[p-e-w]

> our chronological description of past events, has always been constantly edited

No, it has been constantly retold. New people have written new histories. They haven't edited other people's histories while continuing to label those histories as the work of the original authors.

What's happening here isn't "our views are changing, so we are producing new material based on those changed views". They are altering existing works written by people who are long dead, without making it clear to the reader/viewer what has been changed.

[UncleMeat]

The archive absolutely changes. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

My wife is a historian. "Oh, those records were destroyed in 1920 when a new archivist took over and changed the recordkeeping methods" and "oh, the boxes with the stuff between years X and Y were destroyed by bombs in WW2" are common occurrences. Historians understand this and develop methods for dealing with this but we should also understand that the archive is never going to be immutable.

This is not to say that deliberately editing the archive is good, only that it is inevitable for reasons much more banal than what is described in TFA.

[bolanyo]

(posted this a couple of times and it doesn't seem to be visible. Reposting without a piece that might be causing me to be censored, lol.)

Anne Frank's diary was published in 1947. It is a historical document very important to the history of the 20th century, critically important if we consider documents accessible to high-school students and widely taught to them. The original version, and all subsequent versions until 1995 (when a reasonably complete version was first made available) as well as the vast majority of current editions, omit certain material.

This includes Anne discussing [the part I removed so as not to hit HN's word filter!]. It also includes material removed by the original editor, Otto Frank (Anne's father) where Anne is critical of her father and discusses her parents' marriage.

In fact, the 1995 edition didn't include all the missing material (some pages removed by Otto were not available, even to scholars. Nor did the 2001 edition which added the pages Otto removed. There was still some censorship of material. Only in 2018 (deep into the "woke era"!) was the full text of Anne's diaries published after 70 years of the diaries being renowned, widely discussed and taught, and quasi-universally regarded as historically important.

[bolanyo]

> They haven't edited other people's histories while continuing to label those histories as the work of the original authors.

You are extremely naive. This has happened lots and lots of times.

[p-e-w]

Please provide an example, preferably one where the editing was done on a scale comparable to the one happening currently.

[bolanyo]

One interesting example is Josephus. A Jewish-Roman historian, he provides almost the only roughly contemporary mention of Jesus outside of biblical ones (and biblical apocrypha). He simply describes the existence of a 'superstition' (non-officially accepted religion) around Jesus, that he was crucified, and that his followers still venerated him.

Sometime in the last 2000 years, probably the Early Middle Ages, Christian scholars doctored this passage to have Josephus suggest that Jesus was a god, or at least superhuman (even though Josephus was not a Christian believer).

Modern scholarship, including religious scholars, almost unanimously accept the passage as fake. But Christian proselytizers still use it very frequently as extra-biblical confirmation of the divinity of Christ.

[bolanyo]

Please provide an example of an culturally important large-scale work of history or literature, at least 1,000 years old, which hasn't been abridged, extracted, expurgated, euphemized, hidden, bowdlerized, etc.

[defrost]

Easy enough, Pilbarra and Kimberley rock art of the Gwion Gwion, Wandjina, and other traditions.

It's only recently that one of the traditional keepers passed [1]

[1] https://www.magabala.com/collections/david-mowaljarlai

Of course now that the colonisers have reached the lands the sites are under threat from gas plants and industrial development .. but several thousand years was a good run.

[bolanyo]

I don't think that is true. There is lots of rock art which either can't be shown to outsiders (or to members of certain genders or moieties), or can be shown, but the significance behind the art is not allowed to be explained to outsiders. Some rock art can be copied for wider consumption, but the copies have to leave out certain details.

[defrost]

> I don't think that is true.

You don't think what is true? It's true enough that D.M passed recently (well, recently in my timeline at least).

> There is lots of rock art which either can't be shown to outsiders

You should mention that to the Bradshaw Foundation that paid no heed and invited themsleves to view as much as they could find.

> but the significance behind the art is not allowed to be explained to outsiders.

Those of us that live there know many of the stories .. and not sharing that with outsiders doesn't negate the existence.

> Some rock art can be copied for wider consumption, but the copies have to leave out certain details.

Despite which many have copied and repurposed such art with details despite being asked not to .. eg [1]

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Wandjina-Resurrection_fi...

[p-e-w]

For most works 1000 years or older, we don't know the full textual provenance, so providing an example in either direction is essentially impossible. But if the phenomenon is as widespread as you claim, it should be easy to find much more recent examples.

[john_the_writer]

And every time, we should be mad. Or just embrace the firemen in 451.

[altacc]

In my comment I didn't actually refer to the editing of documents, it was more a meta comment on the definition of history.

> They are altering existing works written by people who are long dead, without making it clear to the reader/viewer what has been changed.

Have you heard of this thing called "the bible"? It's been regularly altered for almost 2000 years without making it clear to the reader/viewer how and why. Yes, that's a hyperbolic point but it's to show that editing of past works is not new. Writings, paintings, stories, etc... have long been edited and referred to as the original.

[p-e-w]

> It's been regularly altered for almost 2000 years without making it clear to the reader/viewer how and why.

... in an era where scientific rigor, proper editorial practices, literary science, and indeed the entire humanities in the modern sense didn't exist. That's a laughable comparison.

If anyone tried to publish an "edited" Bible like that today, they would get publicly crucified by scholars.