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Of course mainstream academic history considers that method extremely suspicious, and will continue to do so while we live in an era defined by a scientific paradigm of knowledge. In your comment when you mentioned tools for inner exploration of history I was reminded of Robert Graves's The White Goddess and his method of analepsis, or poetic inspiration that reveals the truths locked in history.
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This is in contrast to a zooming-out, or expanding into new territory, which is only possible when story-tellers try to escape from where they think they have to be to be considered "fantasy." For example, stories where what were traditionally villains or voiceless monsters are now the protagonists. Future fantasy writers allowing past writers to consciously influence them is only going to result in a sort of 'zooming-in' of existing fantasy themes and tropes an ever-narrowing focus until we are reading books about what were previously shadowy crannies of fantasy, in an effort to create something novel while still remaining within familiar territory. On the Dragonlance thing, it certainly does seem as though D&D is a sort of uroboros. Magical not because it was a "spell" designed for good hunting or whatever, but because it magically transferred knowledge from one generation to the next. I imagine that the purpose of cave art was something like tha. I think the idea that cave paintings are a sort of history or knowledge is not that outlandish at all - Australian aboriginal art is multi-purpose: historical record, ritual and place-marker, to the extent that it is unclear whether or not it is appropriate for other artists to appropriate the techniques or even for indigenous artists to use the techniques in the same way western artists use techniques, as mere tools in an art-making tool box. Much ingenuity was spent in devising a vast pictorial dictionary and grammar, with which, it was hoped, the remote future might interpret the whole library. Each scribe set down also in some detail a summary of his own special study, and added a personal manifesto of his own views about existence. Thus was recorded something of the history of the earth and of man, the outlines of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and geometry. Many thousands of such tablets were produced in the course of years, and were stored in a cave which was carefully prepared for them. To each person a certain sphere of culture was assigned and after he or she had thought out a section and scribbled it down on slate, it was submitted to the company for criticism, and finally engraved deeply on tablets of hard stone.
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This task was very dear to the leader, but the others often grew weary of it. The adults of the party devoted much of their leisure during the long winters to the heroic labour of recording the outline of man's whole knowledge.