Is the idea of “history” biased against cultures and groups of people that keep fewer written records? If so, how can historians tell their stories?
Answers
The idea of ‘history’ is literally the idea of the past. Now, how can the past be biased against anything? Bias suggests a facet which is inaccurate to some degree—but the past either happened or it did not. The past cannot be invented in the truest sense. Whether we have all the information is a different question—is our conception of the past in this area dutifully accurate? The fewer records we have, inevitably, it will be more likely our entire view of said topic is not wholly in line with reality. Thus, the practice of history is only ‘biased’ towards groups with fewer written records in the sense that our view of their past will most likely never be reasonably accurate, or even more likely quite wrong. But this isn’t really ‘bias’, this is more an unfortunate consequence arising from a lack of evidence.
Historians can try and ameliorate this by 1) oral reports from these people, 2) archaeological digs, and by 3) looking around their environment and seeing if there is any empirical evidence which provides some sort of link to the past. All of these will vary from case to case, and they all have their concomitant limitations too, of course, especially oral reports.
Now, you ask ‘how can historians tell their stories?’ Well, they can listen to them and record their stories. However, these will almost certainly be skewed due to the unreliability of human memory, especially after multiple transmissions, or due to them wanting to convey the past as they would like it to be. Thus, historians can easily tell their stories, but whether they will be faithful to the past is a separate issue (and the answer is that they will almost incontestably not be).
Answer:
The idea of ‘history’ is literally the idea of the past. Now, how can the past be biased against anything? Bias suggests a facet which is inaccurate to some degree—but the past either happened or it did not. The past cannot be invented in the truest sense. Whether we have all the information is a different question—is our conception of the past in this area dutifully accurate? The fewer records we have, inevitably, it will be more likely our entire view of said topic is not wholly in line with reality. Thus, the practice of history is only ‘biased’ towards groups with fewer written records in the sense that our view of their past will most likely never be reasonably accurate, or even more likely quite wrong. But this isn’t really ‘bias’, this is more an unfortunate consequence arising from a lack of evidence.
Historians can try and ameliorate this by 1) oral reports from these people, 2) archaeological digs, and by 3) looking around their environment and seeing if there is any empirical evidence which provides some sort of link to the past. All of these will vary from case to case, and they all have their concomitant limitations too, of course, especially oral reports.
Now, you ask ‘how can historians tell their stories?’ Well, they can listen to them and record their stories. However, these will almost certainly be skewed due to the unreliability of human memory, especially after multiple transmissions, or due to them wanting to convey the past as they would like it to be. Thus, historians can easily tell their stories, but whether they will be faithful to the past is a separate issue (and the answer is that they will almost incontestably not be).
Explanation: