与历史有关的几个理论(1/6)

Theories of History

Good morning, class.

Today's lecture is mainly concerned with some theories of history.

How much of man's history do we know?

We really know very little.

Written records exist for only a fraction

of what we suppose to have been man's time as a unique species.

Furthermore, the accuracy of these records is often suspected,

and the scope and selection of significant detail in them often needs improvement.

It is worse when we try to reconstruct man's history before the development of writing,

and this is unfortunate because the history of the greatest discoveries,

such as fire,

the wheel and the sail,

as well as the history of the early development of human society are lost to us.

The most that we can do is to use traces,

deduction, speculation and the knowledge

we have of the habits of those animals which have elementary social

order to help us make a partial reconstruction.

This is hardly a satisfactory substitute for precise information.

With our knowledge of human history,

which is only fragmentary at best,

it is therefore nearly impossible

to reconstruct the beginning and to deduce the end of the story of man.