Fragile History

Today, fragile history.  The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them. 

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     I’ve been reading Daniel Boorstin’s book on Hidden History.  And he levels an important criticism of history as it is – as it must be – practiced. He points out what should be pretty obvious – that we learn history only from what gets left behind. 

Documents of course.  But also artifacts ... like buildings – the Acropolis, the Pyramids, Chartres Cathedral, the ancient African masonry city of Great Dzhimbahwe.  We also trace the prehistory of metals from the mines and furnaces we discover.  Or learn about ancient diets and health from bones and bog men – from campfire relics and garbage pits.

One tower of Great Zimbabwe or Dzhimbahwe (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

But: Major pieces of the past also vanish into dust. Sure, a castle survives.  But where did the serfs live?  Writings of the wealthy got preserved.  But what about literate commoners?  And what about biodegradable tools and artifacts? Actions are forgotten if they haven’t been laundered into documents that do survive. 

Boorstin concludes with a remark that: “At his best [the historian] is not accumulating knowledge which becomes obsolete, but creating a work with a life of its own.”  That seems a somewhat convoluted way of telling us that historians are forced to tell only what story fits the surviving data. 

A few decades earlier, historian Lynn White had spoken to this problem in a more specific way.  He’d spoken out against the historians’ focus on words.  Words written in the warmth of wealthy homes, with no concern for that barnyard out back.  We read nothing of the mechanics of the world where everyday life was shaped. 

White argued specifically about the mechanics that led to a horse-mounted and horse-served world – that led from the dark ages to the high middle ages.  And he did so, by chasing down ignored artifacts: stirrups, bits, harnesses, and the like.

Of course today’s technology has equipped us with far better tools for unearthing the fragments of daily life.  Archeology and history are better wed today.  Paper still outweighs artifacts.  But we have, for example, learned to tease the mechanics of everyday life by reading carved graffiti and analyzing remnants of servants’ quarters.

One of my favorite discoveries is graffiti left behind on stones of the Pyramids.  It reveals something of the laborers that placed them – that they worked with pride and good humor.  They tell of drinking beer after their shift.  They call themselves “The vigorous gang” or “The Enduring Gang”. 

So we are learning to leave the castle and enter the barnyard where reality was shaped. Still Boorstin and White might also be soothsayers.  Because, as paper hands the baton to electronics, we might well wonder what the creatures of the year four thousand will know of us?  And how they will know it.

I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work. 

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Daniel J. Boorstin and Ruth F. Boorstin, Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past. Vintage Books, April 1989. 

Daniel J. Boorstin - Wikipedia

Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford University Press, 1962.

Casson, L. Ancient Egypt. New York: Time Incorporated, 1965.

About Pyramid graffiti see also, Cathedral and Pyramid | The Engines of Our Ingenuity

For more about Lynn White and utilizing the horse, see: Stirrups | The Engines of Our Ingenuity

This episode first aired on September 15, 2026.