If everything in history did not occur at the precise second that it did, would everything today be as it is?

Question

Example: If one less person were killed in the Revolutionary War, would history be the same today? Would he have had ancestors that may have grown up to defeat FDR or John Kennedy or may have been a traffic accident that killed Lee Harvey Oswald?

Answer 1

No. The course of events would have taken a detour, so to speak, or a different route, as you mentioned in your logical example.
The problem is not whether the series of events that lead to today's state of things would have changed and given a different outcome. The big question is: Is history reliable as a reference of historical events & facts??? Are we sure the event recorded and transferred to our libraries and posted in our history books is accurate and nobody had tampered with?? Many events that lead to the renaissance, for example, were dimmed or deleted in the course of history to focus on the "main" factors. How do we know that those so-called "main" factors would still be perceived as main if the historians who recorded them were different individuals with different political views?
What I want to say, your question is ligitimate, and no, things woudn't have been the same with the slightest change in "timing", but what gurantee is given to us that our current status is the outcome of "those recorded dates and events" and not the outcome of the deleted or dimmed or illiminated dates and events??

Answer 2

your question is a thought often asked by many!

it's from this concept, we've made movies about "time machines"

yes, it would be different...

but who knows, those 'extra' people in soceity could be the actual bus driver that runs you over in a different time warp!

Answer 3

Who knows....

That could have happened... and may be that's why you're even posting this question

Answer 4

who knows................It's possible.