I agree that it would be interesting to look at evidence from further in the past or from non-Western progress.
Unfortunately, we found researching progress from before roughly 1700-1800 (and sometimes even later) to often be quite difficult. Most sources are vague, disagree with each other, or have clear signs of unreliability. Even when we have good accounts of what the state of the art was at some particular time, it was difficult to establish a progress trend leading up to it.
You’re probably right that professional historians would be good at sorting some of these problems out. Usually when we did contact subject matter experts during the investigation, they could at help us to reality check out findings, but we did not try to get them to actually do work for us.
You should definitely try harder to connect with academic historians. They justify their existence by telling us they can help us learn from the past - this is a golden opportunity for it!
I agree that it would be interesting to look at evidence from further in the past or from non-Western progress.
Unfortunately, we found researching progress from before roughly 1700-1800 (and sometimes even later) to often be quite difficult. Most sources are vague, disagree with each other, or have clear signs of unreliability. Even when we have good accounts of what the state of the art was at some particular time, it was difficult to establish a progress trend leading up to it.
You’re probably right that professional historians would be good at sorting some of these problems out. Usually when we did contact subject matter experts during the investigation, they could at help us to reality check out findings, but we did not try to get them to actually do work for us.
You should definitely try harder to connect with academic historians. They justify their existence by telling us they can help us learn from the past - this is a golden opportunity for it!