Forever changing history - Parity of esteem

EVEN in a country that regularly relives its past, and occasionally with a maudlin sense of dispossession as we do, this will be a week of unprecedented ceremony. History will hang, like cordite, in the air.

The many interpretations of the Easter Rising will be marked. Some more loudly than others because those events retain a currency for some and might be construed to support particular positions adopted today, showing that one-eyed historiography is a deceptive mistress; it can mislead and misconstrue.

The fickleness of our beliefs and interpretations was underlined over the weekend when the tenets of Irish pre-history had to be re-written dramatically.

Tests on an ancient bear bone proved that humans lived on this island 2,500 years earlier than had been thought.

Just as everything else, history changes. Dogmatism and orthodoxy are eventually exposed and textbooks must be rewritten. New truths are embraced.

So, let’s give, to use a hackneyed phrase, parity of esteem to all versions and interpretations of 1916 over the coming days.