Yes, that is what my question was!

Silly bot.

Hi!

It seems like you are talking about the popular but ultimately flawed and false "winners write history" trope!

While the expression is sometimes true in one sense (we'll get to that in a bit), it is rarely if ever an absolute truth, and particularly not in the way that the concept has found itself commonly expressed in popular history discourse. When discussing history, and why some events have found their way into the history books when others have not, simply dismissing those events as the imposed narrative of 'victors' actually harms our ability to understand history.

You could say that is in fact a somewhat "lazy" way to introduce the concept of bias which this is ultimately about. Because whoever writes history is the one introducing their biases to history.

A somewhat better, but absolutely not perfect, approach that works better than 'winners writing history' is to say 'writers write history'.

This is more useful than it initially seems. Until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that.

To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.
Similarly the Norsemen historically have been portrayed as uncivilized barbarians as the people that wrote about them were the "losers" whose monasteries got burned down.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
This evaluation is something that is done by historians and part of what makes history and why insights about historical events can shift over time.

This is possibly best exemplified by those examples where victors did unambiguously write the historical sources.

The Spanish absolutely wrote the history of the conquest of Central America from 1532, and the reports and diaries of various conquistadores and priests are still important primary documents for researchers of the period.

But 'victors write the history' presupposes that we still use those histories as they intended, which is simply not the case. It both overlooks the fundamental nature of modern historical methodology, and ignores the fact that, while victors have often proven to be predominant voices, they have rarely proven to be the only voices.

Archaeology, numismatics, works in translation, and other records all allow us at least some insight into the 'losers' viewpoint, as does careful analysis of the 'winner's' records.
We know far more about Rome than we do about Phoenician Carthage. There is still vital research into Carthage, as its being a daily topic of conversation on this subreddit testifies to.

So while it's true that the balance between the voices can be disparate that doesn't mean that the winners are the only voice or even the most interesting.
Which is why stating that history is 'written by the victors' and leaving it at that is harmful to the understanding of history and the process of studying history.

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And how neutral would those history classes be? History and science now is pretty well balanced and focused on facts. But I’m sure that in ancient time “history written by the victors” was more prevalent.

Before the printing press, scribes had to write copies. They were the most well read people of the time. Basically you learned things as you wrote. They were usually monks.

This is true, though empirical findings often cause paradigm shifts that could not be explained by prior philosophies, and so a new philosophy must be written to explain the findings. It is in cases like this that science and philosophy feed each other. The basic assumptions weren't asserted out of nowhere, but were based on inferences on empirical findings. These inferences were sometimes wrong and so we had to reject those assumptions as we got more data, but that also shows the empirical foundations of the basic assumptions.

We used to get history, now we get social Justice! :)

> People were writing, including those in Rome and those outside of it, but not all these writings survived into the modern day. Some of them may have been surpassed by later written works, some of them may have been a bit boring and just not enjoyed.

This is an important aspect, literature survives only if it's copied. The widespread use of papyrus meant works had a relatively short lifespan (especially compared to vellum) and unless it was copied, it would degrade until it crumbled into dust within a century. Since everything was copied by hand, the only way a work would propagate itself is if it was popular, if it wasn't it only survives (if at all) in mentions by other authors; Aristotle's Poetics part 2 only survives in mention by part 1 for example, no one else mentions it despite the popularity of the former. Combine this with the switch to the codex (book) from the scroll after the turn of the millennia and you have process which further compounds this with older works being left behind on the older, less dense format. Unless something happens to be deposited in ideal conditions such as with the Oxyrhynchus letters in Egypt (not exactly literature but close enough), literature will only survive if it is copied.

Sitting around the fire and listening to stories about the stars?… like way way before the modern era.

No, no it's literally not.

ἱστορία • (historíā) f (genitive ῐ̔στορῐ́ᾱς); first declension

From ῐ̔στορέω (historéō, “I inquire”), from ἵστωρ (hístōr, “one who knows, wise one”).

inquiry, examination, systematic observation, science body of knowledge obtained by systematic inquiry written account of such inquiries, narrative, history

One of my favourite university classes was run by the heads of the History and the Classics departments. The course was called Ancient Greek Historical and Philosophical Thought. And it was exactly what was written on the tin: a dive into how the ancients thought about the world. It was super fascinating! Would heartily recommend anyone interested seek out a similar experience.

Don't know if this has been brought up exactly, but the vast majority of people were illiterate before the printing press. So "history" for the common person was always passed down orally, and was more akin to mythology to actual history.

This immediately made me sad thinking of Hypatia's library and the colossal amount of ancient knowledge humanity lost in the rubble. We probably had a pretty comprehensive understanding of ancient history before that.

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You might have some fun looking into historiography, which looks at how historians developed the academic study of history. It was part of my historical research methods class when I got my undergrad in history.

Well, there's a lot. We don't know much about early Rome because there's not a great historiographical record left behind. We rely heavily on works written long after these events took place. People were writing, including those in Rome and those outside of it, but not all these writings survived into the modern day. Some of them may have been surpassed by later written works, some of them may have been a bit boring and just not enjoyed. We know that some of these works still existed when others were writing theirs, so they are maintained in that way (i.e. in fragments) But we run into a whole different set of complications when evaluating fragments.

Still, people in Rome during its heyday, and historians ever since, have done a good job at piecing together the little bits of information we do get to try and at least paint a picture of what was going on, even if there are still a lot of gaps, a lot of questions, and -- to a certain extent -- a lot of guesses.

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lol this really shouldn’t be that hard. History is literally “HIS STORY”. It’s what “the man” makes of it. Those in power are also in power of the history that is taught to the younger generations.

The most significant US war in the 21st century ended just recently, so I'm not surprised the 21st century hasn't made it into the curriculum yet

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We know tons about ancient Rome. There are literally anthologies written about it. If you want to learn more about ancient Rome, I would suggest starting with The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan in audiobook (he both wrote and narrates the audiobook). He had a long running podcast about ancient Rome as well. With regards to the decay of written accounts, I always remember what one of my professors for a Historical Archives class said in college: imagine that for each century that passes, 9 out of 10 historical documents and artifacts that remained were destroyed, melted down, or decayed. Some from that century might write new copies or accounts, or replicate the paintings or sculptures, but these would no longer be the originals. After centuries of loss, very little of the originals would be left, just a tiny remnant. The rest would only live on in archival copies or a reference in another work. This is why places like Pompeii are so important, they are like time capsules preserving the history (until we dug it all up). The last few centuries were particularly bad about chopping up historical artifacts and dragging them across the world to museums, and wars destroying historical landmarks.

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I apologize. The world needs more levity. Doctoral degrees of all sorts have made some of us grumpy and old.