Why is history important?

Question

besides "so we dont make the same mistakes"

Answer 1

Picture this. You come up with this wonderful invention and you think you're the first to ever think of it. You bring it to the public and everyone is telling you what a great invention it is, how it could change the world. Then one little old lady in her eighties says "Yep, it's already changed the world, my father's friend came up with it when I was eight and now his family is very rich."

Patents are given for new inventions or ideas, but they also depict a history of ideas, a history that those issuing the patents can turn to and thus deny if someone else has already taken out an identical patent and they or their family still has the patent as active. In other words, without anyone knowing the history of an invention someone might think they were the first to come up with it when it's exsisted for years.

Another reason to know history is to know how a place has developed over time. Lets take Paris for example. Nice big metropolitan city today, but that wasn't always the case. Around 52 BC Paris was a Celtic settlement that covered about a hundred acres on an island in the middle of the Seine. That year the Romans conqured the settlement and soon in began to spread out. By the late 1400s Paris had grown to cover an area of three square kilometers along both sides of the Seine with a population of about 150,000. In 1841 Paris had grown to around thirty square miles in area with 912,033 people in the city. And by 1983 the city proper covered an area of forty-one squre miles with a population of about 2,299,830 while the metropolitian area enlarged Paris to a hundred eighty-five square miles and 8,549,898 people. And this is just looking at Paris historical size and population development, nothing about it's cultaral development throughout it's history or how it's citizens lifestyles changed over time.

Answer 2

If you have a knowledge of the path society has traveled so far, you'll better understand the current world around you, which is what being a citizen is all about.  

Answer 3

If you've posted this question on Yahoo Answers, then you might be in trouble...

'Why is History important?' Is a ridiculously vague and ambigious question.

But I'll take a shot at answering it anyway. I don't want to alienate you by insulting you or your intelligence...I just want to try to make you understand.

History is who we are, and where we've come from. History isn't just some 'tool' that we can learn from. It's literally what makes us as a people. History is the past, as well as the present.

How can you not love history? History is enmeshed in our own culture. You wouldn't have Harry Potter without King Arthur and Merlin (who, in reality, were real men. Their stories may have been inflated by fancy and time, but that just proves that literature and fiction are entwined with history.)

You wouldn't have Barrak Obama or John McCain or any other great leaders without inspiration from John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill (without whom there would be no free world.), John and Bobby Kennedy.

Great leaders inspire us to be our ideal selves, and allow us to make history today. They allow us to reach our full human potential, which few ever reach, if any have ever done so...and in doing so allow us to become leaders, and inspire others...repeating the pattern. Without Martin Luthor King, Jr., where would america be? Certainly not her present self.

And yes, we do learn from mistakes. Had the Holocaust not happened, how would we know our own dark potential, and know that we must not let it happen again. We are still learning, and perhaps still faltering. Hitler failed to take Britain when he had the chance...he let arrogance lead to the debacle at Dunkirk...he forgot the falacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, who stood overlooking the same Channel, and failed to take the Great Isle.

You want to learn a lesson from History? Look no furthur than the Treaty of Versailles. Almost every major historical event can in some way be traced back to that convention. Even the War in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh showed up looking for independance for his new country. The Cold War? The War in Iraq/Iran/Afganistan?

But what do I know. I think you have to love it to appreciate it.

In a nutshell, we are living history today. We will live it tomorrow.

Winston Churchill once said,

         "History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."