Fake History

[Masada]

Anyway, it's interesting how the wild theories of today end up becoming the popular fact of tomorrow. I've had cause in the past to bemoan the anti-religious propaganda of revisionist historians of the nineteenth century, such as John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who argued that Christianity had done its best to oppress science and free thought for all of its existence, and illustrated this with "examples" such as the medieval insistence that the earth is flat, the medieval witch hunts, the opposition to Columbus, and the persecution of Galileo - all examples that were either grossly misinterpreted to fit the thesis or simply invented. Despite the repeated discrediting not only of the individual examples but of the whole thesis, it's still central to modern culture.

Could you recommend a really comprehensive book that focuses on debunking all that?

Less central but still very pervasive bad history also includes the claims of certain nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians of religion that everything in Christianity comes from paganism, and specifically that all the things that were said of Jesus were originally said of Mithras, Horus, or some other pagan deity. These claims have also been long debunked, but they have not only survived but expanded in the popular mind, which is why you can find on the Internet (and even in print) long lists of the supposed parallels between Jesus and various pagan gods that are completely fictional and go well beyond anything Cumont or the others said.

And another that does the same treatment for this crock.

There are some cases where a single source constitutes the entirety of our first-hand knowledge of peoples' lives, such as Vasari's Lives.

That sums up Classical Southeast Asian history. Of course, unless there's a reason to believe the authors are lying there should be no reason to suppose they are.

 

[Agent327]

Of course, unless there's a reason to believe the authors are lying there should be no reason to suppose they are.

Since people are always lying, so are authors - just more eloquently.

 

[eoc]

I'm not really interested in pseudo-history or anything like that. I think that one Russian mathematician who claimed all history before the Middle Ages was false ruined pseudo-history for me. I have read 1421 but I didn't see this "wealth of evidence" or convincing evidence.

The only "wealth of evidence" is an old sailing map. But after checking out all the Chinese history documentaries, no record of that sailing map.

 

[North King]

Since people are always lying, so are authors - just more eloquently.

What a depressing view of the world.

 

[Plotinus]

Could you recommend a really comprehensive book that focuses on debunking all that?

And another that does the same treatment for this crock.

Actually I don't think I can off-hand. I'm not sure that a book of the first kind exists, although I'm fairly sure that Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this sort of thing more than once. As for the second, it's in such a different world from mainstream scholarship that no-one who is an expert on the subject would be bothered to write a debunking. It would be like asking an evolutionary scientist to write a book explaining why there weren't dinosaurs on Noah's ark.

Maybe someone needs to write these books. That could be worth thinking about...

What a depressing view of the world.

Depressing and quite unsustainable. I can't think why anyone would think that everyone lies all the time. Perhaps no-one ever tells the complete truth, but that doesn't mean they are being deliberately deceitful.

(It's also subject to the famous Liar's Paradox, of course: "What I am now saying is a lie" - it is self-defeating.)

 

[Agent327]

What a depressing view of the world.

Not at all. Ask any policeman: people lie.

Depressing and quite unsustainable. I can't think why anyone would think that everyone lies all the time. Perhaps no-one ever tells the complete truth, but that doesn't mean they are being deliberately deceitful.

(It's also subject to the famous Liar's Paradox, of course: "What I am now saying is a lie" - it is self-defeating.)

Denying a truth of everyday life (every x minutes someone lies) is neither depressing nor unsustainable, rather is it simply quite true and realistic to face up to it. apart from that, lying is also a very basic ingredient of polite society. The world would indeed be quite unsustainable if nobody ever lied. (On another level, most fiction is telling lies, i.e. made-up stories; everybody accepts that and even delights in it. Writers often do such a good job at it that certain readers never see through the lie and imagine it to be the whole truth and nothing else.)

As for the paradox: a statement can also be a lie and the truth, a procedé most commonly used in the theatre, but also in politics.

 

[Masada]

Not at all. Ask any policeman: people lie.

Do people lie all the time? Again, if I don't have a reason to disbelieve someone, why should I?

 

[Plotinus]

To say that people lie frequently is not the same thing as to say that they always lie. And while it may be true that lies are common in everyday polite society or in the writing of fiction, it doesn't follow that they are common in history books as well. A history book does not tell you that you look well when in fact you don't.

 

[Cutlass]

Actually I don't think I can off-hand. I'm not sure that a book of the first kind exists, although I'm fairly sure that Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this sort of thing more than once. As for the second, it's in such a different world from mainstream scholarship that no-one who is an expert on the subject would be bothered to write a debunking. It would be like asking an evolutionary scientist to write a book explaining why there weren't dinosaurs on Noah's ark.

Maybe someone needs to write these books. That could be worth thinking about...

You should write the book. Would be interesting.

 

[CiverDan1]

Some of this gets believed because it gets drummed into our heads to sell conspiracy-themed TV shows. Anything involving the Maya and Nostradamus is especially prone to this.

Maya: Our knowledge of what they actually believed in is very limited because so little of their writings survive. They never actually believed the world will end in 2012 AFAIK, it is just when the calendar turns over. Just like the start of the long count in ~3100 BC doesn't really represent anything other than being very far in the past. At least in 3 years we can end this nonsense.

Nostradamus: Even among the best language scholars there is often dispute over what he actually wrote because of the obscurity of the language he used combined with the fact he had to be vague to avoid being persecuted as a heretic. Also, you write enough versus filled with obscure predictions over 400+ years it should not be surprising that 3-4 can be connected to some event.

Other examples:

"x" can be seen from space, with "x" usually being the Great Wall. It is simply not wide enough, it doesnt matter how long it is.

 

[Agent327]

Do people lie all the time? Again, if I don't have a reason to disbelieve someone, why should I?

That's a matter of credibility, isn't it?

To say that people lie frequently is not the same thing as to say that they always lie. And while it may be true that lies are common in everyday polite society or in the writing of fiction, it doesn't follow that they are common in history books as well. A history book does not tell you that you look well when in fact you don't.

You seem to read too much into the fact that people lie all the time - which basically is a social lubricant -; I did not intend to imply that people are incapable of telling the truth. As far as history is concerned, establishing what comes closest to the truth is an important aspect of history as a science. That being said, any historian will have a hard time keeping his personal views out of what he writes - nor is that expected; but it's always good to keep in mind - whether reading historical works or historical source texts. In fact, the lie is quite essential to human history, being directly linked to language. (While for instance chimpansees are perfectly capable of deceitful behaviour - and can even fake an alarm call to keep a food source to themselves, it would be impossible for a chimp to "tell a lie".) Whether peolle lying are being purposely deceitful - like a swindler, say - is another matter. The fact of lying itself is quite undeniable, I should think. Also, I made no comment as to the motivation of such lying, other than it being helpful to social relations.

Returning to topic, "fake history" might be described as lying on a grand scale - to the motivation of which I can only guess, so I won't.

As for Maya writings, at a rough estimate, in excess of 10,000 individual texts have so far been recovered; so the problem is not a lack of text as it was a problem of decyphering. Most surviving pre-Columbian Maya writing is from stelae and other stone inscriptions from Maya sites, many of which were already abandoned before the Spanish arrived. The inscriptions on the stelae mainly record the dynasties and wars of the sites' rulers. Also of note are the inscriptions that reveal information about the lives of ancient Maya women. Much of the remainder of Maya hieroglyphics has been found on funeral pottery, most of which describes the afterlife.

And by the way, the movie 2012 was off about 200 years.

 

[Lord Baal]

Not at all. Ask any policeman: people lie.

Usually the policemen.

I'm reading on of these fake history crocks for my own personal amusement right now, actually. Andrew Tomas' We Are Not the First. It's basic premise is that our current 6,000 years or so of civilisation is not the first time it's happened in history, and that we are merely rediscovering previously known information from some sort of "Golden Age of Science" - his words exactly.

His entire first chapter focuses on how little we know about the past, then he mentions things like Heron's engine and the Babylonian batteries as signs that ancient man knew things we would not expect him to know from his technological development - all true. Unfortunately, he then goes on to deliberately falsify information.

The Piri Reis map was made in part by using charts dating back to Alexander. This is true, it was compiled from many maps of many different eras. Tomas makes the flagrantly false claim that this proves that people in Alexander's time knew of the existence of America and its contours, despite the fact that the American portions of the map were drawn using captured Spanish and Portuguese maps. He also makes the claim, proven false before he made it, that the Piri Reis map shows Antarctica. It doesn't, that's South America at an angle to fit it on the map you twit.

It's basically that sort of thing from start to finish. Essentially, exactly what the OP was talking about. It's interesting to read it after reading a discussion on the tactics used by these authors and paying attention to them, rather than just rolling my eyes as I've done previously.

 

[Plotinus]

Whether peole lying are being purposely deceitful - like a swindler, say - is another matter.

No, JEELEN, it is not another matter at all. "Lying" means an intent to deceive. If someone says something that is not true, but which she thinks is true, then she is not lying - she is merely saying something that is mistaken (although it is possible that her ignorance is culpable, but that's another matter). Whether something is a lie or not depends upon whether the speaker intends to deceive. So when you say that people lie constantly, you are not saying that people say untrue things all the time (which may be the case) - you are saying that they are deliberately saying untrue things all the time, with the intent to deceive others - which is implausible. And conversely, if you only meant to say that people say untrue things all the time, but without necessarily intending to deceive, then you shouldn't have called it "lying".

 

[Agent327]

Now explain 'white lies' using that definition please. (O, wait...) I'm afraid this is getting rather silly. Shall we get back on topic?

 

[Plotinus]

A white lie is a statement which is intended to deceive, but with a wholly benevolent purpose, such that the liar believes the person she is deceiving would be worse off if told the truth.

I don't know why you say it's getting silly. You started this digression about the nature and scope of lying.

 

[peter grimes]

One could argue that many of the more popular high school US History texts were teaching a false history. I recently read 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' by James Loewen. I was shocked by how much I didn't know about our history not due to ignorance but due to willful revisionism. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call many of our founding myth, but they sure aren't historical facts!

 

[Masada]

That's a matter of credibility, isn't it?

Sure, but that's a rather large departure from: "Since people are always lying, so are authors - just more eloquently" isn't it now?

 

[Agent327]

I didn't realize you were arguing that.

I don't know why you say it's getting silly. You started this digression about the nature and scope of lying.

Indeed. Excellent definition, by the way. (I knew I shouldn't have asked...) A wholly different approach to lying can be witnessd here:
"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son." (1 John 2:22) And although a 'history of the importance of lying in human history' might be frightfully interesting as a subject, I'd like to return to topic now:

One could argue that many of the more popular high school US History texts were teaching a false history. I recently read 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' by James Loewen. I was shocked by how much I didn't know about our history not due to ignorance but due to willful revisionism. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call many of our founding myth, but they sure aren't historical facts!

I seem to remember something simlar about early Dutch history and the founding of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. The Batavian uprising of Julius Civilis inspired 17th century historians to see the Batavians as early precursors of our nation; in elementary school we used to look at a picture on the wall where Batavians entered the Low Countries rowing on tree logs. Powerful imagery, but not very historical, I'm afraid; there's no real reson to suppose that the Batavians entered via the rivers, rather that they had to cross a few. (And why they would do so on tree logs is beyond me; rafts would have been a bit more practical, I imagine.)

 

[Lord Baal]

One could argue that many of the more popular high school US History texts were teaching a false history. I recently read 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' by James Loewen. I was shocked by how much I didn't know about our history not due to ignorance but due to willful revisionism. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call many of our founding myth, but they sure aren't historical facts!

I know many Australians who are firmly convinced Captain Cook discovered the country, as they were never taught otherwise in school. I was, but I'm beginning to think I was an exception. So the US isn't the only place with that sort of pseudo-historical tripe in schools.

 

[Masada]

Actually I don't think I can off-hand. I'm not sure that a book of the first kind exists, although I'm fairly sure that Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this sort of thing more than once. As for the second, it's in such a different world from mainstream scholarship that no-one who is an expert on the subject would be bothered to write a debunking. It would be like asking an evolutionary scientist to write a book explaining why there weren't dinosaurs on Noah's ark.

I cant think of any other discipline which allows people to get say and write so much tripe uncontested. If a non-economist decided to hatchet job the profession I would be willing to bet that within a week the first of a great many counter attacks would have begun. That said, I also think your example ignores a certain evolutionary biologist.

Maybe someone needs to write these books. That could be worth thinking about...

Most disciplines are quite happy to write popular works which don't sacrifice academic accuracy. Historians do it, so do economists, as do biologists and so forth. Theologians are underrepresented and that is unfortunate considering the rather, well, poisonous atmosphere of the contemporary debate regarding religion. A serious examination of both sides and the ideological preconceptions therein would, I hope, contribute to cleaning up the debate just a little. We certainly see the results on Ask A Theologian now don't we?

I know many Australians who are firmly convinced Captain Cook discovered the country, as they were never taught otherwise in school. I was, but I'm beginning to think I was an exception. So the US isn't the only place with that sort of pseudo-historical tripe in schools.

I think at least in one sense he did discover it insofar as he popularised it. Abel Tasman's rutters weren't well known outside the Netherlands and to the best of my knoweldge weren't released into the public domain until considerably later.

I didn't realize you were arguing that.

What pray would I have been arguing?