The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about the past with repercussions as important for our understanding of time and history as the geological studies of the same period.
Interpretation
The study of ancient scripts reshaped European perceptions of human history.
Neil Macgregor emphasizes the profound impact that deciphering ancient scripts has on the European understanding of human history. This process not only challenged long-held beliefs and established authorities regarding the past but also had significant implications for how people perceive time and historical narratives, paralleling the transformative effects seen in geological studies of the same era.
In practice
In a history class discussing the impact of archaeology on our understanding of human civilization.
Google the name Prometheus, and see how often it has been given to innovations in many different fields, notably science, medicine and space exploration. The fire he stole can be seen, too, as the spark generating all artistic creativity.
In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing, the Cyrus cylinder.
There's the constant concern with what happens to you when you die. Every society thinks about that and makes things to deal with that.
The distinction between a gallery and a museum is enormous. The gallery is about looking at a thing of beauty; the purpose of the activity is an aesthetic response. The museum is actually about the object that lets you get into somebody else's life.
Glory to God in the highest, Ohio has saved the Nation.
Oftentimes, a history book in school will talk about the Underground Railroad as if it's one sentence. But thousands of people decided to run, and they single-handedly changed the trajectory of our nation. By running to the North, they put a face to slavery, which recruited a lot of abolitionists.
When I was a boy we didn't wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.
Hitler was no inexorable product of a German 'special path', no logical culmination of long-term trends in specifically German culture and ideology. Nor was he a mere 'accident' in the course of German history.
Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.