Too much history

"The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history." George Eliot

I am a fan of ancient history. I once had a discussion with an Iranian about minority cultures and religions in Iran and about foreign influences. He told me that the world must know that Alexander the Great did not actually conquer Persia, and that is what gives legitimacy to his particular view of iranian politics.

It is surprising that the historicity of the actions of a group of people in 331 B.C. might be determinants of legitimacy 2300 years later. The history of quite a number of peoples does not go back that far. Are people to be held accountable for and reap the benefits of the actions of distant presumed historical ancestors, but only if the history is known?

Turks and Greeks are very skillful and remarkably bitter in their discussion of even earlier history. I saw a web site about Greek-Turkish relations from a Turkish point of view, refuting the argument that turks have been in turkey for only 1000 years, and counter-attacking by trying to prove that all greek culture and ethnic traits actually come from the migration of tribes from anatolia, in pre-homeric times. That you would have to go so far back into prehistoric times to make a political argument is a good reason to set a statute of limitations on the use of historical (or archeological) knowledge.

The recent history of the Middle East is all about ancestral rights dating back thousands of years. The growing evidence that 4 thousand years back the ancestors of all the peoples in conflict were a single people, Semitic people of the Canaanite linguistic group, does not seem to help generate any further common understanding. The more we know about our common ancestry, the more we tend to use it against the other. The amusing British-Israel Society, for instance, tries to prove that the English are actually the ten lost tribes of Israel reunited. That gives them the right to dominate other peoples.

There is something to be said for murky history. It makes an ethnic group responsible for its own current actions. Back when God was choosing a people, my ancestors were banging rocks together. That freed their descendants from having to live down or live up to a lot of ancient territorial battles. Celtic tribes were everywhere, from Anatolia to northern Britain. From Galatia in Turkey to Galicia in Spain, gallic tribes quietly conquered the world, surrounding the Roman Empire on all sides, but thankfully their lack of written history kept this pan-Eurasian people from hearkening back to when they controlled most of the known world. Most of their recorded battles are defeats, and history barely records their victories. That is probably a good thing. That, and whisky, keeps the Gaelic tribes from wanting to conquer the world again.

Pre-historical footnote: no, the proto-Celts were not banging rocks together; in fact they probably ushered in the Iron Age by bringing iron-making technology down to the Bronze Age middle east. However they had few permanent buildings or writing.

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