Hi Everyone,
In addition to some writings projects, I’ve been also taking time to read a fascinating book called The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century.
The introduction includes a very nice passage that I wanted to share with fellow historians:
But most of all, it needs to be said that the very best evidence for what it was like to be alive in the fourteenth century is an awareness of what it is like to be alive in any age, and that includes today. Our sole context for understanding all the historical data we might ever gather is our own life experience. We might eat differently, be taller, and live longer, and we might look at jousting as being unspeakably dangerous and not at all a sport, but we know what grief is and what love, fear, pain, ambition, enmity and hunger are. We should always remember that what we have in common with the past is just as important, real, and as essential to our lives as those things which make us different.
Page 4-5
This is true, not just across time, but also places too.
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 