only to measure how i long i take to go to the bakery and back? not like the moon would care or any particle. If but it would be universes in universes and still creating more and more, where no end and no beginning at all could be defined(bubble universe theory), again what would make a time constant/concept worth having besides categorizing how long it takes to make my tea.

or:
why would be a concept which we initially used to separate our day and weeks and years with have a physical law to it at all? And if there would be a physical law about time, would it still have to do anything with how we apprehend it?

or: ...

i just ignore time ^^ aslong i can at least, till age tells me, wtf another grey hair in the beard, crap that pain now comes regularly and doesn't go away anymore, damn that year was fast or not ...

[Overdriven]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no...

Seem you don't get what I wrote. I meant a PROOF.

Well, I was in museum, and than another, and one more. Seen a lot of stuff, but how can you prove, that they existed before?

My sister works in historical archives. I'm pretty sure I trust her judgement.

Besides, what are you suggesting? That at one time or another someone went 'LOL lets make a load of ruins and pretend there was a great civilisation here'?

As to dating ect, a lot of stuff can be and is carbon dated. Proof comes from all manner of sources, textual (not text books I mean actual sources like letters, books written at the time ect), art, first hand account (for modern history). Historical sources number massively in all manner of regions and time periods. Naturally for archaeologists it can be a matter of piecing together the pieces of a puzzle, so often they get it wrong or change their theories, but the proof is in front of your eyes if you go and look for it.

[LordBerenger]

Rantrex got some truth to what he says though. Check the 3 biggest religions and their holy text. Over such a long time info can get mixed with and changed into what once was the truth to something fake.


Remember the saying ''History is written by the victors''? Apply that to the past.

[Rantrex]

That at one time or another someone went 'LOL lets make a load of ruins and pretend there was a great civilisation here'?

I like this idea.

Is history created by those, who were living in the past, or by us, living in this moment?

(actually, in this theory you cannot probably prove that anything is older than person analyzing events)

It also means, that everyone is the oldest one here


About religion: there are some texts I have to agree to exist, but why would I care if they were written in the past? They don't need to be symbols. They are just prety nice hope givers and manners teachers.

[Overdriven]

Rantrex got some truth to what he says though. Check the 3 biggest religions and their holy text. Over such a long time info can get mixed with and changed into what once was the truth to something fake.

Well religion is entirely different. If you look at multi-god faiths you could argue that at one time or another many of those God's were human's who simply did remarkable things and due to age old ancestor worship they became Gods and the stories steadily got warped to become the myths they are today. Most of those kinds of Gods have very human like qualities so it isn't hard to believe.

As for single God religions that is harder. In Islam for instance the Quran cannot be changed, not even one word. It is illegal in the Islamic faith. So supposedly the words are exactly the same as when written by Mohammed. Therefore they shouldn't really have been mixed or changed, though naturally there is nothing to say Mohammed was real or that if he was the words came from God. As for Christianity, well for instance you can believe that Jesus was potentially a great prophet, but the son of God who had magical miraculous powers? Now that seems a little skewed to me. But there's no doubt there's some that could be construed as truth.

About religion: there are some texts I have to agree to exist, but why would I care if they were written in the past? They don't need to be symbols. They are just prety nice hope givers and manners teachers.

That's always been my opinion. Cut all the crap out and you get some pretty nice, basic laws to live your life by, some very good moral guidance and can keep your spirits up.

[Panos]

Most religions are bad copy cats of Egyptian and Greek polytheism.

[Casimir]

Well carbon dating goes a good way to proving how old shit is, considering the variety of sources and the amount of them spread around i'd probably go with yes.  The past happened, but history is simply the interpretation of whats left. We can never know the full extent of what happened but we make the most reasonable and logical explanations possible based on what evidence is left.  If you'r going to deny the existence of evidence then there's no point arguing the point.

[Rantrex]

About dating with ur carbon:

No matter whether you belive that God created the world, or it was a bang theory, the final products (like car, apple, sword) could come into being already having that much of C14(?) element inside.

For the most of people(99,99%) the answer: "This painting has been found and dated for 1854." is satysfying, cause that's they only way people can think. (There are some things you cannot imagine or describe, cause your imagination or language is not enough to do it.)

There is only one thing you can do tobe a 100% sure that something "is". And that's something everyone does all the time in his'her life. If you want to know that postman has already arrive, then you need to check your letter box. And you need to do that by yourself to exclude lies and miracles.

If I'm not wrong in this historical matter, wheel also wasn't invented by human, but found as something like rock and adapted by humans civ as a good method of moving (they already knew about friction).

[Casimir]

Indeed you shouldn't take anything as a given you should always try and prove it for yourself, preferably with objective, quantifiable evidence.


Unless I see some kind of hard evidence proving, as you suggested, that nothing in the past happened and it was all made up I'll carry on believe that it did.

[Rantrex]

In science sometimes theories are created about one matter, but if none of them is true, then science probably says that matter doesn't exist.

[Umbra]

People dont realize this yet, but once the computer power gets strong enough to simulate a reality close to our own one would begin to question do we live in some similar virtual simulation run by an advanced civilization for their research/amusement

[Rantrex]

People dont realize this yet, but once the computer power gets strong enough to simulate a reality close to our own one would begin to question do we live in some similar virtual simulation run by an advanced civilization for their research/amusement

Nice one.

The chance for that is 50% (seems high, doesn't it?). It can be only true or false.

[Elmuri]

Maybe the right area for this should be Philosophical Discussion, not Historical

[Rantrex]

Well, it's still about history and events.

How far back do you remember (have memories)? Childhood?