History's Reliability

What Paige says is mostly true-History is often written by the winners. However, this does not even come close to being enough reason to complete discredit the entire study of history. Almost every written work carries a bit of bias (or a lot of bias, depending on what you're reading). However, with that knowledge, we simply begin to look at things with a discerning eye. AS intelligent humans capable of thought and criticism, we are not expected to believe everything that we are told like a baby being spoonfed mashed peas. Instead, if something sounds fishy, we go research it. Look up comparing accounts from the time the histor was recorded. Research archaelogoical evidence for the occurence of events. Look to other sources for their textbook accounts of what went down way back when. But surely, Paige, you would have done all this already. So, if you are still at a loss for why we study history, hear me out. History includes as many downfalls as it does victories. Look at David, in the Bible, for example. A triumphant king, why would he not ask for the account of his affair with Bathsheba to be stricken from the records? Not all winners leave out everything that makes them look bad. If you look at the accounts of the Civil War, for example, there are many battles that the North lost but that are still recorded. If the NOrth wrote history with the sole intent of making themselves look good, why would they not leave these embarassing defeats out of the accounts? History is NOT pointless, furthermore, because human beings learn from their mistakes. If an error in judgment was made way back when, we can try to avoid similar errors today. In addition, even if major events may be fudged a little (the victors army was really 15,000 men, not 5,000), the general outline of the tale stays the same, as does the cultural information. We look at not only the big happpenings of the day, but how people lived and what society was like, and there are no "victors" to fudge the numbers there.