Who's History is the Truth ?

How does one go about finding the Truth when it comes to history ? It is said history is written by the Victors. I love history, but unlike that of science we really have no way to validate any of it. Everything we know about history is story's passed onto us from others. Especially the further back you go .

We can surf through the internet and literally find a million different story's of one in particular history. Example ; A. Hitler died in a bunker. B. Hitler escaped to Argentina. C. The holocaust never happened period. All possibly true. All built on there on seperate mountain of research and predecessor's

Is there and sort of " Scientific Method " when it comes to history ? Or are we just stuck digging through the infinite amount of possibility's , hoping we picked the right one ?

Mine and only mine is truth. Everything else is hear-say.

Sorry to be that person...

*whose

history is sealed tightly in the propaganda of the victors, and repeated continuously till it becomes fact.
i love history as well..but..im never really sure if what im reading is fact or what has been passed down as fact.

a reply to: Rosinitiate

Lol. The sad thing is most people really think that way.

a reply to: LittleFire

Give up that search for Truth Little.
Rather find verisimilitude,the appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability:
The search for Truth leads us to 'belief' while the search for verisimilitude leads us to a vast array of possibilities and in my mind, a closer relationship to the Big Truth than smaller truthes found along the way.

One universal truth when it comes to history:
- Take everything with a grain of salt (for things that relatively ''just'' happened) and a bucket of salt for things further away.

Theres Always a shred of truth in every legend/story of the past. whatever u take out as truth is up to u.

originally posted by: autopat51
history is sealed tightly in the propaganda of the victors, and repeated continuously till it becomes fact.
i love history as well..but..im never really sure if what im reading is fact or what has been passed down as fact.

That's pretty much what i was getting at. It just gets repeated until it accepted. Over time there's probably very little of it factual, if any at all.

a reply to: LittleFire

When you are calm and passive, you will know.--Yoda

Lol, it never works that way. If you live a lifetime and keep that questioning attitude you are displaying you will read a lot of information, retain it and at some point it will all gel into a better understanding of the world, the history we are told and the truth behind it.

My advice to you is to also google whatever subject adding, 'controversy' or 'debunked' as search words. Once you read both sides you find the truth is in there somewhere.

But above all, keep questioning...

a reply to: LittleFire
There's plenty of evidence that the holocaust happened. If you seriously think it did not then the OP title should be 'Can I pick and choose what bits of history I choose to believe and therefore no one is allowed to question me?'

I wanted to give an example of a story that i do not believe at all: 300 greeks kill lots of perzian soldiers before they themselves are killed.
What i think happened: 300 arrogant guys just thought they'd make a stand and got killed in the first wave of arrows. The other greeks just made up a story around them to rally their troops behind it.

Much of history is an opinion.
Take Obama as an example.
100 years from now, what will be said about his presidency?
Good?
Bad?
Both really.
Dates and places are easy, why is much harder.

The winner's.

a reply to: uncommitted

Yea I,m pretty sure you totally missed what i was getting at. I hope you don't really think I'm suggesting the Holocaust didnt happen. But will run with that for a minute.

I could assume with 99% certanity that the Holocaust did indeed happen. I say this becuase there are still Holocaust survivors alive today . I actually met one as a child. I would not claim that I was certain of every detail of the Holocaust though.

Now fast foward a couple 100 years. We would have well documented accounts of the Holocaust. But over enough time the smallest discrepancy could drastically alter what really happened into a much different version of history. All your capable of knowing is that from which resources your predecessor's have left you.

Then again in a couple 100 years we might have time machines and none of this will any longer be an issue !!!

a reply to: intrptr

Totally agree with you. I feel the best way to find Truth of any nature is to look at it from both sides without any bias " hard to do sometimes " I feel you should do everything you can to build and support the subject matter . Then you must give the same amount of energy trying to destroy it. At the end take away all bias and see which one out weighs the other.

a reply to: LittleFire

The beauty of living in the information age is that historical references can be cross checked from various different sources thus somewhat negate the ability of the victors being the only ones to record historical events.

As to a scientific method regarding verifying the veracity of past history pre information age well that's rather harder to accomplish but can be achieved if there are multiple different accounts recorded. Credibility of source is also a key factor but the truth is before we had the ability to capture and record images the written word pretty much dictated as to what actually transpired. Perspective through is a cruel mistress.

a reply to: LittleFire

You'll be fine.

I think it's easy to get small things wrong. Big things, like the Holocaust? That's so much more unlikely. There're some who say big lies are easiest because nobody believes a big lie can happen, but I think that's simply hand waving away what I just said. Facts are it's easier to distort or manipulate something small. This is why I've mostly believed the 9/11 official story for some time now. It's just too big. Now, there might be smaller details about 9/11 which're manipulated or distorted. For example, I wondered for a while maybe the designs or regulations for the towers were downsized to save $$$? It's possible this was downplayed intentionally to direct blame away from key parties.

And I agree about how the further back you go, the harder it's to get the facts right. The problem is reinterpretations can happen and many of hte original evidences are gone. This makes it ripe for distortion. For example, comparing it to a crime scene, if the scene is years old many or most of the evidences can be lost. The crime scene might not even exist. Without that, there're only a handful of ways to gain more information about the crime.

a reply to: jonnywhite

"There're some who say big lies are easiest because nobody believes a big lie can happen."

How do you think the Nazis managed to get all those poor Jews to board the trains to the concentration camps?

It may look all totalitarian in any films that remain of the Holocaust but the majority of those poor people pretty much willingly got on those trains laboring under the illusion that they were being transported to a better place.

a reply to: LittleFire


The holocaust is a perfect example, in a couple of 100 years probably the 6 million will be well documented while the other 54 million that died will not be mentioned. Similar to the 300 mentioned a few posts earlier.