# What is the oldest history book? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 6, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914 "2004-10-06T20:14:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Scarf-Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Scarf-Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarf-Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/1 "2004-10-06T20:14:48Z")
Hi. Suppose I wanted to read ancient history, what would be the closest sources to use? ---
**Author:** ![Punoqllads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Punoqllads](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punoqllads)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/2 "2004-10-06T20:41:54Z")
The Peloponissian War by Thucydides is generally considered the first factualy-based historical document. At least, that’s what my Ancient History professer said. ---
**Author:** ![Scarf-Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Scarf-Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarf-Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/3 "2004-10-06T20:43:34Z")
Thanks. I suppose Herodotus came later then? ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/4 "2004-10-06T20:50:38Z")
> [@Scarf-Ace](#): > > what would be the closest sources to use? Well, a translation of [The History of Herodotus](http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html) is just a click away. How much closer do you need? 🙂 This [page](http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/herodotus/) claims to have over 200 links to resources about Herodotus, the so-called “Father of History” (or “Father of Lies”, depending on who you ask…). And in case you’re wondering, [The History of the Peloponnesian War](http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html) by Thucydides is credited as being written nine years after _The History_. ---
**Author:** ![Punoqllads](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d2c977/32.png) [@Punoqllads](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Punoqllads)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/5 "2004-10-06T20:57:12Z")
It would help if I spelled Peloponnesian correctly. You can get the text from Project Gutenberg [here](http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/7142). Herodotus came before Thucydides, but if my decade-old memories aren’t decieving me, he wrote things more from a storytelling perspective than a documentary perspective. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/6 "2004-10-06T20:58:45Z")
Well, a fair amount of the Old Testament and the Apocraphya (YDAMV) is fairly historically accurate. It’s biased towards Israel, of course, and a lot of it is theologically biased in one way or another (see 1 and 2 Chronicles, for example, as an example of the principle that Israel and Judah do well when they follow God’s law and are punished, generally by invasion, when they don’t.) The problem is knowing what correlates with what we know of history and what is universal/ancestral/history of the people myth. So maybe this isn’t a good place to start looking and you should stick with the Greeks. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/7 "2004-10-06T21:04:38Z")
> [@chukhung](#): > > And in case you’re wondering, [The History of the Peloponnesian War](http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html) by Thucydides is credited as being written nine years after _The History_. Forgive me for being dense but what is the antecedent to _The History_? Did you mean nine years after Herodotous’ history? ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2004, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/8 "2004-10-06T21:19:15Z")
> [@Padeye](#): > > Forgive me for being dense but what is the antecedent to _The History_? Did you mean nine years after Herodotous’ history? If you click on the two links, you’ll see that _The History of Herodotus_ is considered to have been written around 440 BCE and _The History of the Peloponnesian War_ was written 431 BCE. I’m still working on when the _Zuozhuan_ was written, but it seems like that’s a question scholars are still working on, if this [page](http://www.umass.edu/wsp/conferences/aas/2001/historiography/emmentaler.html) is anything to go by. It looks like it probably doesn’t predate _The History_. I’ll give the _Zuozhuan_ the nod as the oldest East Asian history, though. ---
**Author:** ![Scarf-Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Scarf-Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarf-Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/9 "2004-10-07T13:45:48Z")
Interesting… I’m surprised they haven’t managed to date the _Zuozhuan_ though. **chukhung** : I’m suprised to hear Herodotus called the father of lies, I think he is very clear when he is relating something he considers dubious. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/10 "2004-10-07T13:56:56Z")
Ancient kings in Mesopotamia and Egypt recorded their doings on upraised stobes, called _stelae_. They recorded successions of kings and lengths of reigns on these, too. Such “King Lists” are sometimes seen as the beginnings of history. So if you want to get the oldest real thing, look up translations of these stelae. But if you want connected narratives, read Herodotus and Thucydides. Modern scholars are dubious that the speeches they report are accurate, by the way. They’re certainly too specific and detailed to be credible, so they suspect the historians wrote what they _ought_ to have said. ---
**Author:** ![chukhung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e79b87/32.png) [@chukhung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chukhung)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/11 "2004-10-07T15:09:39Z")
> [@Scarf-Ace](#): > > **chukhung** : I’m suprised to hear Herodotus called the father of lies, I think he is very clear when he is relating something he considers dubious. From this [page](http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/CourseNotes/HdtNotes.html) > [@](#): > > Today Herodotus is referred to (somewhat inaccurately) as the Father of History; in antiquity, by contrast, he was often called the Father of Lies. This evaluation is based in part on Herodotus’ pro-Athenian biases (discussed below), but to a great degree it represents a reaction to the curious “tall tales” in which his work abounds: stories, e.g., of gold-digging ants the size of foxes; of races of people bald from birth or with the feet of goats or with only one eye; of bizarre sexual practices; of plants which, when thrown on a fire, emit a smoke that makes people drunk “just as wine does the Greeks” (surely a bizarre fiction of some sort!). This love of tall tales earned the censure, in particular, of Herodotus’ younger contemporary, the historian Thucydides, who regards them as a sign that Herodotus is more interested in entertaining his audience and winning applause than in presenting a serious historical analysis. And, indeed, this preference for Thucydides as the first “real” historian is illustrated in this very thread where **Punoqllads** charges Herodotus with writing “more from a storytelling perspective than a documentary perspective.” ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/12 "2004-10-07T16:56:48Z")
According to [the Straight Dope Staff Report](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible2.html), many of the historical books of the Old Testament were written around 600 B.C. As to whether they count as history books, it seems to me a good argument could be made either way. ---
**Author:** ![Scarf-Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Scarf-Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarf-Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2004, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-oldest-history-book/267914/13 "2004-10-07T18:18:26Z")
> [@chukhung](#): > > And, indeed, this preference for Thucydides as the first “real” historian is illustrated in this very thread where Punoqllads charges Herodotus with writing “more from a storytelling perspective than a documentary perspective.” Well presumably this is how the tradition was previously kept - by word of mouth. I’d imagine that the use of incredible stories served as a useful memory aid.