A man sits in the back of a taxi with a goat after purchasing it from a livestock market ahead of the Eid al-Adha festival in Kolkata, India, September 8, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

“When I was 8 years old, my parents paid a smuggler to take me across the Himalayas, a weekslong walk over the mountains from Tibet to India. It was a trek that tens of thousands of other Tibetans have taken since the Dalai Lama fled a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. My parents must have had their reasons to send me here; they must have had the best of intentions. But 18 years later, I still don't know why they did it. They are not political people. They are small farmers who raise barley and a few yak in a rural area not far from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. I have not seen them since I left...”. – Tsering Topgyal via The Associated Press. (Photo by Tsering Topgyal/AP Photo)

Pumpkins and a mock up skull are seen ahead of Halloween at Wilmersdorfer Strasse shopping street, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues, in Berlin, Germany, October 26, 2020. (Photo by Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Members of the grounds crew try to catch a cat that got loose on the field during the eighth inning between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on August 2, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Hunger/Getty Images)

Peerapong Butakul, a transgender person also known as “Bee”, waits backstage during a rehearsal ahead of the reopening of Tiffany's show after closing for almost three years due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Pattaya, Thailand on August 31, 2022. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

A man passes a poster depicting French presidential election candidate for the far-right Front National (FN) party Marine Le Pen with the face of U.S. President Donald Trump reading “Do not Trump yourself. Choose France. Vote!” on May 5, 2017 in Paris. (Photo by Joel Saget/AFP Photo)

NASA says it could be another 20 years before humans touch down on Mars, but in a sense, the Mars Society has been exploring the red planet for more than a decade – in Utah. Photo: Csilla Orgel, a geologist of Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission, makes her way back to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the Utah desert March 3, 2013. The MDRS aims to investigate the feasibility of a human exploration of Mars and uses the Utah desert's Mars-like terrain to simulate working conditions on the red planet. Scientists, students and enthusiasts work together developing field tactics and studying the terrain. All outdoor exploration is done wearing simulated spacesuits and carrying air supply packs and crews live together in a small communication base with limited amounts of electricity, food, oxygen and water. Everything needed to survive must be produced, fixed and replaced on site. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

Do you think that history is a science? Well, not exactly. First, and foremost, history is the state's “legend of wars”, it’s official regalia. Of course, public historians are not interested in scientific truth – quite the opposite. In this respect, any attempt to present a state’s history as altruistic and benevolent as possible is welcomed and encouraged – as opposed to any revisionism attempts that may be more accurate. In this matter, Chinese have surpassed us all – they revised in highly creative manner (but rather shamelessly) the technology already invented by Europeans, a process that resulted in oldest state on the planet. Here is an interesting paradox: ask any sinologist about the Middle Kingdom during second century B.C., and he will describe it to you in such a vivid manner as if he has been living there all his life – but as soon as you will ask him to describe Chinese history in the 19-20th centuries… let's say, his eagerness will be greatly diminished. However, we will discuss China in a different article, and in the meantime we will try to understand how exactly historic “legend of wars” is formed and functions – based on a specific and well-known example. A great example is Ferdinand Magellan's first voyage around the world.