by Rand E Oertle

Created on: July 14, 2009

If we are required to study history, what can we conclude is the ultimate benefit? History is how one generation, long since dead, communicates with future generations yet unborn. That communication is a critical element in every kind of progress known to man. History is such an all encompassing concept it is difficult, if not impossible, to choose which element is considered most important. History is our system of storing critical information to be used when needed.

In "The Life of Reason Vol.1," George Santayana postulated that: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I would go further adding that those who forget their past are in jeopardy of retrogressing into chaos. History is the vehicle by which we avoid that retrogression.

We can study the history of human interaction, war, science, mathematics, medicine, personal communication and the transmittal of information that allows humans to build on the past in every facet of life, speeding progress of every kind. Man went from Kitty Hawk and the Wright brothers, to walking on the moon within sixty-six years because the historical information was passed from one generation to the next

Prehistoric mankind passed historical events and teachings through an oral tradition. As human-kind progressed it used pictorial and representational symbolism to transfer history from one generation to the next. Humans used various forms to convey history, such as knots in strips of rawhide and a host of other primitive artifacts. These methods evolved into pictographs and pictographs became letters, which were combined into books.

Today exact photo representation, sound and moving pictorials form vast combinations of communication systems coalescing history for today's generations.

We think of history as fixed. But history, like everything else, changes as new data become available.

History can have a dark side that can be horribly vengeful. It is startling to see what historians, who frequently have political agendas, have morphed FBI founder, J. Edgar Hoover, into. Biographies written closer to his death, when compared to today's biographies, are polar opposites. At one time, he was seen as a gallant crime fighter who took down Al Capone, John Dillinger and other mafia dons. Today some historical authors malign and ridicule Hoover personally and attempt to demean his reputation by accusing him of being a cross-dresser.

Harry Truman, following his presidency, was consider the

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