Historical Perspective

In the wake of a recent volume of historical essays entitled Deep History: the Architecture of Past and Present (University of California, 2011), Peter Wood reflects on a surprising trend in historical scholarship, as it relates to today’s history curriculum: the study of “deep history” is moving beyond the “five-minutes-ago history” of popular culture and political hot-button topics into a vast world of archaeological data and historical inferences.
However, Wood observes a distinct challenge with this renewed interest in ancient scholarship: such research of distant times leaves today’s undergraduates befuddled about the nature and significance of history in their own intellectual development. Citing studies from NAS (The Vanishing West, 1964-2010, 2011) and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Failing Our Students, Failing America, 2007), Wood worries that most undergraduates will leave higher education unfamiliar with “anything in the way of integrat[ed] historical knowledge over the wider arcs—human development, civilizations, or the American experiment.”

To study the ancient ruins of Crete can be a worthwhile exercise in developing the historical imagination, but one that makes all the more sense when a student realizes that Minoan ghosts haunt the ancient West like a specter of civilization before civilization. Without taking account of Homer, Ovid, and Pliny, the ruins of King Minos’s realm are little more than a darkened cryptogram. However, to the broadly educated person, deciphering such history promotes a more humane perspective, from which to compare each generation’s cultural innovations with the glory of Daedalus or the hubris of Icarus.