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PresentationsVariation in the Accuracy of Time-Timing in Historical Texts (Based on Chinese History Textbooks)Lomonosov Moscow State University Time is the most important category of historical text. It would seem that the main characteristic of time in it should be accuracy. However, our study, conducted on the material of 9 textbooks on the history of China for Russian students, shows that the situation is not so clear-cut. Sometimes, the sequence of events, the assessment of their duration, the characteristics of the interval between them are more important for the author of the text than the exact dating. In other cases, the absence of an exact dating is due to its unknownness (usually due to the remoteness of events in time), which forces the author to look for different ways of indicating time that allow him to be imprecise, but at the same time remain within the limits of science. The report will consider the following text tactics, with the help of which historians vary the accuracy of indicating the time of events: (1) a combination of exact and "vague" indications of temporal localization, duration of events, time intervals between events; (2) an important dated event is used as a point in relation to which other events are organized without an exact dating; (3) variation of the time scale (step) of the narrative (some events are localized on the time scale with an accuracy of an hour, others - with an accuracy of a millennium). Of course, the further events are from us in history, the more difficult is the exact dating: the narrative of the archaeological period of the history of ancient China is conducted with a step of a millennium (or part of it). At the same time, the enlargement of the time scale is associated with the increased significance of the event or the transmission of a particularly rapid development of actions.
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