Why did people not tend to keep records or consider future consequences until very recently?

score:50

Accepted answer

SHORT ANSWER

There is no easy, short answer here, but here are some key points:

  1. Even in ancient times, humans did keep extensive records in some regions/cultures; in fact, there is evidence to suggest that record keeping pre-dates the development of writing.
  2. The extent to which records have been kept has depended on a host of factors, among them the development of states, religion (which has both helped and hindered the keeping of records), literacy / education / knowledge / technology, political stability, economic prosperity, etc.
  3. As noted in other answers, many records have simply not survived, but this has not always been due to a lack of effort or perception that something should be preserved for posterity. We have lost many potentially invaluable records while some more 'mundane' ones have survived.
  4. Records have been lost for several reasons, among them: neglect (i.e. little or no effort to preserve), accident, collateral damage during invasions, deterioration of materials over time. J. Raven (ed), Lost Libraries, makes for sober reading.
  5. You mention "writing down how something was repaired". There were such texts but, mostly, such knowledge was passed on down from father/mother to son/daughter, from master to apprentice. We tend to create and preserve what we need before anything else, but some things simply weren't needed - the master was the record of 'how to do'.
  6. Identifying one particular time when there was a 'change in mindset' is, in practice, impossible. Records have been diligently compiled and preserved at many points in time in different regions of the world. The difference between modern times and pre-modern times is that record-keeping is now much more widespread, in large part because of the increased number of highly developed states (primarily for the reasons stated above and elaborated on below).

DETAILS

Record keeping is as old as or older than writing itself; the earliest evidence we have of writing suggests that it was used to keep records. Some ancient writers (e.g. Herodotus, Polybius, Xenophon, Sun Tzu) clearly intended to educate and instruct both their own and future generations, and the copying of their works through the ages shows that some people at least saw value in preserving them.

Also, where you have bureaucrats you have records, and bureaucrats have been around for a very long time (see, for example, China). Much of what they recorded was fairly mundane so our 'mania' for keeping detailed records is certainly nothing new, though many of these 'mundane' records have survived more by chance or accident than by design.

The keeping of records is very much tied up with the development of the state (and its accompanying bureaucracy), which in turn both necessitates and facilitates the keeping of records. The states of today generally have far greater resources and needs for keeping and maintaining records than they did a couple of centuries ago. This is one possible point which "inspired this change in mindset", but keep in mind that there have probably always been people who sought to preserve for future generations (if only through family inheritance at first), and there will always be people who see no value in preserving something (or who set out to purposefully destroy, e.g. the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan).

Although there is evidence of many 'mundane' records being stored, how long the creators intended them to be kept is hard to say. The most likely answer is 'for as long as they thought them useful'. Perceptions of usefulness, and thus the desire to record, catalog and preserve, can change very quickly. For example, as recently as the 1950s, many saw little point in preserving for future generations old films or TV shows; although they were sometimes stored, it was usually in a haphazard manner with little regard for preservation. Hence the destruction during WWI of most of the films of Georges Méliès (a collection which would now be priceless) and the loss of early BBC TV shows from the mid 1950s such as some of the classic Hanc**k's Half Hour - the tapes were simply wiped so they could used again. Thus, there are clear examples of both meticulous record-keeping and of non-preservation from both ancient and modern times.

A key depository of records is the archive, the existence and maintenance of which is greatly facilitated by the existence of a stable, prosperous state. Archives date back to early ancient history, and they existed in ancient Greece and Rome. However,

These archives were all destroyed during the Great Invasions of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries A.D...

Source: Michel Duchein, 'The History of European Archives and the Development of the Archival Profession in Europe'. In 'The American Archivist Vol. 55, No. 1' (1992)

Later, though,

European archives began to revive only in the eleventh and twelfth centuries when a new political and religious organization of the continent gradually emerged from the chaos....All the new monarchies (German, French, English, and later Spanish), the great feudal powers, the Church, and the towns organized their own records-keeping independently so that little by little local or national traditions and methods were created, giving birth in modern times to the various archival systems which now exist.

Source: Duchein

The above, of course, only applies to Europe; the extent of record keeping has varied greatly throughout history in different regions.

Knowledge and technology are also key factors. Knowledge may bring realisation of the importance of preserving something, while technology helps us to achieve the exploitation and preservation of a record.


Below are a few examples of record keeping or instruction materials for posterity from Europe and Asia for you to explore further:


Other sources:

J. Raven, 'Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity' (2004)

Recordkeeping and History

Rochelle Forrester, 'History of Writing and Record Keeping' (2016, revised 2019)

Upvote:0

I think you are mistaken in your assumption. The middle ages were notorious for their record keeping, and where those records have not been destroyed (most are), we can reconstruct minute details of both noble and peasant lives (what I mean by detail: Up to the size of the market stall they rented).

Likewise, ancient Egypt kept extensive trade records, and Arab traders around the year one thousand kept diaries of their travels, some of which are among the best sources of life in non-writing societies such as the Germanic tribes that we have.

The reason why we don't have many of these records is, simply put, that paper is flammable. We have a bias in judging the extent of available records. Spend a minute to think about how much of today's records will still exist in just two or three centuries. Anything stored on any magnetic storage device will be long gone. Many paper records will be destroyed. Modern SSD drives? No lifetime even worth mentioning on historic timescales. CDs, DVDs are measured in decades, not centuries.

Upvote:2

How about the management of the limited resources?

Today's 90+ percent literacy among Europe, North America, Asia and a lot of other places is something rather new (and good, and societies worked hard for it).

In the past, it was different.

The economy was product-oriented (read: food oriented) and weaker than today in general. It didn't had the power to employ many people to do services of any kind.

Literate people were scarse, expensive to employ and busy with tasks those in power considered important.

The writing itself was expensive in tools, consumables and time.

Storing the texts was a complex task by itself. Roof that doesn't leak? Maintained for a century or two? Fire safety for extended periods? Good luck with pre-1800 technology.

Upvote:3

While I would still prefer that this question were founded on stronger preliminary research, and I agree with many of the answers posted, I want to eat some crow and admit that the question persists in my mind. The question isn't perfect, but it is interesting, and more interesting the longer I contemplate it. So allow me to thank @gezakerecsenyi for an interesting question.

I have a hypothesis, based on Fukyama that there is a technology of human organization - sociological capital deepening. Until we have achieved a certain minimum level of social capital, it doesn't make sense to create and archive a large store of records. It would be kind of interesting to study the scope of records and circulation of records of each of the examples above and compare them to the kind of examples that OP suggests. That would require a great deal more rigor in defining the terms.

I also have a hypothesis (that I can't support) that premodern cultures viewed time rather differently than we do. If you view time as an eternal constant - the way Imperial China seems to - then you have a different motivation for keeping records than if you perceive time as leading to the end of times (as early Christian civilizations did). If you view the future as potentially better than today, that will lead to the collection and organization of records differently. Those are all high level abstractions for the sake of illustrations only - I'm not attempting to pretend that I can understand those cultures with a simple phrase.

Upvote:8

Others have rightly pointed out that the ancients did indeed keep records, but I’ll add another perspective as to why your perception may be that their record-keeping was less extensive than modern record-keeping.

The simple answer is that we currently live in an age of incredibly cheap record storage and intensive over-retention of records. Between surveillance states and the data economy, all incentives align to keeping records rather than discarding them. Nearly every financial transaction is recorded and audited with high fidelity. On some websites every click or even every mouse movement is logged and data-mined. Phone call metadata is stored by the government and nearly every citizen voluntarily shares photographs with the giant global never-delete storage system we call the internet.

Audit is a billion-dollar industry. The back catalog of arts and entertainment grows continuously in value. Archives and family history have never been more accessible and popular.

So I think your question could be rephrased not as why previous societies kept so few records, but as why ours keeps so many.

Upvote:10

Years ago I prepared a speech on backups and disaster recovery in IT. I started by pointing out that backups and disaster recovery are not new concepts, nor do they have anything to do with technology.

European monks spent much of their time producing off-site backups. For them this was a labourious process in which they would transcribe documents by hand which would then be sent to other monasteries. There the process would repeat. It is only through the work of countless scribes working by candlelight that so many ancient texts survive in the west. We owe them a debt of gratitude and we should also recognise that they understood concepts that many today consider to be entirely modern.

Those who don't read history are destined to misunderstand it.

Upvote:26

Your question assumes that there were no such records in ancient times. I can think of several examples:

  • Have you ever looked at the trial records of Cicero? Those were preserved because Cicero was considered a great orator, even in his time, but they include simple property cases.
  • The Egyptians recorded the deeds of their kings. Okay, that was somewhere between history and propaganda.
  • Plenty of clay tablets with inventories and contracts.

You are right that history as a scientific discipline has greatly improved over the ages, but that was not a single great jump.

Upvote:85

I feel like I need to point out why many mundane records will have been lost.

Imagine you're a scribe making copies of old documents. Which do you decide to copy? Harvest records from 50 years ago, or your religion's sacred text? An invoice from 10 years ago, or the biography of your king?

My point is that there is a selection bias going on here. The texts most likely to be copied and preserved are the exciting ones, not boring day-to-day documents. We still have some administrative documents just by sheer chance; a huge number were made so, even with low individual survival rates, some lucky examples have survived to today. But there was essentially no societal effort spent on ensuring that, whereas society went to great lengths to preserve the Bible for example.

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