Non sequitur claims when deducing meaning from historical artifacts or texts (problem of presentism)

Question

So my question arises from an argument that I have seen regarding some people debating over some ancient inscriptions.

My question is as follows, "Wouldn't any possible explanation for the meanings and values of the inscription become non-sequitur in various degrees because of the complete lack of cultural context and therefore any perspective and explanation would be equally as futile to the point it renders the inscription itself useless?" This is specifically for ancient texts possibly in the B.C. period.

I understand that history is an iffy subject to obtain accuracy of truth and that there are many speculations and hypotheses from scholars but it is true that the lesser the distance from the present day the more accuracy because, for one, the increase of technology to capture such history be it a papyrus or a camera and secondly, similarity to current language.

But I feel like there is a cutoff point where any possible explanation will equally be far from the truth because of the immense distance both linguistically, culturally and technologically.

For example, most historical scholars agree on the fact that a man named Jesus existed and he was punished by the Roman empire in the form of crucifixion, this is a normal claim and is backed up by countless evidence and is substantiated logically because of the two reasons I have mentioned above.

Now on the other hand, let's think of a made up scenario where a group of archaeologists find an ancient Minoan/Hittite inscription from 1500 B.C. that says "alien" (subjectively thought so to be because of slight similarities with "long descendant" language) in that language (linguists' job and assumption) and has carvings of tall beings with non-human features on it, would it be right (approximately accurate) to: A) Make the assumption that there were extraterrestrials in the past B) Make the assumption these were some sort of deities C) Make the assumption that there were extraterrestrials that were deities for these people D) Make the assumption that there were forms of storytelling and/or these were how they depicted their enemies of war E) There were migrants from a remote place here on Earth and they had some distinct form of wardrobe and the drawings are just poorly drawn

For me, none of these would be remotely true as no matter what they do will be farther from the truth and actually all of these I believe are equally not close or accurate to what might have actually happened. I feel like there is a cut off point in time at which point one's hypotheses and theory can not be proven and therefore could not be concluded and surely will be open to as much hypotheses as possible, but I am not sure, is this right?

In short, I am trying to get an insight to the problem of the influence of presentism on historical-finding discrepancies and how it is proportionally associated with temporal distance from the present. In the example of Jesus, we have multiple evidences and multiple texts not the far from the time of origin but in case of the inscription even though a primary source we can't obtain anything from it because as there is more distance from the past to now, the inaccuracy and difference in social and cultural context increases up to the point where even if the translation of the inscription is possible, it would be devoid of meaning when translated to a word, sentence or paragraph that we understand in the modern day. Speculation remains speculation therefore allowing any and every possible speculation but never definitive translation that carries meaning (answer) to the inscription, right?

Answer 1

Your question amounts to what makes modern history a reliable, arguably scientific field, particularly in regards to historical linguistics. For starters, a healthy dose of naturalized epistemological thinking (SEP). Such questions full under the purview of the social science of historiography. From WP:

Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension, the term historiography is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic by using particular sources, techniques of research, and theoretical approaches to the interpretation of documentary sources. Scholars discuss historiography by topic

Languages are objects of a science called linguistics, and observe all sorts of reliable laws of language, probably most famously, Zipf's law. That is, despite the somewhat arbitrary nature of languages such as phonemes and orthography, they don't produce random strings of languages and evolve in a somewhat analogous way to biological organisms. It's even possible given the evolution of language to speculate on pre-historical languages such as the Proto-Indo European language.

In the case of ancient languages, like the Hittite language, there are a variety of scientific methods of answering questions of an extinct language. Consider how the Rosetta Stone played a role in helping decipher hieroglyphics. Sometimes there are keys that have two languages side-by-side, one of which is known. Another method is to look at languages in the same language family, in this case the Anatolian language family. This might include modern descendants, though there aren't any of Hittite in particular. Lastly, languages tend to be internally consistent, and vetted over many years. Consider the Chicago Hittite Dictionary, which might be used by a small, evolving community of researchers.

Ultimately, knowledge of historical linguistics is just linguistic knowledge, and the methods of archaeology, anthropology, history, and linguistics is brought to bear in a way that is scientific as possible. For more particulars of historical linguistics, I would post the same question on Linguistics Stack Exchange.

Answer 2

the question as of now seems a bit vague and broad, so i'll interpret it as "can we hope to reliably and meaningfully interpret old, possibly very old, texts?" and do my best

maybe the most important thing to notice is that there is not necessarily a "complete lack of context": companion texts from the same given place and its surroundings and from around the same time often are context. it may well be that there's less context than we'd like there to be, but i'd guess none whatsoever is the exception rather than the rule. [in case we found a text written in a very weird alphabet and the best linguistic analyses could only indicate its language is isolated, then i guess we'd be hopeless]

the next thing to point would be that this likely depends on the subject: we may have trouble interpreting many sorts of text, be we can certainly look at euclid and conclude "oh, he's assuming unstated hypothesis here, and here, and..."

and lastly, there's that funny example where for a time people were confused that maybe the ancient greeks didn't see colour quite the same way as we do, for they called the sky bronze-coloured or something, but the mystery was 'solved' once it was pointed that oxidized copper turns blue. this indicates that not "any perspective and explanation would be equally as futile" / "any possible explanation will equally be far from the truth": some may well be better than others

Answer 3

Historical science is a cultural science. It tries to reconstruct the facts which happened often long ago in a distant culture. Typical sources from history are archeological remnants, inscriptions, texts, artworks …

These are means to provide the context for a given specific source, e.g., for an inscription. The inscription has to be found, put together, completed, enciphered, dated, interpreted,… This listing already shows the difficulty to embed a historical source into its context. Experts from different departments are needed.

E.g., Indian studies cannot be restricted to textual analysis. Many Buddhist scriptures and their myths are visualised by devotional artworks or they inspired such artworks. At least one needs the collaboration of linguists and art historians, doing field work as well as textual analysis. In order to enter into a discussion across time with the meaning of the text, one often needs also some philosophical expertise.

The result from historical work, like always in academia, is a set of hypotheses, handed down to the next generation for further questioning.