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Herodotus: Peoples
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Herodotus was not the first historian, but he was the first to make investigation the key to history. The word "history" comes from a Greek word which means "inquiry" or "investigation." He wanted to find what actually happened, so he traveled extensively in the Eastern Mediterranean, including visits to Egypt and Persia. He talked to many people, including people who actually witnessed the events he wrote about. While people today might criticize him for his tendency to include inaccurate and often implausible information, he ... established the notion that history must begin with research.
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Prior to Herodotus, writings of the past were efforts to either glorify the king, justify the gods or a combination of both. Hagiography and logograph can readily be seen in the writings of the ancient Sumerians, the early Egyptians and the peoples of the Levant. Even in Herodotus’ own Greece, little effort was made to achieve a factually accurate account of the past. In fact, the person that could be considered the closest precursor to Herodotus was the great poet Homer. And although Homer’s epics were based around and no doubt contained historical truths, their primary function was not to capture the historical record. Instead, like that those who went before him, Homer wrote emotionally stirring poetic verse constructed to inspire fear of the gods and awe of the heroes.
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While in Olbia, Herodotus traveled with various Greek trading vessels, heading up the Dnieper into the region of Kiev. Despite all his travels, Herodotus was no pioneer. He only went where the Greek merchants already could and did go.<14> Because of this, the accounts of his travels in the region are sparse relating mainly to comments on the climate, which was bitterly cold, and the customs and traditions of the people near the shores where the Greeks stopped to ply their trade. From these limited sources... Herodotus was able to infer with incredible accuracy the origins of the Scythians. Herodotus was correctly able to identify the Scythians as an Indo-European people (though he did not use that term) who migrated from central Russia in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Later studies have shown that he was also able to correctly deduce the circumstances of their emigration into Scythia<15> and discount several of the local legends surrounding their origins.<16>
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One of the means by which Herodotus characterizes peoples is through their food behavior. His descriptions of the Egyptians, Persians, and other highly civilized peoples among whom he had lived are far more nuanced than those of "barbarian" peoples, most of whom he knew only by hearsay. The underlying message to his audience is different in the two cases. He was rightly impressed by the long history of civilization in Egypt and Babylonia and by the efficiency of the Persians: he seems to encourage the reflection that the lifestyle of these peoples is logical in its own terms, sometimes more logical than that of the Greeks, and may have been instrumental in their successes. Barbarian tribes, by contrast, are shown as making stranger and stranger food choices as they recede farther and farther towards the edge of the world, from agriculturalists to pastoral nomads to cannibals.
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Although early Egyptologists regarded his chronicles of Egypt as a valuable source of information, the accuracy of some of Herodotus' writings have been challenged. His eyewitness accounts are thought of as accurate, but the stories told to him are questioned. Some researchers think the people who told Herodotus information could have forgotten parts, or just humored him with an interesting answer having nothing to do with the truth.
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Herodotus has been called the "father of history." He was the first writer that we know of (probably really the first) who tried to (in his own words) find out what had happened in the past "so that what people did will be remembered later, so that the great and admirable monuments that the Greeks and the barbarians made would be famous, and, among other things, to write down the reasons why they had a war."
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