History

In words borrowed from Herodotus ( The Histories ) - 

"I here display my inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds may not be without their glory."

I recall from my own dim dark past an occasion when I came first in a History exam, but even though I scored more then twenty percent higher then my fellow class mates I still got abused by my teacher for not doing better. In those days and with that 'encouragement' I found history a chore; in fact I found all study fearful. It was not until my later, largely wasted, university days did I begin to awaken to an interest in the tales and achievements of those who came before. Not until then did I see that we are the result of the glories and also the shame of our past. Today I like to say our past because I see every people and land as contributing to the collective wisdom of the human race. I claim all races as my own. Never have we been totally isolated. The ancient Greeks travelled to Africa, Italians travelled to China, Chinese travelled to the Americas as possibly did the Aborigines of Australia. We have much in common. Just like the unresolved appearance of pyramids found in Africa, the Americas, Tibet and elsewhere, our interpretations of the heavens and of life appear to have emerged along strikingly similar lines. 

Out of Africa, we seem to have all emerged and the collective memory of man is a source of commonality that expresses itself in our similar goals, beliefs and attitudes, even if we fail to recognise this from time to time.

It has been suggested that a recent discovery in Spain is the oldest evidence of human creativity: a 350,000-year-old pink (an unusual colour) stone axe in what may be a burial site. The placement of this artefact with a body in a grave may represent the first funeral rite by human beings and indicate that man was capable of symbolic thought far earlier than previously assumed. The artefact comes from the species Homo Heidelbergensis, around 600,000-200,000 years ago. They are thought to have given rise to both the Neanderthals and to our species, Homo Sapiens. Caution still exists however as others suggest that the axe may have been deposited with the skeletons by either sludging or placed there by later inhabitants.

Whether or not 'Lucy' is our mother, the sky is certainly full of diamonds.

The skeleton of Lucy whose bones are shown left and image right (believed to be our oldest upright walking ancestor 3.2 million years ago -discovered in 1974) got her name from the Beatles song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' which was playing on the radio. - 1470 Man was around 1.8 million years old and the more recently unearthed Kenyanthropus dates at 3.5 Million years has arrived as possibly a more distant relative. None are yet us but the history of our emergence continues to be debated.

Did we have an Adam and Eve, and from where and when did they emerge? Genetic research of the 'Y' chromosome traces Adam to around 60,000 years ago in East Africa. Did civilisation spring forth from one place and did ideas stretch across the face of the earth from Africa, or as some like to think the lost continent of Mu or some yet undiscovered beginning or did much happen in a simply logical manner at various birthplaces. What we know today will no doubt be challenged tomorrow. Nothing is set in stone except unrelenting uncertainty. History, or what we think it to be today, is far from dead, but the most alive and changing guide to understanding ourselves.

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."  Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

When I struggled through History in my youth, I was taught biased, isolated and sterile facts of power and rulers. The trend now is for archaeologists to delve into the remains of the common man, and to unearth the lives of people who died in the belief that their privacy had followed them to the grave. Do we have a right to invade what was once secret? Should we dissect, exhibit, discuss or even contemplate that which was not given to us freely? By what right do we expose the sins or successes of our dead predecessors? Like a family secret suddenly revealed, it just is and judgement is not required.

"Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes." Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Often it is said that we study history to learn about the self, understand the present and prepare for the future. I wonder if it is ever possible to learn from what others have done. When I look at a situation in my own life, I find it hard if not impossible for any other existence to have the ability to understand the truth and depth of what I feel. This is a reciprocal experience, as in truth, I find it difficult to honestly empathise with the interests and events of people other then those of a parent or lover. It appears to require an intense relationship to create the spark which ignites true interest and understanding. I do not say that we do not try, but do we really achieve empathy or even care? What hope is there for a historian or novelist to get to the truth, if writing about one who is not only not an intimate, but is separated by years, if not centuries. Theories abound and change, for like so many events, historical analysis becomes subjective, distorted and more often self revealing of the author then is obviously the intention, or I would say, is generally understood and accepted. Fiction is perhaps closer to the truth of what it sets out to be; one person's imagination. Fiction creates its own reality and pretends to do nothing else. Just what is to be learned from history? Probably that we are an infinite number of minute variations on a theme, a complex and unpredictable assortment of individuals who share some thoughts but diverge on others. The only problem I can see is when one assumes to have the key to 'Truth'.

What is history? Art, music, literature, sculpture, architecture, stories, mountains, oceans, bones, thoughts, and the collective consciousness of human existence, and still it is recreated, modified and adapted over and over until we eventually lose track of what may have been the truth. We love to elaborate and embellish. A story can always be better and it is better if it fits our current views of the world and ourselves. Even our own life is being rewritten over the years. How many people do you know who hold to beliefs about you that you can claim as ill-informed? How many do you know who have different views on events from the past and the present. 

So what is history except a discussion that flows according to the whims of our ever changing mind. This said, there is no reason why we should abandon study. With all the distortion apparent, we still learn. Unlike obsessive fundamentalism, I believe the exact 'facts' of what went before are unimportant to a large extent. If we read much we are exposed to a range of observations that reflect the complexity of human understanding.  The narrow egotism of a little knowledge is not only dangerous, but stupid. Knowing a few 'facts', whether true or false, will not shape our personality or enable us to live life with any more fulfilment. However history is fun, it is a game, it is a discussion, it holds our interest. Who cares if it is true or not, for who knows what is true. If we look a lot we should gain a little. The telling of a story is not always an expression of  truth. Be careful, for what I write is not necessarily the truth. As I said, I try, but so must everyone and none of us should accept without reservation the dictates of anyone including our political or religious leaders. Conscience is a lone journey.  My memory is selective, subjective and prone to error, but I write from what I am, in the hope that I will understand more each day.  One should never leave school until you close your eyes for the last time.  

Coming up are some of the places and periods that fascinate me and things I have sought out. Some facts, some comments, some theories, some of my photos and some treasures from around my house.

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."
Haile Selassie

As I began revising this site some time ago, I happened to read the following in a book on The Egyptian Philosophers by Molefi Kete Asante.

Ptahhotep, who lived around 4400 years ago, passed on the wisdom of his experience and that of those who came before. For new and subsequent generations, age was his authority and he began with:-

'O king my lord, I am old, old age has finally arrived. I was first feeble, but now I am weak also. Like a child I sleep all day and when I wake, my eyes are dim and my ears deaf. My strength wanes with weariness, my tongue is silent, my memory is dead and arthritis wreaks havoc on my bones. Sweetness becomes bitterness, my taste is gone - surely old age affects everything. The sinuses are clogged and it is painful to stand or to sit.'

'May old age serve me as a staff, so that I may repeat the words of those who heard the words of the ancestors who listened to the gods. I want the same thing done for you, so that strife may disappear from among the people and the people of both banks of the river serve you! The majestic God said, therefore, - Instruct him in the words of the past, that he become a model for posterity. May he be obedient. May he be devoted to the one who speaks to him, because no one is born with wisdom.'     

I am far from that old and venerable; he claimed to be 110 years old, but  I have been around for a while and I have recorded the things I have observed from our past and from those who are wiser then I. You and I are the result of what has gone before and where we go will influence those who come later. Hopefully I may occasionally create some interest in our history.  

The Famous of History

This is an attempt to count the centuries and those artists and musicians who gave us the many treasures that enrich our lives. As pointers there are also writers, scientists and occasional people and events of influence. Perhaps they cross-fertilised and moulded the individual creativity, thoughts and attitudes of each other. Nothing is done in isolation and the attitudes, beliefs and theories of a time are often what manipulate our thoughts or alternately cause us to react against accepted trends. I have decided to stick to the previous thousand years ; Once again it is a subjective choice. All people mentioned were born in the century under which they are listed in the order of their birth.

Composers/Musicians     -    Writers/Poets     -    Artists    -    Rulers/Events/People of Influence     -    Scientists/Philosophers

Anno Domini or Year of the Common Era

1000

French poet and composer Pierre Abelard famous for his love for Heloise. Composer and playwright Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Romanesque revolution in art and monumental architecture, for the purpose of propaganda, Art and science flourished in China. The writings of Buddism were printed. Guido  of Arezzo invented four line musical notation and intervals.

1100

Saladin and Crusades, King Richard Coeur de Lion composed many plaintive melodies. Genghis Khan, Emperor Hui Zong artist and patron, A monk Nestor created the record of the foundations of the Russian Empire, European literary activity and Carmina Burana collection.  St Francis of Assisi,

1200

Magna Carta signed 1215, Nicola Pisano, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Philippe de Vitry's treatise 'Ars Nova' described music of the period.  Alighieri Dante,

1300

Francesco Landini blind musician and poet and achieved the highest quality of his time. Hubert and Jan van Eyck, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Robert Campin, Donatello, Fra Angelico,

1400

Johannes Gutenberg, Bellini Family, Thommaso Guidi (Masaccio), Filippo Lippi, Andrea Mantagna, Donato Bramante, Sandro Botticelli, Josquin des Prey  Leonardo da Vinci,   Albrecht Durer, Nicholas Copernicus, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Martin Luther precipitated the Reformation and was also a composer of Hymns. Santi Raphael, Titian, King Henry VIII probably incorrectly is credited with writing 'Greensleves', Antonio Allegri da Correggio, Hans Holbein,

1500

Benvenuto Cellini, Thomas Tallis, John Calvin, Tintoretto, Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni da Palestrina, Pieter Bruegel, Veronese, Elizabeth I, El Greco, William Byrd, Giulio Caccini, Jacopo Peri ( the first opera? 'Euridice'), Francis Bacon, John Bull, John Milton Senior composer fathered John Milton the poet. William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, Galileo Galilei, Claudio Monteverdi wrote the first true operas. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Gregorio Allegri wrote the famous Miserere which a hundred years later Mozart wrote from memory thus leaving it to the world. Nicolas Poussin, Rene Descartes. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Anthony van Dyck,  Diego Velazquez,

1600

Rembrandt van Rijn, Murillo,  Jean Baptiste Moliere, Robert Boyle, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jan Vermeer, Christopher Wren, Dietrich Buxtehude,  Sir Isaac Newton, Antonio Stradivari the violin-maker, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Alessandro Scarlatti,  Francois Couperin, , Giovanni Bononcini, Tommaso Albinoni, Antonio Vivaldi, George Philipp Telemann,, Jean Philippe Rameau,  Antoine Watteau, George Frederic Handel,, Johann Sebastian Bach,  John Gay, Giuseppe Tartini, Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) , Giovanni Tiepolo, Canaletto.

1700

Farinelli the male soprano,  Thomas Arne, Marquis, de Sade, Giovanni Paisello, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi,  CPE Bach, 4th Earl of Sandwich ( invented style of eating while playing cards),  Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs, Thomas Gainsborough, Niccolo Piccinni,  Captain James Cook, Josiah Wedgwood,  Joseph Haydn,  JC Bach, , Luigi Boccherini, Francisco de Goya, Domenico Cimarosa, Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe,  Antonio Salieri,, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,   William Blake, Luigi Cherubini,  Ludwig van Beethoven,   Gasparo Spontini, JMW Turner, John Constable, Daniel Auber,   Niccolo Paganini violinist and composer,  Henry Bishop,  Carl Maria von Weber, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Giacomo Meyerbeer,  Gioacchino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Franz Schubert, Auguste Comte, Eugene Delacroix,  Fromental Halevy.

1800

Vincenzo Bellini, Albert Lortzing, Hector Berlioz, Mikhail Glinka,  Michael William Balfe, Felix Mendelssohn, Charles Robert Darwin, Frederic Chopin, Otto Nicolai, Robert Schumann, Franz List, Ambroise Thomas, Frederich von Flotow, Henri Rousseau, Giuseppe Verdi,  David Livingstone, Richard Wagner,, Charles Gounod,  Jacques Offenbach,  Walt Whitman, Cesar Frank,  Edouard Lalo,  Bedrich Smetana, Anton Bruckner, Johanne Strauss, Anton Rubinstein,  Hans von Bulow, Carl Goldmark, Edouard Manet, Alexander Borodin, Johannes Brahms, James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas, Amilcare Ponchielli, ,Camille Saint-Saens, Leo Delibes, Georges Bizet, Paul Cezanne, Modest Mussorgsky, Auguste Rodin, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Monet,  Antonin Dvorak, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Arrigo Boito, Jules Massenet, Arthur Sullivan, Edvard Hagerup Grieg, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,  Henri Rousseau, Gabriel Faure, Paul Gauguin, Hubert Parry, CharlesVilliers Stanford, Vincent van Gogh, Engelbert Humperdinck, Oscar Wilde,  Leos Janacek, John Philip Sousa, Sigmund Freud, Edward Elgar, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Giacomo Puccini, Georges Seurat, Gustave Charpentier, Gustav Mahler, Ignacy Paderewski, Hugo Wolf, Nellie Melba, Claude Debussy, Gustav Klimt, Frederick Delius, Henry Ford, Constantine Cavafy, Edvard Munch, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec,  Pietro Mascagni, Richard Strauss, Jean Sebelius, Alexander Glazunov, Carl Nielsen, Kandinsky, Ferruccio Busoni, Francesco Cilea, Erik Satie, Enrique Granados, Arturo Toscanini, Scott Joplin, Henry Wood (the Proms), Henri Matisse, Franz Lehar, , Alexander Scriabin, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Enrico Caruso, Sergei Rachmaninov, Gustav Holst,  Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg,  Joseph Suk,  Thomas Mann, Maurice Ravel, Carl Jung,  Manuel de Falla, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari,   Albert Einstein, Ottorino Respighi, Bela Bartok, Pablo Picasso, Percy Grainger,  Zoltan Kodaly,  Igor Stravinsky, Amedeo Modigliani, Alban Berg, Jerome Kern, Heitor Villa-Lobos,  Marc Chagall,  Marcel Duchamp, Irving Berlin,   Man Ray, Arthur Bliss,  Serge Prokofiev,  Max Ernst, Cole Porter, , Ivor Novello, Paul Hindemith,  Carl Orff, Bessie Smith,, Erich Korngold, George Gershwin, Rene Magritte, Henry Moore, Duke Ellington, Francis Poulenc

1900

Louis Armstrong, Aaron Copland, Kurt Weill, Richard Rodgers, Joaquin Rodrigo, William Walton, Aram Khachaturian,  Salvador Dali, Count Basie, , Vladimir Horowitz,  Willem de Kooning, Michael Tippett, , Dmitri Shostakovich, Herbert von Karajan, Olivier Messiaen, Benny Goodman,  Francis Bacon, Jean Genet, Gian Carlo Menotti, John Cage,  Jackson Pollock, Woodoe Guthrie, Benjamin Britten, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Bernstein Ravi Shankar, Roy Lichtenstein,  Mikis Theodorakis,   Joan Sutherland,  Bill Haley, Andy Warhol,   Peter Schulthorpe, Jasper Johns, Malcolm Williamson,   Robert Moog (Synthesiser), David Hockney, John Lennon, Stephen William Hawking

 Updated January 02, 2007