How accurate is history (past 2000 years)?

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I think most of the copies from ancients were made by christian monks; muslims (after arabs) burned everything, but I might be wrong and actually they burned only couple of libraries.
 
Ion said:
I think most of the copies from ancients were made by christian monks; muslims (after arabs) burned everything, but I might be wrong and actually they burned only couple of libraries.
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The great library in Alexandria was destroyed, but I think it was greater than 2000 years old. How I would have loved knowing what was in this library.
 
History if properly done can be quite accurate. A lot more accurate than the Internet.
 
Somebody mentioned Alexandria and it’s library.
“Modern archeology tells us that only the cultic center was demolished. The colonnade, where any books would have been kept, was not touched. However, the demolition of the Serapeum is one of the best attested events in Late Antiquity, and not a single account, Christian or pagan, mentions any books at the Serapeum.” (Shamelessly stolen)

Anyhoo…
There needs to be some clarification on what you are meaning. Do you mean history courses are not accurate?
History books (text books specifically, any books written by individual authors will have differences)?
Or is it to say that the current structure of historical events is inaccurate (Of course, without knowing the reality, how could one ever say it’s inaccurate? Inaccurate compared to what?).
Or is it finally to say that primary sources are not sufficient to explain history which then requires bias and conjecture to be introduced as we attempt to fill in the missing bits if those can/should be filled at all?

Rather vague really.
 
Actually, I’ve seen a huge amount of more inaccurate information on the Internet than I ever did previously in history books. Maybe the deluge of cyber-misinformation has made us skeptical of everything. A historian has to go to primary sources, not Google.
 
Elostirion said:
Somebody mentioned Alexandria and it’s library.
“Modern archeology tells us that only the cultic center was demolished. The colonnade, where any books would have been kept, was not touched. However, the demolition of the Serapeum is one of the best attested events in Late Antiquity, and not a single account, Christian or pagan, mentions any books at the Serapeum.” (Shamelessly stolen)

Anyhoo…
There needs to be some clarification on what you are meaning. Do you mean history courses are not accurate?
History books (text books specifically, any books written by individual authors will have differences)?
Or is it to say that the current structure of historical events is inaccurate (Of course, without knowing the reality, how could one ever say it’s inaccurate? Inaccurate compared to what?).
Or is it finally to say that primary sources are not sufficient to explain history which then requires bias and conjecture to be introduced as we attempt to fill in the missing bits if those can/should be filled at all?

Rather vague really.
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Is it you Tyrion?
 
The more I learn, the less I trust the views of the majority.

History is written by people with goals.
 
Ion said:
The most accurate is The Holy Bible
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The Bible is not a history book. It teaches lessons, and while it does contain some history, the forms that were used for its writing were literary in nature and it was not intended to encompass all of human history. In addition, the OP was asking about the last 2000 years of which the Bible encompasses about 90.
 
Robert_Sock said:
I believe history is a poor reflection of reality.
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There was a news story about a C-level employee that died of a hear attack on a fishing trip. If the news stories were the historical documentation it would be inaccurate. The only reason I know this is because at the same time the news story was aired a friend of mine was picked up. Turns out the guy had been killed and that he was under investigation for fraud. My friend was a person of interest because she had received permission to take time off from work with pay (which was against company policy given the time she had been with the company, and she was using the time off to bury her father and handle his legal affairs).

I doubt that the news that we receive is accurate and view a good bit of history as being dubious. At best there are a lot of instances of “historical facts” that I treat as hypothesis or provisionally true.
 
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