> For those ignorant of history every day is an incomprehensible shock, for those well versed in it a reminder that human nature never changes.
That's a popular claim - just like the claims against journalism - but also historically ignorant. Human biology hasn't changed in ~200K years, but human nature has changed dramatically. It took 190K years to discover agriculture and 195K years to discover writing, and look what happened since then! Look at our natures compared with humans 200, 500, 1K, 10K, 100K years ago: We're democratic, free, incredibly prosperous and safe and peaceful, etc. etc.
I can’t claim much about what people thought or did in their daily lives before the advent of written history but I do know that we still experience all of the same thoughts, feelings, vices, worries, failings and dreams that anyone who has ever kept a written record has throughout history. Our wider scale dealings and political intrigues are largely the same although dealing with different natural or technological events, the ones regarding interpersonal or strictly human matters are practically identical though.
You say that agriculture, writing and democracy have changed human nature but I argue they have only changed the backdrop against which the play takes place, the players and the lines are the same as ever. People didn’t think any differently when they were hunter gatherers, illiterate and living in a family group instead of a city. The subject matter would differ but the nature of the thoughts would be the same as if you were thinking about the same things.
> we still experience all of the same thoughts, feelings, vices, worries, failings and dreams that anyone who has ever kept a written record has throughout history
That I agree with to an extent. I don't have thoughts that a witch cursed me, for example, or that I can accuse people based on a revelation rather than objective evidence.
> Our wider scale dealings and political intrigues are largely the same
Unless I misunderstand your meaning, that claim is clearly untrue. There was no democracy, rule of law, freedom, etc. etc. etc. for most of human history. We handled political issues much differently; intrigues don't involve murder and civil war.
That’s because when we started farming and writing, we created a larger creature of which we are the constituents - civilization. It is now evolving much faster than we are.
