History? HISTORY? That's about the only subject where there is no such thing as personal experience- you've got nothing BUT documentary evidence. Or are they talking about having personally examined "primary documents"?

Not only does the person in question know what they're talking about, but they know it bacause they've "been there and done that", they're not just spouting off something they've heard or read or seen on T.V. (Gawd-awful annoying).

Troy

Just my 2 cents...

Flying barefoot is marginally better than ladies who fly with nylons & heels. But both, IMHO, are extremely bad ideas.

Call it old habit, but as a pilot I always dress to egress, even if I'm a passenger. I insist my wife also do the same.

In the event of a crash, wouldn't you want your feet protected from *very* sharp shards of metal, pools of corrosive liquids, and fire?

Let's try this picture thing again. Sorry about the confusion with "walk the walk, etc."

[img]http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/users/41675d16ze3c52a64/timthegunslinger/__sr_/b6b7.jpg?pfWfXaBBcilnugfL[/img]

It looks like it doesn't work if there is a line-feed between [image] and the start of the URL. Bug in the forum apparently.

Being a newbie, I've been intently reading Cody's book during the last few weeks. I am certainly struck by his appearance. The gear he recommends for a survival kit makes lots of sense, but I particularly interested in the mini survival kit knife package that the book describes and that he is shown wearing around his neck in a photo in the book.

Anyway, I came across this web site:

http://www.caliberdt.com/~bill/Cody2004/

It gives photos and descriptions of Bill Quall's experince taking a survival course from Cody. Sounds great.

Anyway, I was surprised to get to the middle of the pics and lo and behold, there is a pic of Cody wearing that mini-survival kit knife setup around his neck.

I'll have to admit, though the material in the book is solid and made lots of sense, I thought the pics were probably setup for the book, but seeing him wear that knife around his neck in Bill's pics really impressed me.

Cody must live one heck of a life.

Oh, I also found a web site that mentions a series of Discovery Channel videos about survival that Cody helped create. Has anyone seen these? Are they available for purchase anywhere?

so I guess for historians to walk the walk they must be what... ..dead?? <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

There's a group among what used to be called "living history" folks (reenactors and docents, mostly) who now advocate "experimental archeology" (I didn't make up the term, folks.. I think Ivor Noel Hume is responsible for this one).

The original idea is that if you do what they did then, with the tools and materials that they had then, you can learn things from the process that you cannot learn from the documentary evidence.

I'm NOT saying that the idea doesn't have merit- it does. But there are a great many ways for it to go astray, and one of the more obvious (one would think) is to ignore the documentary evidence that does exist because it seems to contradict personal experience gained in this way.

The problem is that "personal experience" of history can never be more than a very rough approximation- we cannot become historical people in historical settings, with different pasts, experiences and skills, and we cannot leave the 21st century people that we really are behind, with all of our prejudices, foreknowledge, and cultural biases. No matter how much we try to "recreate" past events, the past cannot be resurrected, and our efforts will always fall short.

The documentary evidence, on the other hand, is the real people of the past speaking directly to us FROM the past.

So... all of this would seem pretty obvious, but it's a free country, and there just had to be groups who reversed the priorities, who contend that when their "recreated" personal experience contradicts documentary evidence, that evidence is wrong.

There are indeed such groups, mostly small and largely ignored, but even a small group of verbal bullies and their sycophants can easily dominate an on-line forum.

That's what happened. These particular dear folks were fond of just stating what the "truth" of history was without any contributory evidence at all ("woodsmen would have all worn brown"), and when someone pointed out contradictory evidence from primary sources, that person was loudly criticized for daring to contradict those who "walked the walk", i.e. KNEW that woodsman wore brown, because THEY wore brown, and it worked for them. Post hoc ergo ante hoc.

Thanks, PL, that explains a lot. The problem with documentary evidence is that some things that "everybody knows" don't get written down, like how to light the gas lights without getting blown up, or the proper way to sharpen a quill pen. These experimental archeologists are trying to fill in those blanks. But you're quite right, it's still guesswork. Re-creational, as it were.

I agree entirely, it is a valuable tool for filling in the blanks, and I enjoyed the process (and the learning) immensely when I did that sort of thing (I could be persuaded to do it again, in fact).

There is an obvious problem, though, when it goes beyond "filling in the blanks" to "overwriting" other evidence.

And, I hate to say it, but there are other problems as well. Experimental archeology may, for instance, come up with one or two good ways to sharpen a quill pen (to use your example), but experimental archeology cannot ever demonstrate or prove that that's the way it WAS done.

It's entirely possible.. even likely.. that our ancestors knew some tricks, now lost to us, that took generations of THEIR ancestors to learn... and it's even remotely possible that a modern counterpart might stumble on to a different, or even better way to do something than was known at the time. There was probably nothing preventing colonials from making, say, fire pistons, other than the fact that nobody had thought of it.

But the bottom line is that the best possible result of experimental arecheology is to demonstrate how something could have been done, how we think it's likely it was done, but it can never have really conclusive results. Other forms of research can.