Hiromi_X

We only have 400 years or so of Accepted Western Civilization's Idea of What Constitutes History.
And yet the Tlingits have oral tradition that tells of the coming of the moon...

And of course, those things do exist, though there's a continuing legacy of ignoring them, unless you live near the Anasazi ruins.

The pre-colonial history of the US has often been actively erased. However, ruins and archaeological evidence of the pre-colonial history are everywhere that natives were. The population wasn't so dense, and the method of recording history was primarily oral, so it might look like "less", but the history is certainly there.

There are still some ancient mounds in the Southeast, and Midwestern wooden long houses and Northwestern plank houses have been used for a long time; their permanence was impacted by weather and the colonial pressure, of course. The Northwest has both old and contemporary totem poles. The Southwest has many surviving pueblos.

It's also worth noting that most of the castles in Japan are reconstructions, and that many of the historically important buildings at temples and shrines were wood, and rebuilt when they deteriorated or burned. I don't think architecture is how Japanese measure their history. Yet surely nobody would argue that Japan doesn't have much history.

I think this idea that the area now known as the US has no history is as much a product of colonial thinking that minimized the significance of Native history as it is about the artifacts of history.

I have a strong interest in history, and find myself much more interested in European and Asian history than Native American and African history for those very reasons. I enjoy learning history through reading primary sources. It's not that Native American and African history don't have art and oral tradition to offer. I've actually looked into this, and found that most primary and secondary sources were either 1) not translated into a language that I'm fluent in or 2) were only accessible through college libraries and online scholarly journals--two sources that I can no longer access without great expense.

As for the US as a nation not having a history, I have to agree to an extent. We're such a young country that we only have slightly more than 200 years of history to study. That's miniscule compared to other countries and empires that have a millennia worth of primary sources and art to draw upon (Rome, China, Persia to name a few).

I think American culture is more complex and interesting than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. Identity and tradition are incredibly complex in the US. It's a good part of the reason why the idea that identity is worthy of study took hold in the US rather than Europe or Asia.

However, I often feel that Americans have only a shallow connection to "our" culture. There's flag-waving and if-you-don't-love-it-get-the-hell out, but a short memory of the iconoclasts that marked most of our historical turning points. Contemporary industrial cuisine like canned green bean casserole with canned cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onions has been assigned the strength of "tradition." I know I can find examples of similar shallowness outside of the US, but these aspects are such visible parts of our "culture" that they might look like all there is.

If there were only a "shallow" culture, though, the story of immigrants and in particular their second and third generation children would be far less complex, I would think. If we had so little culture, shouldn't adjustment to the American lifestyle have fewer instances of conflict? Instead, we see that our immigrant-dependent culture changes both the dominant culture as well as the immigrants.

Hmm,

Interesting comments here. I would tend to agree with Tirade in that many sources of Native American history aren't so accessible, and particularly if you are not from the US too. For many non-English speakers this is exacerbated as there would also be a paucity of texts that had been translated into other languages.

For Europeans and Asians who have their history all around them in the form of 'concrete' artifacts and buildings, then I guess the US (once off the East Coast) would seem to have no history.

As a New Zealander this seems even more obvious since we have only written history since 1840. But there has been a very definite change in historical outlook here since Maori history has become much more well-known and backed by pretty good oral histories and now the archaelogical record. Plus even in the 1970s before the "Maori renaissance", most school children were taught some of the Maori legends particular to their area, so the landscape did have its stories.

I will disgree with Tirade on one point though..the origins of the US began with the first settlement in 1615. So that is almost 400 years of history from that perspective. Not to mention the native American history of course.

One of the things that particularly got up my nose in China was the continual mentioning of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and history..(as opposed to the US's 200) and that this was understood to be longer and superior to that of the West, or Europe. That of course is bulls**t, cos 'Western' civilization goes back to Ancient Rome and Greece which funnily enough si also about 5,000 years :-).

So saying the US has no history, or only a short history is a complete fallacy. History is much more about people and cultures and ideas than about the buldings they left behind.

As a former professor of U.S. History I'm compelled to weigh in on this issue. Granted, we don't have the cathedrals, Roman ruins, or remains of Celtic hill forts dotting the landscape of England, for example. But to suggest this country doesn't have "history" is a bit short-sighted. Moreover, it suggests rather shallowly that history is about physical monuments and the passage of millenia. As we recall from Shelley's "Ozymandius," monuments can fall into decay, their creators forgotten. If one looks at Herodotus or Thucydides, however, history is also about events, actions, and the people who populate those events. The U.S. has plenty of noteworthy events AND actors on the historical stage. As for the charge that American culture is in some way "shallow" . . . I think "shallow" isn't the most descriptive term here. Call it "middlebrow," a term that naturally invites disdain but reflects the more fluid class structure of the country prior to the mid-20th century. Sure, it's easy to argue that American culture today reflects a "lowest common denominator" mentality - a charge with which I'm apt to agree after watching TV - but it ignores the complex contributions of our unique admixture of people, which is surely the stuff of history.

This is just what's near me in Ohio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_Mound

There is, of course, a wide range of artifacts and sites across the nation, ranging from the Pueblos (Puebloes?) of the Southwest to the remnants of Iroquois villages in the Northeast.

Just because we have no Versailles (or at least, major structures still standing, that is, thanks to Cortez and his contemporaries,) doesn't mean we have never had culture in this country comparable to the historical European monarchies.

So, I cannot help but ascribe a certain cultural myopia to thoughts like this.

I'd certainly include Judaic history in Western history, which goes back a bit further. And probably ancient Egypt, along with the Sumerians. That's about 5000 of recorded history, and maybe a bit longer if you include the fuzzier ancient parts. Greece is just the beginning of "classical" history, not Western history.

As for industrial food, I'm only using that to illustrate how young "traditional American food" appears to be, and that's deliberately ignoring the regional specialties that originated in the colonial periods. To an outsider not versed in the mysteries of Pennsylvania Dutch, Cajun, and Creole cuisine, the "simply seasonal" ideals of the West Coast, or the whims of Thomas Jefferson's kitchen, American cuisine looks pretty limited, and lacking in any grand historical tradition. (And even for a reasonably food-conscious person like myself, actual American eating habits can be frustratingly one-dimensional).

Of course, while I've emphasized the history that "doesn't count", it's not entirely unfair to see American history as short; after all, the dominant culture tends to have little patience for quaint cobblestone roads minimal love for the historical buildings we have in the face of progress. Also our relatively low-density lifestyles made it relatively unimportant to build lasting structures, and the pragmatic values of the dominant Protestant groups placed less value on lasting iconic church structures as the dogma and practice of their faith in that old "Manifest Destiny". We're good at erasing the remnants of our past.

I think the textual bias was built into the profession, at least after Leopold von Ranke there was a belief that civilizations without writing were effectively 'prehistorical'. I assume it's disappearing though because I've read a bunch of histories of non-written sources in the last few years. It's a fairly limiting idea.

I would agree that Americans shoulder some of the blame for this. I expected to see much more evidence of the Mohawk nation when I moved up here than I have. So far, all I've seen is a few roadside signs. To be honest, there aren't many places where the past is preserved to my satisfaction in America. And even with memorials, there's a difference between setting the past aside to be memorialized, and treating it as part of a living tradition. There's some reason to believe that American culture is purposefully ahistorical.

Conversely, the first time that I went to Europe, I thought- 'Holy Moses, I feel like I'm walking through a history book!'

It can't grow forever! It can't!

Heh, heh...wanna bet?