Advanced ancient societies could flourish while neglecting history entirely.
Evidence
Ancient India offers the example of an advanced, sophisticated society that did not think that history mattered, and took no trouble to record it. As serious Indian history-writing began with the coming of Islam, most of what we know about pre-Islamic India is either from fragmentary evidence or outside visitors, not from narrative historiography. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1805
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SEED: An article angle on how a civilization’s relationship to its own past shapes its intellectual life — and what we lose when historiography arrives late.
- ADDENDUM: Connects to “On Sacrifice” theme of what survives only through outsiders’ eyes and fragmentary record — pre-Islamic India known mainly through visitors parallels how we know pre-Islamic ritual practice.
Related
- Another advanced civilization could thrive while neglecting historical record-keeping (similarity 0.94)
- High culture can flourish without a historical orientation (similarity 0.82)