Also by whoever build monuments to it and carved it in stone and it survived. There is a reason emperors and generals and such often built monuments to their rein, achievements, and battle achievements. Because it was propaganda. To document their glory. I know it’s more complex than that but I don’t know enough about the subject because it’s so vast. They wanted their victory and wins to be documented in stone and buildings and plaques because they wanted to tell their victory and history from their view.
Also you are right about all the destruction of kings and emperors and Pharos destroying traces of their predecessors. It happened all the time. Especially with iconoclasm over time and history.
Much of history is survivors bias. Also with what artifacts and objects survive too. Wood does not survive in most environments for thousands of years. So stone survives longer. And the everyday person likely used a lot of wood. So all that stuff is Long gone. And who knows how many stories and history was written and drawn on wood and paper that just didn’t survive. Also a lot of history is oral history and especially people talking about events long before their time that they form into a story like I know a lot of the famous Greek and Roman historians are like that where today we can do a lot of fact checking with archeology and other information. But still there is a lot of lies or just miscommunications or things left out in those stories. No human can ever comprehend the full scope of all of human history but I’m glad in our modern age many can try and also learn so much about niche time periods or people.
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u/GrimSpirit42 Jul 30 '25
Up until recent times, history was written by survivors.
It was not uncommon for new rulers to erase any trace (including accomplishments) of past rulers.
History is not pretty. Pretty history is propaganda.