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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I decided these advanced notions were probably too heady for the simple folk at Medium.com. And for me as well.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I figured everything needed lightening up by this stage of proceedings.
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Who’s Your Daddy? December 4, 2024
The quest for a noble lineage.
I spent two years learning Latin as a pimply youth and the only things that arrested my attention was (1) the Romans had a special word for assaulting females as in ‘we shall have overcome the Sabine women’ and (2) a picture of Aeneas dallying with Queen Dido in my Latin textbook.
The Romans had a problem when it came to explaining who the hell they were. It didn’t pay to admit you were the local oiks who embarked on imperial expansion by descending on neighbouring towns, rounding up all women of marriageable age and forcing them to go live at your gaff. You had to be foreign heroes (who later descended on etc etc).
But which foreign heroes? The Greeks and the Carthaginians were local rivals, so it couldn’t be either of them. Egyptians were too weird, Persians too far away. They were Trojans.
It all fitted. After the Wooden Horse had put paid to their city, the Trojans took to their boats and one of them, skippered by Aeneas, the lesser-known Trojan hero, reached Carthage where he dallied with Queen Dido, before leaving her in the lurch. “I’ve got to found Rome, darling, but I’ll be back in a jiffy. Promise.”
It’s one thing Queen Dido believing it, it’s another thing modern historians believing it. Carthaginians are Phoenicians by another name, Phoenicians are Philistines by another name and Philistines are big in the Bible. Smiting all sorts. (They’re called Palestinians now, so no change there.)
Since the founders of modern history were brought up on (a) the Bible and (b) the Classics, this put Carthage well before 1000 BC. Good, that’s got that sorted. What do you mean, ‘evidence’? Oh all right, if you insist.
| In North Africa, both Lixus and Utica [Carthaginian cities] were supposedly founded before 1100 BC. However, at each site the earliest finds come from 700 BC |
More research is needed. Or perhaps less...
| While it used to be feasible to believe that pre-1000 BC remains would eventually appear, this becomes increasingly less likely with each new excavation |
Archaeologists are pastmasters when it comes to turning lack of evidence into evidence. They even have a phrase for it: ‘The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’. [Tell that to the CSI franchise.] In this case the absence of evidence is actually evidence that the Carthaginians were sea traders
| Since they were not towns but ports of call, it is logical that nothing should remain on the site and hence nothing of archaeological interest is to be found. The kind of trade the Phoenicians engaged in did not call for permanent structures but perhaps merely a few tents at the various ports they called at to trade with the local population. |
Bedouins of the sea. It’s a beguiling image. But it didn’t cut the requisite mustard. People have a nasty habit of asking for something. Anything. And since that several hundred-year gap didn't exist, it had to be filled with... theorising
William Albright, Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem (last heard of messing around with the ‘Solomonic building tradition’, you might recall) explained how it could be done. There was plenty of post-700 bits and bobs so why not re-date it all to… er… post-1000.
| We must, of course, assume that this ware was brought to North Africa not later than the late tenth or the early ninth century BC, and that it continued to be manufactured until the eighth century, sometime after it had disappeared in Phoenicia. Such phenomena are exceedingly common. |
Students of academese should note that superb ‘of course’ when proposing a potty theory (no pun intended). And if any doubts remain, rounding the whole thing off with an assurance that ‘such phenomena are exceedingly common’. Without giving any examples. (Mainly because there aren’t any.)
The Italians are just across the water from Carthage so they weren’t taking their cues from superannuated transplanted Americans. Sabatino Moscati jettisoned ‘of course’ and put in a ‘quite naturally’
| A few generations would quite naturally have elapsed between the disembarkation of the first settlers and the production of works of art destined to survive for centuries |
If I know anything about the children of immigrants, Sabatino, it takes about one generation before they’re all social workers and abstract sculptors. But haven’t you forgotten it was not works of art that was missing, it was everything that was missing? There was absolutely no archaeology for several hundred years even though officially there were thousands of Carthaginians beavering away leaving archaeology by the wheelbarrow load.
Although the elegant way Signor Moscati has described several hundred years as ‘a few generations’ indicates his own choice of profession was a shrewd one, it is only fair to leave the last word to Mohammed Fantar, a Tunisian archaeologist and hence, one might say, a real Carthaginian
| Carthage has never been subjected to systematic, detailed and exhaustive excavations … the earliest signs of occupation of a given terrain are often hard to identify. Light constructions, perishable materials, the early and hesitant occupation of an area by people homesick for their native land, the destruction and reutilization of dismantled structures — these are all factors of development which tend to cover up the first signs of settlement |
We have nothing to teach Tunisian archaeologists.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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That subtitle, added as an afterthought at the time, is more important in retrospective. We are brought up to believe the hinge happened in the Middle East. Misdirection or what?
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Italy, the land that time forgot December 5, 2024
But also the hinge between BC and AD
The event that closes BC and ushers in AD, ostensibly the birth of Christ, takes place well away from Italy. So is Italy irrelevant to our chronological purpose of exposing the ancient Dark Age of 1200–600 BC as nothing more than an error of Egyptologists? Depends whether you are of a conspiratorial bent or not
* Italy (the Roman Empire) was in charge of all the places relevant to BC becoming AD
* Italy (the Roman Church) was in charge when the AD/BC system was being worked out by medieval monks
* Italy (the Italian Renaissance) was the epicentre when the historical sources for the actualité of ancient history were being… ahem… rediscovered.
Either way it is reasonably important to establish where Italy fits into history and more specifically where it fits in to the Great Six Hundred Year Gap where history does not fit. Being so far from ancient events, Italy came late to the BC history feast so it is down to the archaeologists to ensure that Italy at least fits in the way academics claim it ought to fit.
The founding father of Italian archaeology, Quintino Quagliati, came up with the nicely turned phrase ‘Sub-Apennine’ to characterise Italy immediately before history arrived in the guise of Mycenaean Greeks. As there is no Mycenaean history attesting to this, Mycenaean pots would have to do
| The Mycenaean pots are of LHIIIA, B and C styles, much of which (certainly the LHIIIA) predates the Sub-Apennine … so ought to have been found below it rather than above |
That’s not a good start. The Anglo-Americans, who were in charge of archaeology at the time (still are, to be honest), told them so in a patronising sort of way. Here are the ruling British authorities, John Coles and Anthony Harding:
| Of the find circumstances virtually nothing is known. The excavator, Q. Quagliati, made a valiant attempt, under rescue conditions … to elucidate the stratigraphical sequence, but his information is of the scantiest. |
Ross Holloway, Emeritus Professor at Brown University, preferred to damn the Brits not the Italians
| Quagliati’s team had for the most part been carrying out a perfectly normal excavation, indeed the resulting report was remarkably detailed with ample plans, sections and so forth. |
Sucks to you, Hollers, now you’ll have to explain how the pots got into the wrong level
| none of the large quantity of Mycenaean pottery recovered by the excavator was in its original position … it came from elsewhere on the site, becoming mixed into Stratum 1 by erosion, quarrying and modern building work |
I am not saying this because I am British but if old Quaggers had left this somewhat salient point out of his report, incompetence is the kindest charge that could be levelled at him. But we can leave Italy to the Anglo-Americans and move across to Sicily, where they recognise a Dark Age when they see it
| There is a daunting absence of material for the Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age (1250–650 BC) |
Daunted? Sicilians? Never. They don’t have any Apennines to be sub- of so they created some labels of their own
| It is, in theory, possible that the coast was abandoned in Pantalica North times, re-occupied in the Cassibile phase, abandoned again in the Pantalica South period, then finally resettled by the Greek colonists |
Par for the course when archaeologists are trying to explain nice ordinary strata made by nice ordinary human beings but dated by nice ordinary Egyptological chronology-makers.
Wasn't that other large Mediterranean island, Cyprus, always being abandoned and resettled? Wasn't the Cypriote coast always being abandoned and re-settled differentially from the interior? What a carry-on! What a double carry-on. We shall have to call in the WASPs after all.
Professor Holloway was quick to point out that, between Sicily and mainland Italy, were the Aeolian Islands where the ground between Mycenaean strata and the Greek settlers was undisturbed. That should clear the matter up.
| this and related discoveries illustrate, in a way rarely seen in archaeological contexts, the contemporary existence of two diverse groups |
You can say that again, Ross. Thirteenth-century people are rarely seen with seventh-century people in any context. The Brits swooped in and dished American, Sicilians and Italians with one fell swoop.
| The Ausonian I-II transition is set at c. 1230 BC by the finds of Mycenaean imports. This seems most unlikely, given the conventional end-date of Ausonian II around 850 BC, based on the association of Ausonian II type bronzes with Cassibile pottery in Sicily. Worse still, the new evidence from Sicily clearly indicates that the Cassibile period belongs to an even later date — the combination of these two connections (the Mycenaean and Sicilian) would give Ausonian II an impossibly long span of 500 years |
Of course they had also dished Archaeology, Ancient History and Classical Studies with one fell swoop but all’s fair in love, war and scholarship.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I have a weakness for using song lyrics that nobody else remembers. This is from a Harry Belafonte song.
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Oh islands in the sun, willed to me by my father’s hand
The archaeologists’ re-mix December 6, 2024
Mediterranean islands certainly seem to have a story to tell whether they are Cyprus and Sicily or the tiny Aeolians. They all bear the scars of a dislocated chronology and its concomitant, a Dark Age that is not quite a Blank Age.
We can wrap up our tour of the archaeo-historical cold spots with a couple more islands before we wrap up this entire series with a descent into the lair of the beast, Egypt. Which should wrap up ancient history and archaeology if there’s any justice in this world. [William Hill are offering 1,000,000–1 so get your money on early.]
The Royal Navy has always swanned around the Med so it is unsurprising to find Brits in charge. Our old friend John Evans took time off from heading up the Society of Antiquaries to pen the standard work on Maltese archaeology. He knew all about Dark Ages and knew not to call them Dark Ages if you could help it
| An equally deep recession seems to have taken place in Malta at this time … although Maltese pre-history can be tied to … 1400–1200 BC Mycenaean Greece, there are strikingly few remains until the 700 BC Carthaginian settlement |
‘Strikingly few remains’ is no barrier when it comes to creative labelling and Johnno came up with ‘the Borġ in-Nadur Culture’. Guess how long they lasted? Correct! From the day the Mycenaean Greeks left to the moment the Carthaginians arrived
| It would seem to have survived, if we take literally the evidence of the material … at Mtarfa, until the beginning of the Carthaginian period. The total span of the culture would therefore be a period of some six hundred years or more |
Taking evidence literally? What will those archaeologists think up next. The British milords were asked to work their magic in Sardinia where puzzled locals had found model boats in excavated tombs that could be dated to anywhere between the thirteenth and the eight century BC.
‘That can’t be right, can it?’ asked the locals anxiously.
‘Yes, it can,’ said a crack team sent in by the British Museum. ‘They were probably collected over a two-hundred-year time span.’
‘Come off it, Signori Inglesi, that doesn’t cover the five hundred year gap, does it? And anyway, who collects things for two hundred years?’
‘The British Museum.’
‘Harrumph. We’re going to ask the French for a second opinion.’
‘The artefacts were Etrurian, had been preserved as heirlooms, then buried,’ said Michel Gras, Director of the Ecole Française in Rome.
‘Well, British Museum, what do you think of them apples?’
‘Gras’s heirloom model is a desperate measure, as its author properly recognises, but one that is rendered inevitable. What do you think, Francesca?’
Francesca Ridgway, the Etruscan specialist at London’s Institute of Classical Studies said, ‘Gras has shown convincingly how the 700–500 BC contexts for some of the model boats in tombs must be regarded as heirlooms because the production of these bronzes cannot have gone on too long. But I’ll check with the old man.’
‘Craftsmen from Cyprus settled in Sardinia in 1150–950 BC,’ said David Ridgway, ‘and continued to make bronzes in the Cypriot tradition. Though they seem to have been remarkably inactive for the first two or three centuries.’
‘I suppose it would be too much to ask for a period of inactivity from the academics,’ said Mick Harper.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Our quest finally comes to an end. Nearly. Getting there.
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We arrive at the bastion of evil December 7, 2024
The cradle of wicked chronology, the place where history was fatally suborned. Nubia.
You may know it as Sudan but anciently it was what the territory south of the first cataract of the Nile was called. In the news at the moment but not much regarded by the ancients, being little more than a sub-region of Egypt.
| Apart from that one time when Egypt became a sub-region of Nubia. |
The official history of Nubia is straightforward, if punctuated:
* From time immemorial until 1050 BC Nubia was a dependency of Egypt
* In 1050 BC something dramatic happened
* The Egyptian ruling elite up-sticked and retreated northwards to Egypt
* The Nubians departed bag-and-baggage southwards
* In 750 BC the Nubians re-occupied their old stamping grounds
* They invaded Egypt, conquered Egypt and ruled Egypt as what Egyptologists call the 25th Dynasty.
| What was behind this extraordinary reversal of fortune when zeros became pharaohs? |
We can look to no less an authority than UNESCO for the answer because they have been overseeing massive rescue digs necessary when Nile dams threatened to flood Nubian archaeological sites. UNESCO’s William Adams was one of the overseers
| In the eleventh century Nubia vanished entirely from history. Its erstwhile Egyptian conquerors had returned to their native soil, and the indigenous population had retreated somewhere into the wilderness of Upper Nubia, whence they were to emerge with a vengeance three centuries later. |
Adams’ account is in the finest traditions of UNESCO. A colonised people escape their oppressors by seeking out their ancient abodes, then march back to defeat their former colonial masters. UNESCO does however draw the line at becoming, in turn, their colonial oppressors.
| “Memo to staff archaeologists: expressions such as ‘vengeance’ are deprecated in official reports.” |
Even so, UNESCO will have to clarify one or two points before commending the model to persecuted peoples around the world:
* Why did the Egyptians pack their bags and go home?
* Why did the newly liberated Nubians head for the hills?
* Why didn’t the Egyptians take advantage of this vacuum on their doorstep for three hundred years?
* Why did it take the Nubians three hundred years to reoccupy the vacuum on their doorstep?
The eyes of the world are on you, UNESCO.
| They proposed that an extended dry period, causing low floods of the Nile, resulted in a diminishing agricultural production and an eventual exodus of the population; the Egyptian settlers and administrators, Egyptianized Nubians, local princes and some of their retainers north to Egypt, and the rest of the indigenous population south to hither Nubia |
That would do it all right, no question. Unless you were an applied epistemologist, then you might have some questions. Let us listen in
Applied Epistemologist: Do you in fact have any evidence the Nile underwent a drought at this time?
UNESCO: No, nor would we expect to. We do not have the kind of resources to find out. We are simply putting forward a hypothesis that best fits the known facts.
Applied Epistemologist: I appreciate that. As you know, the Nile is historically perhaps the most studied major river in the world. Do you have any evidence it has suffered a three-hundred-year drought or indeed a prolonged drought of any kind at any time in its history?
UNESCO: No, but again it is not something we have ever been called upon to study.
Applied Epistemologist: I entirely understand. Do you know of any major river anywhere in the world at any time that has suffered a prolonged drought and then returned to normal?
UNESCO: No, but again…
Applied Epistemologist: Quite. Are you aware of any geographical, geological, geomorphological or climatological theory that would lead to such an occurrence?
UNESCO: No, we are historians and archaeologists and wouldn’t know the answer to that in any case.
Applied Epistemologist: Absolutely. In the light of your answers would you care to amend your statement that this is a hypothesis that best fits the facts?
UNESCO: Look, we thank you for your interest but we are busy people with worldwide responsibilities and not a great many resources with which to meet them so if you don’t mind…
Applied Epistemologist: Of course. I’ll see myself out.
This is doing UNESCO a great disservice. They understand only too well the difficulties facing large organisations when relocating
| To dismantle a 500-year-old bureaucracy is no overnight matter: records of land tenure, endowments, taxation assessments, viceregal correspondence, orders and details of building works all have to be disposed of, or transferred elsewhere. Were the temples closed down? If so, what happened to their administrative records, furniture and fittings, libraries, and, most significant, cult images? |
Good questions all, but we must insist on a hypothesis of some sort to account for what happened. Notably, how were the Nubians, newly returned from the hills of Hither Nubia, able to conquer mighty Egypt? UNESCO has elected to pass the buck on this one
| The sudden expansion of Nubian power in 750 BC has baffled Nubian archaeologists |
I think they mean archaeologists excavating in Nubia, nothing is imputed against Sudanese scholarship. One has to be careful not to cause offence.
We are all, I think it fair to say, baffled. There is nothing for it but to resume our search for the real bastion of evil, the cradle of wicked chronology, the place where history was fatally suborned. Sorry about that.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We do get there. Though there might be a few more since.
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Boney Finds Dem Bones December 12, 2024
First Consul is First Egyptologist
If there is one piece of ancient real estate that has been studied until its pips squealed, it’s Egypt. It was already being pored over by all and sundry when Napoleon took an army of savants with him to Egypt in 1798. (Plus an army of soldiers but they came to a sticky end.)
This was closely followed by the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and Champollion's translations of the hieroglyphs. Hence there was what amounted to Egyptology before either history or archaeology were modern academic subjects. Academia is always top-down, possession is always nine-tenths of the law, so it was the Egyptologists who laid down the ground rules for modern history and archaeology.
So they’d better get it right.
One thing the Egyptologists offered was a chronology everyone could use. They had found a king-list prepared by a BC Greek called Manetho and from this they were able to date the reigns of all the Egyptian pharaohs from the first (Menes r 3407–3346 BC) to the last (Cleopatra r 51–31 BC).
That was far too useful for anyone to turn their nose up at. But in any case they couldn’t because academic rules forbid specialists in one discipline dissing specialists in another one.
It was Egyptian chronology or bust.
The Egyptologists, whisper it, thought it might be bust when it came to this Nubian business (https://medium.com/@mickxharper/we-arrive-at-the-bastion-of-evil-89be2260b2c0) so they said whatever it was, it wasn’t a Dark Age.
| Little else of architectural importance is known for a period of some three hundred and fifty years, until a new stimulus came from the south with the invasion of the Nubians. The copious sources of information which were available in the previous two dynasties vanish. Administrative papyri and ostraca prove practically non-existent. Votive statuary seem to disappear almost totally. |
If that isn’t a Dark Age, my name isn’t Napoleon Buonaparte.
Except Egypt is the one place that is not permitted dark ages. Who on this God’s earth is going to rely on somewhere with dark ages to provide a usable, continuous chronology? [Apart from us. Our BC/AD chronology was worked out by seventh century monks in the middle of our Dark Age. But that’s different, we know what we’re doing.]
Being forbidden dark ages, Egyptologists have dubbed their dark ages ‘Intermediate Periods’. This particular one being the Third Intermediate Period. Only pedants would point out this means Egyptian history consists entirely of intermediate periods:
Non-intermediate periods being intermediate to intermediate ones.
Fortunately, Egyptologists can work miracles with king-lists. Whenever there is an inconvenient gap in the records, they have a standard operating procedure:
* Come up with a date for Pharaoh A
* Call the inconvenient gap until the next pharaoh Intermediate Period I
* Obviously that means Pharaoh A’s dynasty has ended
* Therefore by definition him and his predecessors are the First Dynasty
* So, when Intermediate Period I is over
* Pharoah B will by definition inaugurate the Second Dynasty
* Repeat using Dynasties and Intermediate Periods until
* Cleopatra of the Thirty-Third Dynasty clasps an asp to her bosom.
Everything was going swimmingly, dynasties followed by intermediate periods followed by dynasties until the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, officially 1570–1069 BC, and collectively known as the New Kingdom was over, and the Third Intermediate Period, officially 1069–665 BC, could begin.
You might recognise those years.
S’right, it’s when the the Greeks, Trojans, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Cypriots, Spanish, Carthaginians and Italians were having their Dark Ages. It was all hands to the pump to save the Egyptians from the fate their chronology had inflicted on everyone else. The Third Intermediate Period is nothing like a Dark Age...
| Traditions in painted and other arts continued, the pottery from the end of the New Kingdom, 1070 BC, being indistinguishable from that of the Nubians, 665 BC |
See! They were producing pottery the whole time. Just a bit samey. What about fancy goods?
| A silver bowl from the tomb of King Psusennes I (1039–991 BC) continues a type from the Ramses pharaohs of around 1300 BC and is a source of inspiration for Phoenician bowls of 750 BC. |
Bit of an international trendsetter this Pharaoh Psusennes
| The jewellery belongs to a stylistic group regarded as the model for Syrian ivory-working in 750 BC … an alabaster vessel bearing the name of the wife of the Assyrian King Sennacherib (700 BC) is exactly similar to a jar stand from the tomb of Psusennes |
This is bizarre even by the louche standards of academics. Come on, lads, surely you can do better than this? No, says Morris Bierbrier, one of the guardians of Egyptian chronology, but we can do worse
| During the Third Intermediate Period, inscriptions would seem to disappear almost totally — a bizarre absence not encountered in other periods of Egyptian history. |
What, not even during the First and Second Intermediate Periods? Kenneth Kitchen, Emeritus Professor of Egyptology at Liverpool, ‘the very architect of Egyptian chronology’, sketched out an explanation of sorts
| There is confusion in its record of the other kings of this dynasty. Kitchen has supposed that six or seven entries were simply omitted from the list by a copyist. |
He supposes, does he? Well, tell the scouse git the whole of ancient history is based on Egyptian chronology and Egyptian chronology is based on their king lists, so if copyists were making wholesale mistakes in the king lists and he doesn’t know if they were or if they weren’t, and if they were he doesn’t know how many kings might have gone adrift, I’m going to recommend he stays just where he is, in Liverpool. That’ll learn him.
| The work of Kitchen and Bierbrier on genealogies has been immensely important and influential but has argued for lacunae in the records when these appear to conflict with the accepted chronology |
You mean when the accepted chronology conflicts with the accepted chronology?
Here endeth our excursion into the chronology of ancient history. If you’ve got any complaints take it up with a university near you. They’ve all got Ancient History departments. Very popular is ancient history, always on the telly. You won’t get past Reception when they ask ‘Purpose of visit?’ but it’ll make a nice day out for you.
— — — — — — —
[Anyone who wants to know how we got here can visit this page https://medium.com/@mickxharper/ancient-history-how-we-got-here-cfa3749dc2f2 where all the previous breathless episodes are layed out.]
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This was the first, and as it turned out the last, attempt to get a bit more flesh off the RevHist bones.
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Learn to spot a wrong ’un December 15, 2024
Announcing a new competition from the fecund pen of M Harper.
It is designed to hone your skills at spotting fake historical sources. This is surprisingly easy, but only if you are looking for them. Historians rely on historical sources for a living so have a tendency not to look very hard.
We’ll start with an easy one, lifted from the Wiki entry of a well-known eighteenth century figure (slightly modified to remove giveaways as to who it is). It was written by an academic specialist and has gone through all the usual Wiki hoops from other experts.
| As a child, X suffered nosebleeds, and his grandmother sought help from a witch: “We enter a hovel, where we find an old woman sitting on a pallet, with a black cat in her arms and five or six others around her.” [Quote taken from X’s autobiography.] Though the unguent applied was ineffective, X was fascinated by the incantation. Perhaps to remedy the nosebleeds (a physician blamed the density of the local air), X was sent, on his ninth birthday, to a boarding house in a different town. |
That seems quite straightforward — it would not be in Wiki if it wasn’t. Academics may be stupid but they’re not daft. So now we get to work. Or rather you get to work. There were half a dozen blatant clues in that passage that shows the whole thing is total bullshit from start to finish. I’ll give you a few moments to identify them…
If you are having any difficulty simply apply one of applied epistemology’s favourite maxims:
| ‘People in the past are remarkably like people in the present.’ |
As you are someone in the present, all you have to do is ask yourself, 'How much of this applies to me? Whatever does gets a provisional tick, whatever doesn't gets sent to my bullshit detector.' As I am myself someone in the present, this was my list:
1. Can I recall a childhood visit to a medical practitioner with this degree of compelling detail? X was writing some seventy years after the event. Blimey, I can only hope I’ve got such powers of recall when I’m writing my memoirs.
2. Did nosebleeds require consultations with medical practitioners during my childhood? Or is it the sort of thing someone might make up if they wanted to include a childhood meeting with ‘a witch’ to add a bit of colour to their autobiography?
3. Do I recall being sent to both an orthodox and an alternative practitioner about any of my childhood afflictions? I do so quite frequently as an adult, but as a child, never. Parents are far too sensible. Though I notice it is X’s grandmother, a.k.a. some dotty carer left in charge. Was my grandmother dotty?
4. Has any doctor, to my knowledge, claimed differential urban air density is medically significant? A mountain retreat possibly but that would be mentioned. I know in former times people blamed ‘the miasma’ for widespread medical disorders they did not understand. Plagues, for example. Malaria, things like that. But for nose bleeds? I could, I suppose, check whether ‘differential air pressure’ is a general eighteenth century medical explanation but I am fairly sure the person who wrote this Wiki piece hasn’t done so.
5. Were any medical remedies, in my childhood experience, applied on birthdays? Obviously not. But there must be some reason why this incidental detail has been included. What might happen when I turn nine? I’ll put that behind my ear for later.
6. How often did a health issue involve me being dispatched to another town and placed in the care of strangers? If I had, say, tuberculosis that could definitely happen, but not for a nosebleed.
Putting it all together I would guess X has been sent to boarding school, as middle class boys were wont to be in the eighteenth century, just as they are in the twenty-first century, but X wants to dress up a mundane event as something more dramatic for his life story.
Now you might think this highly pernickety and doesn’t add up to a hill of beans but there you would be wrong, according to the precepts of applied epistemology. The devil, as we all know, is in the detail. Consider:
* X believes we are going to take all this on trust.
* Academics researching X’s life have taken it all on trust.
* Five minutes amateur inspection shows it shouldn’t be taken on trust.
That is not to say it is untrue. All of the above might have happened in real life. That is not how applied epistemology works. We are never experts on that which we study, we are experts on how experts study that which they study.
Oh, how dull! Bean-counters counting other people’s beans. Maybe so. But, to cut a short story short, it didn’t take us very long to establish that X never existed at all. Totally made up even though he’s got an entire scholarly industry devoted to his life and times
| His autobiography is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century |
You invoke his name often enough and quite matter-of-factly. So we thought it worthwhile putting the record straight. There is quite a lot out there that needs putting straight. Things a whole lot more important than X. Or you for that matter.
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