Why weren't earlier civilizations interested in preserving their history?

Sumerians (roughly 4000 BC) are the earliest civilisation with a written record, so far as I know--at least, no writing system has been discovered that has proven to be previous to their efforts. That's not to say that writing didn't exist in the past, but oral history has existed for much longer--many thousands of years. For example, there's an old 'legend' from Ireland that Skellig Michael (which is presently an island off the west coast of Eire) was once connected to the mainland. The only time that could have been possible would have been during the ice age, when the sea was about 400 feet lower than it is now. The last time it would have been possible was about 11,000 years ago, when the sea began rising at the end of the ice age. Given that, you're looking at about 440 generations (40 gens. to 1000 years) of continuous oral tradition, carrying an historical truth down as a fireside tale to the present day. The Australian aboriginal tribes have the same sort of stories, about lost lands, and islands that used to be attached to the mainland. The Tasmanian tribes, for instance, thought of fish as sacred--perhaps because all their really old cemeteries were under the waves, and the fishes were swimming around over sacred ground? What sort of legends are our decendents going to have told to them about the world as it was before the sea level rose 250-300 feet? Don't assume that 'legends' are a load of old crock--there could be and probably is a lot of truth in those ancient stories. It's just that because they spoken instead of written down, we in the western world tend to dismiss them as a load of rubbish, which is grossly unfair.

 

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Early civilizations WERE interested in writing down their histories. Written histories of early civilizations are quite extant.

 

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I think he's talking about losing your "Indian soul" to the European via adopting European ways; thinking, modes of communication (i.e. writing), a small excerpt:

 

I believe that some early societies did write things down only to find out later that what they wrote it down upon didn't last!

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I think all civilizations have been interested in preserving their history, we have ancient runestones, cave paintings with stories of wars against tribes and so on.

 

When the Spanish conquistadores conquored central America they burned the libraries they found. The Romans weren't much better in their treatment of conquored peoples, depending on who was leading the Roman army at the time and what kind of defense was put up. One of the best ways to break a people is to destroy their shared culture and replace it with yours. Its a tough old world.

 

they did various cave drawings etc.

they didnt have written word but they drew pictures etc

what else would you want them to do?

 

I don't agree with the premise of your question, they did. After all, those pyramids with the carvings of everyday Egyptian life on their walls is preserving history.

Now if you talk about those civilization where they didn't use stone structures or paper, it is hard to preserve something on materials that can not stand the passage of time.

It is possible that they did it on paper, but it was lost, burnt, decomposed. Also time went much slower in those days thus there was no reason to think about generations 5-1000 years ahead in the future. Several civilizations used verbal history preservation and once the people were killed off, so was their history preservation.

 

Absolutely right! And the title of this thread absolutely wrong! Whether we are discussing the Sumerians, the Egyptians, or the Jews, right down to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles -- all these people were greatly interested in their history, and recorded it. That's why we know the names of all the Sumerian kings and the lengths of their reigns; ditto all the dynasties of Egypt, etc.

Of course, much of the history was heavily biased and likely to mislead -- and that is still true today. And of course, among the surviving tablets of Sumeria, most are not history but business records -- but that will be true of all the CDs we leave behind to be dug up centuries hence after the imminent collapse of our own civilisation.

I am inclined to believe that in past times people were more concerned with the story of their ancestors than they are today, and in passing on that story to future generations. There were fewer alternative distractions: no football leagues in Ur, no celebrity channels in Babylon, no Wii in Ecbatana . . .

 

There is a mistaken belief that the word "Indio" comes from the Italian, meaning "in God". In fact, it is an abbreviation of the Spanish "indigenos" meaning natives or indigenous peoples. It is traditional to cut other folk down to size: e.g. Spic, Paki, Chink, Frog, Hun, etc.

 

"you will only find pain in the past"--Jet Li. War. 2007

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Very easily. You did after all learn to speak before you learnt to write, did you not?

Speech is naturally occuring, whereas writing took generations of evolution. So far it looks like we were speaking hundreds of thousands of years ago, but started using symbols which then were changed into what we would recognise as writing, 6 to 10,000 years ago. In order to write, you have to have symbols, and appreciate that they are representations of things, not the things themselves, and you also need to have reasons to record things for the future.