#modern invention tbh

[oswednesday]

tbh i think we need to stop calling these women feminists like even if they self identify as that its like most of them, are not even the most bare bone feminists, a lot of them just log on and find the most acceptable woman to target because they live sad misogynist lives, maybe bigot or sexist just rolls of the dome we need a word that is just embarrassing to be called, clout chasers, hacks, im sure we can find something

[daisywords]

Got some solid plot stuff in recently so I can get back to the important stuff: sprinkling in Trip's weird complexes

[distinguishedstudentfishalien]

One thing that absolutely kills me about the argument of "Judea belongs to the Zionist Jews because we were here before" is that if that's how they want to play it, we should apply it everywhere else.

You know what that means. Goodbye U.S. of A.

You need to give back the half of the country you stole from Mexico.

Wait, actually, you have to give back all the land you stole from First Nations.

And Mexico, mestizaje is pretty much a lie, send back the oppressors to Spain and Europe, and give back the land to the original cultures.

Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Australia, New Zealand etc, etc, etc. You know the deal, give it back.

And STILL, Israhell would have to give Palestinians their land back because Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites. So by their own logic, Palestinians have as much right (if not more) to be there.

[sudaca-swag]

the funniest thing sanderson did with the cosmere was to create an entire empire where men werent allowed to read, only the women, so men were all illiterate and super proud of it and their job was go to war and die lmao

[supercantaloupe]

top 5 oboe concertos 👀

kalliwoda. yes i am counting it even though it's labelled a concertino. idc. it's great and i love it

mozart. yes i know this answer is Basic. but if it was good enough for flutes to steal it's good enough for this list

marcello. i have a soft spot for baroque, sue me. also if this counts then the kalliwoda definitely does. play it in c minor if you're a real one

strauss. idk i just like strauss

vaughan williams. honestly not my thing to play but with the orchestra accompaniment it really is something special to listen to

also honorable mention has to go out to the grunge concerto by scott mcallister. i heard someone play two movements of this at oboe camp a couple summers ago and it's like...the concentrated essence of contemporary composition. it is So

[ask meme]

[eri-pl]

#burn#no I'm not communist but yeah I do hate group projects#oh Eri why am I suddenly thinking of... one particular person xdd#not that this post has anything to do with it but. group projects.

Hey, Melkor was not a communist, that's slander!

Y’all are awfully communist for a bunch of people who hate group projects

[busiest-bee]

I have a disease where I think Way Too Much about my oc Ribeye. I accidentally made an au with him and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since yesterday. Might post about it but might not

[quathxr]

Just watched a group of cows being herded by four wheelers cross the road. Life is good

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i don't have the words to articulate it at this moment but there's something about the way that people have specific expectations for "authenticity" and will dismiss anything that falls outside them as a mangled, anglicised version of the thing when actually that is the older and more traditional form of something, it just doesn't match their expectations. obviously in my personal experiences i'm mostly talking about medieval literature here especially medieval irish literature

sometimes this is as simple as spelling – i've had people argue that the name "finn" is anglicised and it should always be "fionn" to be Really Irish, but "finn" is an older spelling, glide vowels are later, if you wanna go real far back it'll be "find" (nd in place of nn is an older spelling pattern). or they'll hear someone say "ogam" and assume they're mispronouncing "ogham" due to lack of knowledge of irish and not consider the fact that medievalists tend to use the older form of the word. or they'll Well Actually you about "correct" terminology which wasn't standardised (and/or invented) until the 20th century

a lot of this is defensive and the result of seeing a lot of people ACTUALLY get this stuff wrong and have no respect for the language. in that regard i understand it, although it becomes very tedious after a while, particularly when people sanctimoniously declare something "inauthentic", "fake", or "anglicised" without doing enough research to realise it's not trying to be modern irish and is in fact correct for older forms of the language

more often however this search for the projected "authenticity" is ideological and has much larger flaws and more problematic implications. "this can't be the real story because it's christian" well... that's the oldest version of the story that exists and it postdates christianity in ireland by about nine hundred years, so... maybe question why you're assuming the only "real" version of irish stories can't be a christian one? this is especially true when it comes to fíanaigecht material tbh, but in general there seems to a widespread misapprehension about ireland's historical relationship with christianity (i have seen people arguing that christianity in ireland is the result of english colonialism which took their "true" faith from them... bro. they were christian before the "english" existed. half the conversion efforts went the other way. please read some early medieval history thank you)

however i also saw someone saying this about arthurian literature lately which REALLY baffled me. "we'll never have the Real arthurian stories only the christianised versions" and it was in the context of chivalric romance. buddy you are mourning something that does not exist. this "authentic" story you're looking for isn't there. that twelfth century story you're dismissing as a christian bastardisation is as "real" a part of this tradition as you're going to get

[hazelcephalopod]

Most of these I was like. “Ok sure… kinda weird but sure.” And then there’s the ones that made me go “Umm. Uh… so… those are some choices.” And for me those are, “Terebithia” and “Westeros”.

Also side eyeing Utopia a little. Also the charter listed for this is called “Dan Meth”.

One of my favorite hobbies is thinking about the fucked up implications of this fantasy world map my parents got me for christmas

[Image ID: photo of a map. On the left side of the map is Middle Earth, with the Shire and Mordor labeled. To the direct right of Mordor is Whoville.]

[wonder-worker]

I should clarify that we don't know if Thomas More actually met Elizabeth Shore! While he claimed that he did, David Santiuste has pointed out that More's description of Elizabeth in her later years, "where a 'fallen woman' loses her beauty, echoes familiar tropes in moral literature" at the time. It was very common to find such narratives in Tudor England, such as Robert Henryson's popular poem, Testament of Cresseid. So, while most historians have (unfortunately) taken More's claim at face-value based on that description, it can and should be questioned more than it has been till date.

Also, More's knowledge about Elizabeth's life was distinctly lacking and unreliable* in a way that makes it hard to believe he was getting his information from her. For example, he claimed that she was still married to William Shore in 1483 even though we know she had divorced Shore years ago; he didn't know that Richard III had accused her of having an affair with Thomas Gray despite the very public nature of that accusation; and he either didn't know or deliberately erased the fact that she married Thomas Lynom (and had a child with him) shortly after her penance walk. Instead, More seems to have created a tragic afterlife for her, claiming that she ended her life destitute and friendless, which was...almost definitely untrue (her reality would have been far, far happier). His claim that Richard III accused Elizabeth Shore of witchcraft was also most probably false and invented by More himself: the Great Chronicle never mentions any such thing, Richard's own proclamations against her suggest against the idea, and a textual comparison to Vergil's account (which More directly used as a source for that specific scene) indicates that More seems to have inserted Elizabeth Shore into the accusation that was, historically, only levelled at Elizabeth Woodville**.

In short: We don't know if More truly met Elizabeth Shore; at the very least, his claim should be taken with a grain of salt. But even if More did meet her, or at the very least came across her (which is plausible, as her second husband had a flourishing career under the Tudors and died in the 1510s), his haphazard knowledge of her makes it very unlikely that he could have questioned her about events of her life. Alternatively, if he did question her, he seems to have had no problem massively editing, rewriting or outright inventing several crucial and defining aspects of her life to suit his own narrative convenience. Whatever the case, it's clear that More was not using Elizabeth Shore as a source of information. It's also clear that he demonstrably did not care about historical accuracy where she was concerned*** (his descriptions of her are incredibly self-indulgent and generic) and should not be taken at face-value when talking about her life.

*We don't know if she and Edward IV truly had an affair, or if it was actually long-term & public (both of which are different things, and both of which have no verifiable evidence as of now). But even if they did have some kind of relationship, evidence strongly contradicts the idea that she was a visible figure during his reign - which may explain More's haphazard knowledge of her. Indeed, the author of the Great Chronicle could not even remember her name, merely calling her "a woman named Shore", with a blank space left before her surname. Similarly, the Elizabethans - who derived their knowledge of her entirely from More's account being printed and circulated from the 1540s - seem to have been so unfamiliar with her that they invented a fake name, fake husband (a goldsmith named Matthew) and fake backstory for her. More himself, in addition to his various inaccuracies about her, claims that she had a memorable role at court while simultaneously taking it for granted that his audience will not know who she is (which...does not make sense). He also literally never bothers to mention her name throughout his account; we don't know if he even knew what it was. Compare this to the consistent and matter-of-fact way contemporary and post-contemporary chroniclers spoke of Alice Perrers and Katherine Swynford, or how Rosamund Clifford's name was organically remembered across the centuries. In contrast, the absence of Elizabeth Shore in post-contemporary chronicles, and the ignorance that both More and the Great Chronicle displayed for the most basic elements of her life, cast immense doubt on the idea of her so-called visibility. If she had an affair with Edward IV, we can also conclude other things about their relationship based on current evidence, which may explain why chroniclers had such lacking knowledge of her. For one, she never received any official grants or rewards from Edward throughout his reign, a striking contrast to Alice Perrers and Katherine Swynford who received plenty from their royal lovers during Queen Philippa and Constance of Castile's lives. With the variety of 14th century English and 15th century French & Breton precedents that Edward had at his disposal when it came to rewarding royal mistresses in such a way, we can only conclude that if they were in a relationship, he simply did not want to honour Elizabeth Shore in such a public manner (ie: through patent and Parliament rolls, etc). Nor did Edward ever favor her parents, despite his patronage of so many other London merchants. It's very hard to understand how someone who had so little influence that she was incapable of obtaining grants for herself or her family would somehow have been able to intercede on behalf of others as Thomas More (very generically and romantically) claimed she did. Indeed, Elizabeth is absent from all known cases of intercession during Edward's second reign, and specific examples dispel the idea that she was viewed as a figure of visible influence like Alice and Katherine had been (see: the Merchant Adventurers Company sending desperate appeals to influential figures at court in 1480; Elizabeth Lambert is conspicuously absent from the list). In my opinion, if historians claim that Edward III and John of Gaunt's affairs with Alice and Katherine were "discreet" during Philippa and Constance's lives despite having actual contemporary evidence of their affairs via records and chronicles, then we must necessarily view the (potential, unverified, unknown) relationship between Edward IV and Elizabeth Shore as 10x more discreet considering we have no evidence for it at all. Based on what we know so far, given that post-contemporary chroniclers could not even remember her name, I think this interpretation is only fair.

**Re Elizabeth's role in 1483: another thing I want to clarify is that her arrest and penance walk doesn't seem to have had anything to do with Edward IV - as is commonly assumed - but with William Hastings. Simon Stallworth's contemporary letter, written on 21st June, makes it clear that Elizabeth was imprisoned shortly after Hastings' execution. The Great Chronicle likewise emphasizes that she was punished for her affair with Hastings (which mirrors how Richard used her to disparage Thomas Gray, and suggests that he was using the same tactic here to vilify Hastings) without ever linking her to Edward IV. Also, the idea of her being a messenger between Elizabeth Woodville and Hastings is simply not true: it is a modern fantasy theory that has been irresponsibly accepted by historians as a fact. It has no basis in history (it's highly improbable that Elizabeth Woodville and Hastings were in an alliance) and no chronicle, including More, claimed Richard accused her of this.

***In general, Thomas More is very unreliable when it comes to Edward IV's life - specifically his love life - as well. Apart from his false claim that he died at the age of 53 (???), More seems to have invented a page-long fictional story about Edward's alleged pre-contract, claiming that it was actually with Elizabeth Lucy who had once been summoned by his mother to court to try and deter him from marrying Elizabeth Woodville (we know that the pre-contract was with Eleanor Talbot, there is no record of a woman named "Elizabeth Lucy" even existing at the time, and there is no evidence of Edward's council or his mother doing any such thing). Additionally, More claimed that Edward IV discussed his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville with his courtiers before he married her, which is obviously not true. He also claimed that Edward had three long-term mistresses, which is explicitly contradicted by other chroniclers like Dominic Mancini, who arrived in England at the end of Edward's life and clearly states that he was known for having very short-term sexual affairs; it's very hard to understand how Mancini could have gotten such a radically different impression from courtiers and local Londoners if a long-term public mistress like Elizabeth Shore existed at that time. For that matter, the claim is also contradicted by Thomas More himself, who implies that Edward's affairs stopped in his last years ("in his youth given to fleshy wantonness...in his latter days, it lessened and well left"). I'm really not sure how we can reconcile that with what More claims about Elizabeth Lambert. Interestingly enough, More's claim that Edward may have eventually stopped having affairs is actually supported another independent chronicler, Habington, who wrote that "Even from [lust] which was reputed his bofome finn, toward the later end of his life, he was [somewhat] cleare: either [conscience] reforming him, or by continuall faciete growne to a loathing of it". Of course, we don't know if this is true or not, but whatever the case, the point is that More's claims re Edward's love life are ... really not reliable. On the contrary, he has displayed a pretty stellar record of invention, exaggeration and general inconsistency. His claims re Ellizabeth Shore cannot be taken at face-value and should be questioned & doubted far more than they are.

(Of course, this isn't to argue that everything More claimed about Elizabeth was an outright invention. This isn't true at all: he clearly did know some pretty important things about her. But when it comes to the existence and nature of her alleged affair with Edward IV...we just don't know. More could have been making it up; he could have been telling the truth; he could have been narrating what he believed was the truth; he could have been basing his account on a grain of truth while exaggerating/constructing the rest (in my opinion, the last one makes the most sense and fits best with what we know so far). What I'm trying to say is that More's claims regarding their alleged affair are not verifiable and reliable, and his claims regarding the nature of that affair can be contradicted by actual evidence and other sources, including More's own account. All in all - like you said, he can't be used uncritically as a source when it comes to her.

What is your opinion on Elizabeth Lambert? Does she have any unknown related knowledge?

I find her very interesting, particularly with the way her story parallels Alice Perrers and Eleanor Cobham, and I find her a very sympathetic figure. I don't know too much about her since the end of the Wars of the Roses isn't one of "my" periods and the thought of sorting through the Ricardians from the Ricardian-influenced to the Tudorites to find decent information about them just makes me go "no" and give up.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by your second question. We don't know a lot about her since the lives of mistresses aren't very well documented, particularly ones not of aristocratic birth. In addition, a lot of what we know about Elizabeth comes from Thomas More. He did claim to have met her but More can't be used uncritically as a source. The best coverage of Elizabeth's life, afaik, N. Barker's article, 'The real Jane Shore’ in Etoniana, 125 (1972) and 126 (1972). I've not read them myself but I believe Barker was the scholar who discovered "Jane Shore" was in fact Elizabeth Lambert.

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

one thing i actually really liked about dot and bubble was that often when the doctor (or really any other person in a sci fi show tbh) takes a modern day person to the distant future to see humanity, it portrays it like this beacon of diversity and inclusion...

but i like that this one showed that prejudices like racism aren't something that magically goes away one day, they're often in built into the structures of a lot of human society (especially structures involving the rich)... and that even when humans are scattered across the stars and invent infinitely more complicated and intelligent technologies, those old prejudices continue to rear their ugly heads and prevent people from actually becoming better...

[ocelotlesbian]

my take on where tbhk characters lie on the fujoshi/himejoshi & fudanshi/himedanshi spectrum

i'm bored. click under the cut :D

for the record, this is all silly goofy speculation just for fun, don't take any of it too seriously ^_^

nene: fujoshi - i mean come on it's self explanatory. she loves romance, she loves pretty boys, she would love BL. simple as

hanako: he doesn't know what any of that is / fudanshi - he died in the 60s before the true beginning of yaoi & yuri, so i think he just wouldn't be in the loop with any of it at all. he might borrow some BL from nene though, so i'm also placing him in the fudanshi category

kou: Normie™ - he reads neither BL nor GL, and likely not romance in general. just not rlly that interested in those genres i think

mitsuba: himedanshi - too repressed for BL, too heterophobic for straight romance, just right for yuri

tsukasa: same situation as hanako - not familiar with either genre

sakura: vaguely himejoshi - i just think she's a lesbian, honestly. she dabbles in BL & straight romance as well just for the sake of it, but her favorite kind of romance is yuri

natsuhiko: himedanshi - he just gives me those vibes, tbh. he likes cute girls and i think he'd also like reading about them falling in love. if tbhk didn't take place in 2015, he'd love tgswiiwagaa

aoi: himejoshi - i'm honestly not that sure about aoi, but i do know that her scenes with nene are yuri as FUCK so she gets to be a himejoshi on principle

akane: himedanshi - he likes whatever aoi likes

teru: N/A - his ass is too overworked to have time to read either, unfortunately

tiara: himejoshi in the making - her nickname is literally "princess", of COURSE she would be a himejoshi when she's old enough to read

shijima: lesbian fujoshi / himejoshi x2 combo - she draws both, she doesn't discriminate!! same goes for og mei

yako: neither - just not interested in romance as a genre in general

tsuchigomori: neither/nuance - i don't think he would actively read either, considering he's a grown ass man with a job and taxes, but also his whole thing is books so i think he's definitely familiar with BL & GL to some extent

kako & mirai: senior citizen & fujoshi in the making - i don't feel the need to elaborate on this one

hakubo: Normie™ - he doesn't care

sumire: would've been a fujo - she lived before yaoi was invented, but i think if she was a modern girl she would read it

satou & yokoo: the main characters of their own slice of life BL - i don't feel the need to elaborate on this one either

okay those are all the characters i can think of off the top of my head, if you have your own opinions, please share!!!

[eri-pl]

So… what's the idiot envious of, exactly???

So I noticed it when reading BoLT, but the Silm also says (back in Ainulindale) that Melkor was

envying the gifts with which Ilúvatar promised to endow them [Elves and Men]

OK. Which gifts? Professor, sir, which ones? The only thing that makes half of a sense here is the out-of-Musicness of Men, let's leave this for later.

Elves' harmony with Arda? Melkor is an Ainu, he has this innately.

Elves' cool skills? See above.

Them liking each other and being able to have a normal social life? Nah, the Valar (those who aren't jerks) have this too I suppose. He would be envious of them too.

Men being able to leave Arda? Again: as an Ainu, Melkor is innately bigger then Arda… OK, I suppose he would like to come and go as he pleases, go to Arda and be as harmonized as Elves, and then leave freely… but nobody has that! I mean ok, I can see how he overestimates what the Incarnates have and talks himself into envy, but this feels somewhat stupid and counterproductive even for him. (Ofc if we were to assume that Men originally had both, it does become easier to understand… But then also we're getting near the "aren't Elves kinda nerfed?" landmine, which gives me some trouble in general)

OK, now let's talk about the out-of-musicness. I think Melkor assumes that he's got this too, I think? "It came to Melkor's mind to add themes of his own invention" or whatever the wording is. And tbh all the Ainur have the quality of "having existed before the Music", so… OK, I can see how he maaybe would be envious of the Men being able to ignore the Music after it was sung, and maybe he is (subconciously, I think) aware that he can't do so. And this fits well with the story of children of Húrin, which is basically "Melkor proving to Húrin that Men are bound by doom too". So… it's not like the Men have a lot of this ability, it seems. In general it does not feel like a wholly satysfying explanation.

Still, why is he envious of the Elves too? Because Féanor made will make the Silmarills? This sounds like a stupid reason even for Melkor.

And don't tell me about the Second Music, because then we're back to the category of "Melkor is an Ainu, he has that innately". Well, had until he got himself kicked out from the orchestra, but this happenned a lot later.

Unless it's the "I was here first and I'm better, so why do they get to have the cool stuff too?!?" which I feel is a slightly different vibe of envy (is this even proper envy or just jealousy?) than what Tolkien was going for. (But the "why new baby so loved?" syndrom about Manwë and then about incarnates makes Melkor even more similar to Feanor, which I like).

Like… there is the vibe in the Silm that Men-and-Elves are getting sooo muuuch and so of course Melkor is jealous… but when I unpack it, what are they getting exactly that he did not? Professor?

Oh, and also in BoLT Ainulindale: "the giving of that gift of freedom [to Men] was their [the Valar, in modern terms: the Ainur] envy and amazement" — what. The other Valar were envious of it too? Which ones? Names, please. (Makar I suppose but tbh he's to dumb to appreciate it)

Seriously, sir, what.

It almost starts feeling like "the Men are more real and the fairies and spirits get envious of that"

[centrally-unplanned]

Serious question: How much do you think exowombs would actually improve fertility rates? I think they would help at the margins, but I suspect that disinclination to carry (more) children to term only makes up a moderate portion of the decline in fertility and all the other factors driving that change would continue unabated.

This depends on what you mean, right? The "conservative" assumption is you invent exowomb technology and it is just IVF+, a new way for individual parents to have families (but not too conservative, in real life people would have moral issues around the tech, we are gonna ignore those here). I think this would make a more than marginal difference! It has some very direct benefits; people absolutely do not have kids because of issues like:

Unwillingness to take the full time off work because it impacts careers

Health risks for pregnancy, particularly later in life

Actual infertility issues, again particularly as one ages

"Going through it again" once you have had 1-2 kids

That exowomb tech directly addresses. Some of these are huge parts of the fertility decline! I would bet fully safe/mature exowomb technology boosting the median "ready to have kids" family unit by half a kid, and it could be more.

There are deeper issues around this, for example. So I have done direct conversations with "adult, stable & childless" people, and something I hear a ton are statements like "the medical risk to me is too high", despite ofc pregnancy being the safest it has ever been. That doesn't mean that is wrong! Just that pregnancy isn't getting safer - people's risk profiles have just changed. Other statements include things like "pregnancy literally sounds like body torture, it would alienate me from my physical sense of self" (some hip amoung you might say body dysphoria). Conceptions of self-identity have changed, people value stability and self-image more, and tbh anxiety levels are higher so we are less risk-happy. These deeper culture shifts *could* also be addressed by exowomb tech; though it is far more vague how that would all play out.

And ofc surrogacy is currently a thing! Lots of people currently pay for exowombs - it is just very expensive ($100k+) and very "invasive". When costs go down, demand goes up, simple as right? And even in the most basic case, lots of single men want kids and don't have a partner.

Now there are many things that aren't addressed by exowomb tech - the high-demand parenting styles of modernity, rising minimum *expectations* around the cost of raising a kid, focuses on careers, etc. You won't get people back to wanting 10 children family. So the shift could be notable, but it won't be huge.

With the *conservative* assumptions we just gave. So let's loosen those - most people don't want 10 kids. But some people do! That is just quite hard to do right now, most women don't wanna do that and most men can't afford a harem of mother-wives or 18 surrogates. But with radically lower costs those barriers vanish. I think you would get a far larger "tail" of fertility - you would be surprised how many people would have the dream of that kind of family if it was on the table for them.

And then institutions enter the picture - organizations promoting families, or the state actively pursuing it. Which to be clear is already happening - fertility decline is real and a serious problem, states are getting very interested in reversing it. Once you open the door to "state orphanages hitting TFR targets" than any discussion of "margins" is asinine. Your fertility is what you will it.

Which might sound dsytopian! And it could be - my stance tends to be living is good and orphans that are well provided for are actually perfectly happy (turns out parents aren't that necessary!). But I admit to the other side of the case here - my point is that you aren't going to have a choice. I am betting the answer without such tech isn't going to be pretty

[specialagentartemis]

Feel like dropping the rant about how "pre-written records = prehistory" is not a good way of conceptualizing history? It's not my area at all so I'm fascinated.

Hah absolutely

It’s a mix of semantics, and word connotations, and the way history gets presented, and tbh legacies of racism.

So. Part of it comes from the distinctions between the academic field and practice of history, and the academic field and practice of archaeology. The practice of history means analyzing the past through written texts and records; the practice of archaeology means analyzing the past through the material remains left behind. This is fine. It refers to the way you approach information about the past and what tools and theories you use to do so. I have no problem with this part!

Of course, it starts to get more complicated when you also have classicists (who study ancient Greek and Roman history primarily through texts but also incorporate some aspects of archaeology) and Assyriologists (ditto but for Mesopotamia), which have their roots in old-school European practices of formal education. There’s also historical archaeology, which is primarily archaeology but incorporates written records of the time and place for a fuller picture, or uses archaeology to complicate or fill gaps in the records. Historical archaeology is a practice that can be applied to any place and time with historical records, but primarily it refers to archaeology of the Americas post-European colonialism.

These refer to the ways we study the past. Where I start to disagree is when these terms get applied to the past itself.

Historians study history through written texts, so there is often a delineation where history = the presence of written texts, and prehistory = before that. And I have problems with that delineation of time.

For one thing, the connotations of the terms. History, in common use, is important, it’s everything that built the world we live in and led to where we are now. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. While prehistory conjures images of dinosaurs, or cavemen. It implies that the things that happened in it aren’t as important as the things that happened once history proper started. It also feels very, very old—it feels weird to call, say, the Inca empire prehistoric, when the Inca Empire is younger than Oxford University and the first Inca emperor was crowned in Peru after the Norman Invasion of England in 1066��something nobody calls prehistoric.

Because that brings up a more objective issue with splitting time into “history” and “prehistory”: writing was invented at different times in different places, and used to different extents. Writing was first invented in Mesopotamia in the Early Bronze Age, about 5,000 years ago. It was probably independently invented in Egypt shortly afterward, and was independently invented in China 3400 years ago, and in Central America about 2500 years ago. Writing spread across Asia, India, North Africa, Europe, and Mexico/Guatemala; it was not used in North America, South America, southern Africa, Australia, most parts of Polynesia, Micronesia, Australia, or New Zealand at all until European contact. According to the written records definition, this means history starts in very different times in these different places. Not only does this unbalance what we think of as “history” a lot, it ends up discounting or minimizing these people’s own ways of reckoning history, making their history start when Europeans arrived.

This is an incredibly dismissive way to consider whole continents’ worth of people and cultures! It turns them into a “people without history,” and implies that whatever they were doing before Europeans (or Chinese, Indians, or North Africans depending on the region, but mostly Europeans) doesn’t really matter to what happened since. If anything happened at all in that “time before history”; a common perspective of both early colonists and modern pop-history in places like the American West or Australia is that the people there have been living the exact same way for thousands of years, unchanging since the Stone Age. Only upon contact with Europeans did anything change and “history” start. This is hugely dismissive of these people’s autonomy and their past. (You’ll notice it’s a lot of people who suffer from racism who are denied the title of “history”!) It’s also just not true.

I’m an archaeologist who studies the US Southwest/Mexican Northwest region; I focus on Arizona and New Mexico in the 1000s–1400s AD. And one of the things that opened my mind so much in studying the US southwest was just how much things changed from decade to decade and century to century in the past, the same way they did anywhere else in history at this time. There was no written history in this part of the world, but what we do have is very precise tree-ring dates. Using tree rings, we can date when this or that building was built down to the precise year. And because it’s a desert, things preserve well for a long time, so we have lots of ancient tree-ring dates. Because of this, we can see how art styles, architectural styles, settlement patterns, family organization, farming practices, religion, politics, and cultural interactions changed over the past four thousand years. And we can see that they did change, and sometimes they changed slowly and sometimes they changed rapidly. People did things. They had new ideas, they formed new political organizations and adopted new religions, they came together and broke apart, they developed new art styles and new technologies, elite lineages controlled the social order until their power fractured, people moved into new places and adapted their old practices to what they found there, or developed new ones… and because of tree-rings and desert preservation, archaeologists can see it in ways we can’t in cooler and wetter environments. This is history. This is people doing things, shaping the physical and social landscape for the centuries that followed.

And of course, Pueblo and Diné and Apache and O’odham people of the Southwest have their own oral histories that overlap with these archaeological studies. This is true in many, many places that did not traditionally use writing. They can’t be discounted just because they weren’t written down.

So to me, history = writing and prehistory = before writing is a false dichotomy that’s unhelpful at best and racist at worst. To me, history starts when people become socially organized enough that they care about what happened before, what happened where, and why it’s important, and what it means. Every culture has history, whether they wrote it down or not. Studying it may not always be suited to the skillset of historians, but that doesn’t mean it’s not history.