HISTORY Lecture 1 Dr Evgeny A Khvalkov HSE

HISTORY. Lecture 1. Dr Evgeny A. Khvalkov, HSE

What’s history?

Herodotus (ca. 484 BC — ca. 425 BCE)

Herodotus was first called the “father of history” by Marcus Tullius Cicero. Why Herodotus and not someone else? Qvintus: Intellego te, frater, alias in historia leges obseruandas putare, alias in poemate. Marcus: Quippe cum in illa ad ueritatem, Quinte, referantur, in hoc ad delectationem pleraque; quam et apud Herodotum patrem historiae et apud Theopompum sunt innumerabiles fabulae. M. Tulli Ciceronis De Legibus liber primus , V.

Herodotus first used the word “history” applying to the study of the past. Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε, ὡς μήτε τὰ γενόμενα ἐξ ἀνθρώπων τῷ χρόνῳ ἐξίτηλα γένηται, μήτε ἔργα μεγάλα τε καὶ θωμαστά, τὰ μὲν Ἕλλησι τὰ δὲ βαρβάροισι ἀποδεχθέντα, ἀκλεᾶ γένηται, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι.

1. What’s history? • History (ἱστορία) is the study of the human past. • It is therefore a sort of a search, research, or investigation. • The closest profession to the profession of an historian is the one of an investigator, interrogator, detective or criminalist. • History is the study; it is scholarly. A non-critical compilation, a mere story of the events in the past does not count as history. • History is neither collecting something already cognized, nor its systematization. Historical thought concentrates on something the we do not know so far, but attempt to cognize it.

2. What do we study in history? • History is a discipline studying the human past. • History is therefore humanistic in a sense that it focuses on the deeds of the humans and perceives the human being as the subject of history rather than its object.

3. How do we study history? • History is meant to be a critical interpretation of factual data. • A non-critical compilation is not history.

4. Why do we need history? • We need it for our self-cognition, i. e. to understand who we are. • This self-cognition exists on following three levels: • First, cognition of the human essence in general, • Second, cognition of the type of the human being within the mankind, to which you belong, • Third, cognition of who you are, you as a unique person dissimilar from anyone else.

What’s self-cognition? • Self-cognition is cognition of what you are able to do, and since no one can know this without doing something, the only way to answer the question “what a human being is able to do? ” is to study, how humans acted in the past. • This is the main value of history – we learn through it what the human beings did and, therefore, who they are.

Timeline of human evolution

Sahelanthropus tchadensis (7 – 12 mln)

Australopithecus afarensis (3. 9 – 2. 9 mln)

Homo habilis (2. 9 – 1. 5 mln)

Homo erectus (1. 8 mln)

…

Homo heidelbergensis (800 – 345 th. )

Homo neanderthalensis (300 – 40 th. )

Homo sapiens (160 th. – )

Pleistocene megafauna

Mammoths

Indo-Europeans: which groups does this family include?

… in Europe

Origins of the Indo-Europeans

Expansion of the Indo-Europeans

Timeline

Centum–satem isogloss

Centum–satem isogloss

Expansion of the Indo-Europeans

Yamna

Catacombs

Srubnaya and Andronovo