Questions concerning non-written history

Question

It is unclear to me whether events not involving written history are considered on topic.

For example, various questions recently, such as Thule people migrating to Greenland, ask questions before written history or memory, which rely on archaeology for an answer. Another question asked about DNA.

Obviously analyzing archaeology is completely different than analyzing historical documents. Are we wanting to include archaeology and anthropology here?

My feeling is that the focus should be on historical events and that once you get into questions like what kind of clothes did neolithic hunters wear and stuff like that, you are no longer talking about an event.

Answer 1

We've traditionally taken a fairly expansive view of what's on topic here. Essentially, if its about stuff involving humans in the past, where there isn't a better stack for it (eg: Politics, English, etc.)

From a technical sense, yes it is true that anything that isn't relying on written records is not "History", but rather some other discipline.

However, I have two basic issues with limiting our scope that far. The first is practical. For example, there's no Anthropology stack right now to direct people to, so closing anthropology questions just for being anthropology helps nobody. The poor user doesn't get their question answered, and this beta stack has one less question it could sorely use. Perhaps when we make it to "release" it would make sense to break anthropological questions off into their own stack, but for now one stack covering both seems to be plenty.

The other is more philosophical. When you get into ancient history, records are nice to have, but we don't have nearly as much as we'd like. It is only sensible to use archeological finds, linguistic studies, DNA etc. both to fill in the gaps, and to check (or perhaps in cases even correct) the written record. Not doing so, simply because those are other disciplines, would be bad science.

You could then argue, "Well yeah, but once there flat out is no record, surely that's no longer History!" Perhaps technically yes. But I don't see drawing the line at 100% reliance on non-written information to be any less arbitrary than drawing it at 99%, or 80%.

What we are really interested in here is the story of Humanity, as well as we can figure it out scientifically.

Answer 2

It's a bad idea to limit ourselves to written history. For most of human existence, there was no writing. For most of written history, most people could not write. If we exclude non written history then we're practicing 'history from above'; the slave, the barbarian, the amerindian, the servant and the young child will be excluded from it, because they either could not write or their writing is lost or untranslatable.

Answer 3

One hand - If we're are wanting to discuss the entirety of the history of man, or human kind, do we go back to homo sapiens? Truthfully, it can be said (religious beliefs aside) that even pre-sapien is our history. The formation of the earth, the split up of the single land mass into our continents formed our history. Why stop anywhere? Go all the way, I say, or don't.

The other - Then, it is often said in commentary (by me, I know, but others as well) that if an answer isn't sourced, it's not an answer its an opinion. Shouldn't our answers be able to be sourced, or cited, from primary (or secondary) sources? How can we include pre-written history (oral tradition) when there was no written history, based on it? I know I ask a lot of questions and provide no opinion on this question, but....

If I were to be held to task, I'd say we either open up the field to include ALL history, all the way back to whatever you believe is the beginning, or stop it at written.

Answer 4

History is the analysis of the textual remains of the past.

Oral historical traditions are no different for having been a spoken text.

Some physical remains of the past are textual in nature, or contribute towards an analysis of the textual remains.

All three of these belong here.

But, the analysis of the physical remains of the past not as texts does not belong here.