A dirty thunderstorm occurs over Mount Sakurajima as the volcano erupts violently at 12:03 am on July 26, 2016 in Tarumizu, Kagoshima, Japan. The eruption occurred at the mountain's Showa crater. This is the first time that the active volcano in southern Kyushu has spewed out a smokestack that high since an eruption on August 18, 2013, according to the Kagoshima Meteorological Office. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)

People walk past a New Year fir tree made of toys at a park in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia January 2, 2017. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Indonesian mahouts clean their Sumatran elephant in a river near the zoo in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, 12 December 2014. According media reports, the smallest of the Asian elephants, Sumatran elephant (Elephas maximus sumatrensis) is facing serious pressures arising from illegal logging and associated habitat loss and fragmentation in Indonesia. The population has come under increasing threat from rapid forest conversion to plantations. (Photo by Dedi Sahputra/EPA)

As the sun sets on the Malecon in Havana on Friday January 23, 2015, Surenis Angulo de la Paz, 24, center, dances as group of locals play music around her. Behind her is Fidel Lopez, 55. (Photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

A woman leaves with her television set, as she and others are evicted from their apartment blocks close to the site of last week's building collapse, after their homes were deemed unfit for habitation and marked for demolition, in the Huruma neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya Friday, May 6, 2016. Following a building collapse which claimed at least 40 lives with more 80 people still unaccounted for, after severe flooding, the government has ordered the demolition of similar unsafe buildings in the area. (Photo by Ben Curtis/AP Photo)

A demonstrator jumps from a vehicle of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) during a protest to demand what protesters say is true information from the OSCE about the shelling in Donetsk, Ukraine (since April 2014, the city is the administrative centre of the Donetsk People's Republic), July 23, 2015. The graffiti reads, “Stop moronic war!”. (Photo by Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)

People cross a street against strong wind and heavy rainfall under the influence of Typhoon Haiyan, in Sanya, Hainan province November 10, 2013. One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region's main city. Despite weakening, the storm is likely to cause heavy rains, flooding, strong winds and mudslides as it makes its way north in the South China Sea. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

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.