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Myths, ethnographies, travelogues, writers like Herodotos, stories handed down, royal and imperial archives.

Well, since only the very wealthy were able to be educated, people like Alexander for example were tutored by famous historians/philosophers/mathematicians.

Everyone who wasn't the richest kid around would most likely have been tutored by students of these famous philosophers. (Pretty much anyone inclined in the scientific arts was a philosopher, as in the ancient eras all sciences were rooted in philosophy)

Classical studies during the Age of Enlightenment and Victorian era.

So yes for sure, those examples you give are accurate, much of history for a very long time was what we would now call Great Man History. Education was a luxury of the rich and powerful and they mostly saw history as a study concerning the great leaders of the past as a way to learn to emulate them.

Now what exactly these people were learning from is unclear to me, I suppose reading texts directly or listening to a lecture by someone who did read a text but the sourcing of this material or how exactly it was being taught or studied is unclear to me

Usually not much in an archive or library ... anything written was expensive so a lot wasn't written.

Not as much as is saved now, but those resources were more substantial than you might think.

History was not always taught in classes. For example, many Indigenous nations transmitted histories through oral stories.

In Rome few would have studied history directly.

History would mainly have been learned as a means to study other things, like politics, military arts, as a way of learning pietas (the roman concept of duty and loyalty towards the family and Rome). For example the life and campaigns of Alexander would have been a core part of pietas and military training (and Ceasar was noted as being a huge Alexander fanboy).

But if you wanted to study history then there would have been numerous chronicles written and available at libraries and private collections, most of which are lost today and only known second hand through historians like Polybius, Diodorus and Arrian (who had an almost unrestricted access to the writings of the hellenic and pre-hellenic world).

Since most of those nations didn't read and write, they transmitted everything through oral stories .... north American indigenous nations for sure.

Herodotus is frequently cited as the world's first historian. In ancient times, the study of history wasn't so much a subject as the study of philosophy with Historical events as examples in philosophical discussions. In earlier times...people had their oral histories until people such as Home collected these and assembled them into the Iliad and/or his Odyssey. Of course the earlier books of the Old Testament are codified oral histories as well. The ancient Egyptian told stories in their hieroglyphs. Someone focused on the story of history would almost always originate from the upper classes as they were the only ones with the wherewithal to expend time and energy on such things without the need for finding food.

Well since there's only been colour since the 1950's, it's advanced lots. Before that, all monochrome. Jesus, before the 1920's, no sound! World War One was fought with people running around with "sound cards" like -BOOM-. -KAPOW-. -BLAM-. The Germans had improper translations of English and french- (soldier cards ....je swee sherrie,. Fish n chips lads! Or Canadian fish n chips, eh!)

The English and French had improper German translations (soldier cards....Auch dee strudel. Vissen nine!....rawss rawws Berliner!)

....all in black and white. At the end of the war they had a pianist who played ragtime and such....

I know that when Harvard University was founded back in the 1600s it had a traditional curriculum, and that did not include history. There was a huge emphasis on classics though, however, which would’ve included Greek and Latin, and probably also some discussion of Greek and Roman history – they would’ve read Caesar and Livy so talking about that –and understanding Plato and the philosophers.

A lot of historical discussion would probably also occur in different religion classes or religious settings. Christian theologians, for example, would be expected to have some knowledge of the reformation and Luther, while Catholic seminarians were taught about the history of the church, Reformation and Counterreformation etc.

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Depends, mainly, on how wealthy you were.

One important thing to know is that history as a subject or discipline in its own right was not really a thing before modern times.

History was not part of the "septem artes" of the medieval age, and in ancient Rome education in general was a rather deregulated, private affair by private teachers or tutors, who sometimes were slaves.

Higher education in Rome was also all about rhetorics and practical skills you would need for a career in politics, and even that was reserved for very high class people. Of course, some knowledge about the history of the realm would have been vital for the aspiring high class citizens, but mostly just to further their political "value" and not for its own sake.

In the middle ages, you had the first universities in Europe, the first one being in Bologna somewhere around 1080, but again, this early universities had no "history institutes" before the 18th century for the most part.

To put things into perspective, ordinary folk in this age would not even know what exactly their by far most important text did say, since the bible was not available in anything other than Latin, ancient greek and hebraic (or however you call that one in english...).

Some researchers in the middle age, mostly from a church background, would work with the texts of the classical philosophers of antiquity, but even that was a very exotic field of research.

Another point, of course the lense through which history is viewed was very different "back then", both in classic age and in early christian and muslim societies. Their was always a focus on the "success stories" of your own society and your own faith of course

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https://newrepublic.com/article/79470/1895-8th-grade-final-exam-i-couldnt-pass-it-could-you

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*Hebrew would be the proper term, though often clarified as "the Hebrew language" to distinguish it from the people and culture.

The Bible was for a long time regarded as the most relevant historical text. Also if you go really far back, it was also common for myth to be treated as the source of historical knowledge.

“These are the people you hate now. Commit them to memory for the test.”

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History before it was history was just current events.

Historiography is the study of the study of history. Congratulations on making it to this level of nerd 😆.

It’s technically the history of writing about history, so oral histories would be a different thing. But to learn about the way people in the past interpreted and spread their own history, that’s the term you should Google.

One weird thing that I learned at some point and has stuck in my brain is that people in the Middle Ages in Europe, while they obviously knew biblical history and Greco-Roman history, they only knew it in broad strokes and didn’t really concern themselves with the daily life of people in long ago history. So, they would imagine King David as living like a contemporary European king in a castle and dressing in the type of clothes they themselves wore. But maybe that was only the laymen of the time?

Some have touched on school in the ancient world so, I'll go to the Medieval West, starting in around the 8th/9th century and beyond for a bit...

School was most often run by the church or church adjacent institutions [like a monastery or, a group of monks/priests in the employ of a King, say] and as such would require study or religious texts, as well as the "seven liberal arts" - the Trivium and the Quadrivium, if you've heard of those.

The trivium was grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In studying this, most fledgling monks or lay people would probably be reading a lot of Aristotle and perhaps a smattering of Cicero or other Latin writers. Meanwhile, the quadrivium included arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. Here again, classical authors would have been read and preserved, along with some late antique and medieval writers as well.

Starting in around the 11th/12th centuries, monastic schools started to develop into larger institutions, which eventually gave rise to the earliest universities [oversimplifying some]. The seven liberal arts still made up the core of one's education which could lead to a bachelor's degree. A Master's degree might focus more on the quadrivium, or an area within that, and after attaining an MA, one could study theology, medicine, or law at higher levels.

So as you can sort of see - you wouldn't see people studying history as its own field. History would come up when studying theology, when reading for rhetoric and grammar, and in other ways tangentially, but it was not a focus.

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History until fairly recently can be described as the great deeds of great men. As such, if you were of the elite, you'd learn about the deeds of your family and how they related to where you lived. Books/manuscripts were rare and expensive. It would be rare to read/possess them. For the man on the street, probably the old way would be via plays. This changes with the printing press.

As for asia/south america. No idea

The Egyptians were around for so long, there are texts from them where they are telling the history/doing archeology about centuries old Egyptians.

Technically the sciences today (all of them) are subsets of metaphysics (philosophy). A PhD for any discipline = doctor of philosophy of (insert discipline here)

Yeah, I learned everything stemmed from philosophy when I first cracked open a book of Aristotles teachings. I've respected philosophy a lot more because of that

Technically medicine/physiology makes up a number of sciences so not all sciences hand out PhDs, some hand out MDs.

You’re right MDs and JDs are not PhDs— good point

It was not my point, but you are correct, there are other doctorates other than PhD.

Yes, all of our basic assumptions etc which all systems sit on top of, are based on the current limits of philosophy. Isiah Berlin has a great short interview on YouTube channel: philosophy overdose where he outlines that nicely.

Philosophy is still highly relevant today with this sort of thing, a lot of good philosophy isn't about answering things definitively, it's about formulating the right questions and conceptual ground for discourse going forward, something many technocratic people tend to misunderstand or write off.

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As many have already said, only the privileged classes would go out of their way to learn historic things (perhaps monks and nuns might have access to written histories, or someone wealthy enough to be literate might read something like Herodotus). But most people told histories through myths, legends, rhymes, and ghost stories, often for entertainment.

Aboriginal people in Australia pass(ed) history down as oral tradition, and my shallow understanding is that their histories are incredibly detailed and lengthy, and the teaching is extremely rigorous and rigid, so they are passed on exactly as before; they apparently map well to natural history going back an astonishing amount of time.

A farmer in what is now rural England may perhaps have passed on legends about local history, or may have learned about it in song. Medieveal Europeans often memorialized notable local royalty through song and legend, such as "Good King Wenceslas" or the story of Lady Godiva. Traveling entertainers or troupes might tell fun stories, alongside actual historic recountings, in verse. That's partly why so many poets in centuries past wrote their epic stories in rhyme: there was a tradition of people, likely illiterate, memorizing and reciting the entire thing for audiences. The practice of history through song was something people took up again during the labor movements of the early 20th Century in the US; as the stories and histories were suppressed officially, people wrote folk songs about coal town battles, union leaders, awful bosses, and what life was like for workers. And, of course, a lot of history that people learned was religious.

In Tibet people have been passing histories of monks and monasteries down for a long time but I'm not sure how far it goes back. Because of the tradition of locating the reincarnation of a specific monk or teacher in every generation, naturally the history of that person through the centuries would be relevant. So, the stories of monks and monasteries was one possible subject of history.

A look through Shakespeare's oeuvre shows that in the late 1500s people in London were watching plays about famous ancient Romans and famous English Kings. In the late 1300s Chaucer was also writing Classical histories (mixed with mythology) and histories of notable nobles and church officials (not always complimentary) in verse. His audience would have been noble men and women, as well as the rising upper middle class people and merchants.

[meta, I'm am not a historian] That depends on the history you're talking about right? Every class had [a book] books, or a single speaker if we're talking about the [data] days before books.

Edit: a reminder to expand... Since I want to explore this question more fully and not just answer with a question (and an answer?)... But I don't know if anybody's listening.

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Ever since picking up Aristotle and subsequently Marcus Aurelius' Meditations I've been a philosophy nut. I wish I found it earlier in life since it's definitely opened up my perspectives on quite literally everything

Nice, it's some of the most rewarding reading you'll ever do, and really helps to complement historical reading too as a lot of these people didn't make the rigid distinctions between fields like philosophy/physics/science we make today. Like reading about the enlightenment after reading people like Kant and Locke gives you an entirely other perspective on the entire era. German Idealism and structuralism ended up being my jam, Kant and Hegel are just once in a generation geniuses, but it's great because the field itself just spills out in so many different directions.

100% on the historical aspect, the fact that I can read the thoughts of a man that ran an empire, or of a man that was the tutor of many great men is astounding, and putting into perspective how people of the time thought. I'm screenshotting your comment so I remember to look into your recommendations

Ah, so it was “current events”.

The /r/askphilosophy sub is pretty great, lot of very knowledgeable users there, similar to the /r/askhistory sub

I wouldn't recommend starting with Kant, but if you're interested in early modern philosophy to Enlightenment stuff (roughly 1400s-1700's) I'd start with Descartes and work your way from there, he sort of lays the groundwork and context for a lot of thinkers past him. You probably won't agree with him, and almost everyone who responds to him has major criticisms, but it's a pretty good starting point because it's a clean break and highly influential at the time with many philosophers of the era directly responding to his ideas.

Rough sort of cartoon timeline is you have Descartes who advocates philosophy called rationalism, which is advocated and modified by certain people and critiqued by empiricists. Kant comes along and attempts to synthesis both of these schools into one and largely succeeds in doing so, Hegel follows up and radically complicates things but borderline creates a functioning "system of all systems," that is still pretty debated and relevant today. Things are a bit muddier than this, but it's helpful to have a broad idea I find when navigating this stuff.

This is also a highly useful website as well: https://plato.stanford.edu/

It can help with reading and provides pretty broad overviews and introductions to a lot of different ideas and works. Last bit of advice is people on youtube (i.e. "The School of Life" and other such vids), especially highly rated channels tend to be pretty wrong about a lot of philosophy lol, so tread carefully there, although there is absolutely great stuff here and there, it can just be hard to tell the difference early on.

Best of luck!

If you read philosophy they tend to talk about historical figures who came before them. But as someone else stated, this probably was exclusively the wealthy who had the means to learn about this

I think everyone else hit the nail on the head as far as the wealthy being educated. History as an educational subject in school is relatively modern. I’ve seen my grandparent’s history textbooks from the 30s and 40s since they kept them. They focused primarily in European and American history, but they aren’t nearly as detailed as the stuff I learned in my APUSH and AP Euro classes 10-12 years ago. Modern communication has helped piece together primary and secondary sources to tell a more complete narrative of what has happened. I have a friend with a PhD in archaeology, and she says what we know about history is constantly changing with the more we uncover. She is a mummy doctor, so you gotta believe her after all.

The MD is a clinical/professional degree. There are also PhDs in medicine with the research degree, and “double docs” with both a MD and PhD in medicine.

Medicine still has PhDs but I wouldn’t call any PhDs “handed out”.

It's a professional degree in the US and a few other places. In most of the world, however, MD is also for research degrees in medicine. "Handed out" was used for some light hearted levity. I cannot believe anyone would know so little about the education system that they'd think I meant it literally.

> “double docs” with both a MD and PhD in medicine.

Old roommate of mine did this. Smart guy but damn his life was busy for quite a few years

History isn't a specific class. It is part of the education of the elites or those who want to join the elites. Researching the education system of each civilization would give more insight. There are lots of primary sources on the Roman, Greek, and Chinese education system from the ancient world.

I was also wondering what people study in history now compared to, say, 15 or 20 years ago. When I was studying history in school in 2007, the syllabus went up to the end of the Cold War. I think the previous syllabus (introduced in 2002) also touched on the Cold War, which was amazingly current given that 1991 was just a decade or so ago.

Yet, when I look up the current syallabus today, the coverage is still up until the end of the Cold War (30 years ago). Sure, the topics covered have changed (now they learn about Dutch colonialism and French Indochina instead of the Russian and Chinese revolutions) but it seems that no one is willing to touch events in the 21st century just yet.

I apologize. The world needs more levity. Doctoral degrees of all sorts have made some of us grumpy and old.

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The most significant US war in the 21st century ended just recently, so I'm not surprised the 21st century hasn't made it into the curriculum yet

lol this really shouldn’t be that hard. History is literally “HIS STORY”. It’s what “the man” makes of it. Those in power are also in power of the history that is taught to the younger generations.

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You might have some fun looking into historiography, which looks at how historians developed the academic study of history. It was part of my historical research methods class when I got my undergrad in history.

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This immediately made me sad thinking of Hypatia's library and the colossal amount of ancient knowledge humanity lost in the rubble. We probably had a pretty comprehensive understanding of ancient history before that.

Don't know if this has been brought up exactly, but the vast majority of people were illiterate before the printing press. So "history" for the common person was always passed down orally, and was more akin to mythology to actual history.

One of my favourite university classes was run by the heads of the History and the Classics departments. The course was called Ancient Greek Historical and Philosophical Thought. And it was exactly what was written on the tin: a dive into how the ancients thought about the world. It was super fascinating! Would heartily recommend anyone interested seek out a similar experience.

No, no it's literally not.

ἱστορία • (historíā) f (genitive ῐ̔στορῐ́ᾱς); first declension

From ῐ̔στορέω (historéō, “I inquire”), from ἵστωρ (hístōr, “one who knows, wise one”).

inquiry, examination, systematic observation, science body of knowledge obtained by systematic inquiry written account of such inquiries, narrative, history

Sitting around the fire and listening to stories about the stars?… like way way before the modern era.

We used to get history, now we get social Justice! :)

This is true, though empirical findings often cause paradigm shifts that could not be explained by prior philosophies, and so a new philosophy must be written to explain the findings. It is in cases like this that science and philosophy feed each other. The basic assumptions weren't asserted out of nowhere, but were based on inferences on empirical findings. These inferences were sometimes wrong and so we had to reject those assumptions as we got more data, but that also shows the empirical foundations of the basic assumptions.

Before the printing press, scribes had to write copies. They were the most well read people of the time. Basically you learned things as you wrote. They were usually monks.

And how neutral would those history classes be? History and science now is pretty well balanced and focused on facts. But I’m sure that in ancient time “history written by the victors” was more prevalent.

Hi!

It seems like you are talking about the popular but ultimately flawed and false "winners write history" trope!

While the expression is sometimes true in one sense (we'll get to that in a bit), it is rarely if ever an absolute truth, and particularly not in the way that the concept has found itself commonly expressed in popular history discourse. When discussing history, and why some events have found their way into the history books when others have not, simply dismissing those events as the imposed narrative of 'victors' actually harms our ability to understand history.

You could say that is in fact a somewhat "lazy" way to introduce the concept of bias which this is ultimately about. Because whoever writes history is the one introducing their biases to history.

A somewhat better, but absolutely not perfect, approach that works better than 'winners writing history' is to say 'writers write history'.

This is more useful than it initially seems. Until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that.

To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.
Similarly the Norsemen historically have been portrayed as uncivilized barbarians as the people that wrote about them were the "losers" whose monasteries got burned down.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
This evaluation is something that is done by historians and part of what makes history and why insights about historical events can shift over time.

This is possibly best exemplified by those examples where victors did unambiguously write the historical sources.

The Spanish absolutely wrote the history of the conquest of Central America from 1532, and the reports and diaries of various conquistadores and priests are still important primary documents for researchers of the period.

But 'victors write the history' presupposes that we still use those histories as they intended, which is simply not the case. It both overlooks the fundamental nature of modern historical methodology, and ignores the fact that, while victors have often proven to be predominant voices, they have rarely proven to be the only voices.

Archaeology, numismatics, works in translation, and other records all allow us at least some insight into the 'losers' viewpoint, as does careful analysis of the 'winner's' records.
We know far more about Rome than we do about Phoenician Carthage. There is still vital research into Carthage, as its being a daily topic of conversation on this subreddit testifies to.

So while it's true that the balance between the voices can be disparate that doesn't mean that the winners are the only voice or even the most interesting.
Which is why stating that history is 'written by the victors' and leaving it at that is harmful to the understanding of history and the process of studying history.

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Yes, that is what my question was!

Silly bot.

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Anymore descriptors for that interview? Channel seems to have lot of Berlin interviews.

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That's not true, people would be extensively taught in history and biblical theology if they just asked their priests. They went to mass every week, in churches that quite often had decorations precisely about this subject, and priests were expected to be able to explain them in detail if anyone asked -otherwise that would have made them seem quite unlearnt.

I dunno. I worked under a post doc in grad school who I suspect his PI wrote his dissertation. He did not last long. After he left our lab his former PI started popping up in his publications again.

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Big fan of Nietzsche myself. Funny thing is that - and I say this as an Autistic person myself - I am fairly certain that both Kant and Nietzsche were Autistic.

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Which country ransacked which country. Who was the leader and how did it all go horribly wrong. And repeat.

Ooh, fascinating, thank you. Can you point me in the direction of some reading on Australian Aboriginal oral tradition?

History is the study of change over time, and it covers all aspects of human society. Political, social, economic, scientific, technological, medical, cultural, intellectual, religious and military developments are all part of history.

History was what we consider Classics today: Herodotus, Homer, Thucydides, Livy, Plutarch. Up until well into the 20th century, the works of Plutarch were probably the most read history in the West. They're essentially mini-bios of famous leaders and generals of antiquity, with an emphasis on their moral character.

These bios were instructive to Western elites, who were encouraged to champion the values demonstrated by Plutarch's nobler subjects - courage, loyalty, civic-mindedness. If you were an educated man in the 19th and early 20th century, you were expected to be able to talk about Pericles, Alcibiades, Caesar, etc.

The one thing they don’t teach about in history class

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCzqhWGJ1RU

What was your point then?

Also just because MDs and JDs are not PhDs, does not remove both medicine and law from the metaphysics (philosophy) umbrella. In fact you can get a PhD in both those disciplines.

You're honestly better off Googling it, sorry. I read this in bits and pieces ages ago and don't remember where.

Prior to modern era there were few classes or formal schooling. Literate elites of Rome were aware of Greek and Roman history. Mostly educated by private tutors they read histories, mythologies and philosophies. Many educated Romans read Greek. Many educated medieval elites read and spoke Latin. Caesar knew Alexanders story well and once burst into tears that he had achieved so little himself at Alexanders age. Nearly all literate elites in Europe for the last 2,000 years have known the story of Caesar.

That might be the case, but I would really not categorize something like that as formal education.

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Just to add to what others have said...

In some societies, even today, a people's history is primarily an oral history. But in terms of a formal education of some kind, whether we're talking about ancient Rome or ancient China, history would have certainly been studied -- that is, if you're leading an army, it helps to know some military history. Not just the heroic tales, but tactics and strategy.

Don't forget Homer. They loved Homer.

No worries, thanks for that rabbit hole, it's distracting me from working on my finals and I'm loving every second of it lol.

Rich people could sometimes buy chronicles and history books but apart from that it was mostly just common knowledge and stuff your dad told you