issue110

bhnUID: 2177959

110"When we concern ourselves with the study of history, we become storytellers. Because we can never know the past directly but must construct it by interpreting evidence, exploring history is more of a creative enterprise than it is an objective pursuit. All historians are storytellers." 14:24---17:00  2h36mins 719words
outlines:
A. historians does not live in the past, they could not know the past directly. in this sense, historian cannot know exactly what happened and what it is like  exactly and specifically in the past.
历史学家不可能直接的了解过去具体发生了什么
B.evidence found could not tell the history itself, only by the historians' work, can we know the image of  the past. the history we know today is some of the work of historian.
一些历史是历史学家推测和证实的成果。
C.Although some of the history are not recorded directly and are constructed by historians through interpreting evidence, that does not indicates that they are created by  historians' imagine.
历史学家不是故事家，他们根据事实证据和科学的方法，而不是空想。
D. every vocation existing has its significance, let alone historian exploring, which is an occupation of long history. if storyteller were just storytellers, it must have been supplanted by professional storyteller---novelist, especially historical novelist.
历史学家的存在也证明他们不可能是故事家，他们的价值在于还原历史，而不是讲故事。

Historians tell us that Troy, an ancient city of northwest Asia Minor near the Dardanelles River, is originally a Phrygian city dating from the Bronze Age, the legendary site of the Trojan War and was captured and destroyed by Greek forces c. 1200b.c. People keep doubting if the Trojan War did happen due to the lack of stolid evidence, and  thinking that historians just created the Trojan War, even after ruins of Troy were discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1871 because Some people think that historians construct the War by interpreting evidence rather than direct evidence. Are all historians all storytellers?

Most people can only live for about one hundred years, so does historians. Thus there does not exist an historian who live from ancient times to now. For this reason, historian could not know the past directly by the way of watching, listening, and touching. In this sense, historian cannot know exactly what happened and what it is like  exactly and specifically in the past. As and old Chinese saying goes: Only the thing you say by yourself is the real thing happened. For example, Xishi, one of the most beautiful women in ancient times generally accepted now, is only depicted in literal form in history record without reliable image. Historian cannot know what she looks like. Is she looks like Ziyi Zhang, or even more beautiful? They don't know. They judge her beauty by the record regarding how she is welcomed by noble men of than time in stead of her engaging picture.


Unrecorded history of human being is quite long than the recorded history of human beings since long after  the existence of human were characters invented. The earliest characters existed in China, which is  called Jiagu Wen, a kind of hieroglyphic, were generated about five hundreds years ago ,while the history of Asians could dates back to  800,000 years ago. Such a long period does not appear in history record. Even after the invention of characters many events were not recorded, How can we know what happened in this span of time or those not recorded? Of course, that is historians' work. They study the evidence founded by archaeologists, further, reason what might happened and finally, describe the image of the past for us. Trojan War mentioned above is just the case. Heinrich Schlemann founded the ruins of Tory, but the ruins themselves told nothing about the War, only by the historians' work: researching the destroyed houses, dropped weapons, skeletons() of solders, combing all the evidence and depict the picture of War, can we know  how the  War goes. I accept that history we know today is some of the work of historians.

Although some of the history are not recorded directly and are constructed by historians through interpreting evidence, we cannot equate historians to storytellers. There is significant differences between historians and storytellers. A storyteller is a person create stories by his or her void imagination without factual foundation or lacking sound logic reasoning from the facts. While historians do the opposite job of storytellers, they must base their construction of history on the solid evidence such as reliable records, excavated articles, study the evidence comprehensively, redepict the view of past time, just like the jigsaw puzzle, putting evidence together to reveal  history.

Every vocation existing has its significance, let alone history exploring, which is an occupation of long history. if storyteller were just storytellers, it must have been supplanted by professional storyteller---novelist, especially historical novelist, because novels are more interesting and attracting than history. A book called "San Guo Zhi" , Which objectively recorded the history of wars between three countries in ancient history of China， is not as popular as another book, a historical novel called "San Guo Yan Yi", to which the author added many mysterious plots , though the latter does not reflect the fact. Therefore, historians are not storytellers. The significance of historians lies on their work of helping us knowing things important really happened ,rather than creating entertaining stories.

In conclusion, although historian could not tell us all specifics exactly and some of event are constructed  by interpreting evidence, their work should be not be simply considered as the same as creating stories, for scientific methods are involved in their work and the interpretation are generally convincing.