How much of past history has been warped and completely inaccurate? - George Orwell's fears have been realized.

[NoReturn]

The Ethiopian Orthodox have a book in the deuterocanon that deals with the Nephilim. Probably it was a legitimate strand of Jewish folklore that the rest of Christianity lost.

Fun fact, in 652AD the Nubians managed to hold off the Muslims who had been running rampant because of how well-guarded their mountains were. It's the only place in the region where the Muslims not only agreed to parlay, but an actual truce. The Muslims then turned around and took the coast, leading to the landlocked Ethiopia we see today.
All this to say that the result was a sequestered branch of Christianity that was removed from the rest of the religion by a big wall of angry Muslims, so we can look to them and at them to see where they branched from the main line, and what ideas, stories, and beliefs they have in common.

 

[Candlelight Desolation]

Pretty much every bit of history before 1600 or so is guaranteed to have exaggerations and distortions. The history of Ancient Rome is a great example. The first 400 years of Roman history (everything before the first sack of Rome) like the kings of Rome and them getting overthrown (which is legend) or the wars with the Etruscans is all bullshit made up hundreds of years later in the grand historical tradition of glorifying you and your buddies' ancestors and condemning your rivals' ancestors. Our only surviving source is Livy who cobbled together whatever shit he could find plus myths and stories he heard, but then the Romans themselves started accepting Livy as factual. It's fake and gay and made up.

Then there's the other Roman issue of character assassination where they'd make up hilarious rumors like all the bullshit about Caligula or Nero gay-marrying a slave or Domitian being some evil corrupt SOB. In reality, Caligula was probably a decent, ordinary dude, Nero was a good emperor, popular in his day, who had the bad luck to offend some religion that worshipped a dead Jewish man, and Domitian was probably one of Rome's best emperors. It took almost 2,000 years for these men to have their reputations rehabilitated after a bunch of lying bullshit from Roman historians, and that's only because we have other sources to criticize the historians who made up that shit and we have tons of inscriptions and other records showing "hey, these guys weren't so bad."

History after 1600 is less prone to this bullshit because we have far more sources be it government records, newspapers, books, letters, etc. to back it up. That's where it's easier to spot government lies and self-serving nonsense. We can still do that today. As long as we archive things on offline mediums that can last centuries, future historians can piece together truths like "Ukraine was a corrupt shithole the West defended to protect their corruption" and "COVID-19 was created in Wuhan under the direction of Ralph Baric using Peter Daszak and Dr Fauci's money."

I understand what you mean. I read Adrian Goldsworthy's biography on Julius Caesar last month, and he mentions a lot of apocryphal stories about the lives of Caesar and a few of his contemporaries - some stuff specifically would be Caesar's rumored gay affairs with people in his life and his daughter having a miscarriage out of shock when her husband came home covered in blood - and he mentions in the text that he wouldn't mention these things, but they are the only sources from 2000+ years ago that mention it. I mean if you're a historian of the Greco-Roman world and you're writing a biography, you really only have one of three sources to draw from, especially since this was WAY before video or audio recording equipment as well as a lot more literacy that would come around 1600:

1. Fragments of primary sources from accredited Roman historians which not all have survived to the modern day.
2. Secondary sources about these people/times written by people who have biases and agendas, not all of which have survived to the present day.
3. Rumors started by perverted gossip mongers who are only semi-literate.

I mean we have biographies on figures like Ronald Reagan and Napoleon Bonaparte, two guys closer to our time, but even those aren't 100% reliable because of, as I said, biases and agendas. Case in point:

• Alan Schom's very hostile biography towards Napoleon vs. Andrew Roberts's work praising him.
• Almost every single Reagan biography I have seen in my life is a liberal hit piece without fail (looking at you, Lou Cannon!)

It even goes on in day-to-day life; it's said there are three sides to every story:

1. Your side
2. Their side
3. The truth

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I went through American public school, yet did so before Current Year.

So maybe somewhat warped, yet not completely?

 

[Beak Thing]

The Ethiopian Orthodox have a book in the deuterocanon that deals with the Nephilim. Probably it was a legitimate strand of Jewish folklore that the rest of Christianity lost.

Even the OT itself references other books that have been lost in the ensuing centuries.

I understand what you mean. I read Adrian Goldsworthy's biography on Julius Caesar last month, and he mentions a lot of apocryphal stories about the lives of Caesar and a few of his contemporaries - some stuff specifically would be Caesar's rumored gay affairs with people in his life and his daughter having a miscarriage out of shock when her husband came home covered in blood - and he mentions in the text that he wouldn't mention these things, but they are the only sources from 2000+ years ago that mention it. I mean if you're a historian of the Greco-Roman world and you're writing a biography, you really only have one of three sources to draw from, especially since this was WAY before video or audio recording equipment as well as a lot more literacy that would come around 1600:

1. Fragments of primary sources from accredited Roman historians which not all have survived to the modern day.
2. Secondary sources about these people/times written by people who have biases and agendas, not all of which have survived to the present day.
3. Rumors started by perverted gossip mongers who are only semi-literate.

One thing that's really interesting is the New Testament and the Gospels in particular are a rare example of having source documents very close historically to the events they describe, and in multiple copies. I think the earliest Gospel manuscripts are from the early 2nd century AD, which is incredible when you consider the most contemporary sources of other works often date to the Early Middle Ages.

For example, Caesar's Gallic Wars have no older manuscripts than the 8th century AD or so.

 

[Fek]

I've um...very much autistically researched a great many historical inaccuracies over the last year or two now. I've chased the knowledge of it all down many a rabbit hole in the process. Many of those rabbit holes are dead ends. Some seem deliberately booby-trapped. I've learned the hard way on the latter.

I'm not about to tell you what is right or wrong, or cite example after example of issues. There are too many to count. I can most definitely say the following, at the risk of sounding foreboding (if not a bit tinfoil): There is a deliberate effort going on to keep people ignorant of a great many things ranging from the minuscule to..existential. I don't know the "why" of it yet, but holy fucking shit will you have the floor drop out from underneath you if you genuinely and earnestly continue this line of "historical" inquiry (present included) on your own. You have to see it for yourself, because it's so flippin' unbelievable that you'd call anyone telling you about it a nutter..

..wait. Shit.

 

[Bonesjones]

I've um...very much autistically researched a great many historical inaccuracies over the last year or two now. I've chased the knowledge of it all down many a rabbit hole in the process. Many of those rabbit holes are dead ends. Some seem deliberately booby-trapped. I've learned the hard way on the latter.

I'm not about to tell you what is right or wrong, or cite example after example of issues. There are too many to count. I can most definitely say the following, at the risk of sounding foreboding (if not a bit tinfoil): There is a deliberate effort going on to keep people ignorant of a great many things ranging from the minuscule to..existential. I don't know the "why" of it yet, but holy fucking shit will you have the floor drop out from underneath you if you genuinely and earnestly continue this line of "historical" inquiry (present included) on your own. You have to see it for yourself, because it's so flippin' unbelievable that you'd call anyone telling you about it a nutter..

..wait. Shit.

Be more specific, coward.

 

[std::string]

Those potatoes came from somewhere, dammit.

The cultivation of potatoes in South America still bugs me.

The OG potato had a wild solanine content which would've made anyone who ate them very sick or possibly killed them. Who the fuck was out there cultivating some random tuber that tasted bitter as hell and could kill you?

 

[NoReturn]

You have to see it for yourself, because it's so flippin' unbelievable that you'd call anyone telling you about it a nutter..

Tell us and I won't call you a nut.

 

[Nick Gars]

Very simple answer to the question of the thread.


I don't know, and that's the horror of it.

 

[Fek]

Be more specific, coward.

There's no need to be hostile. The entire point was to nudge you, the reader, into poking around for yourself..

Tell us and I won't call you a nut.

..but sure, I'll toss out one example video for fun.

America Before The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation, by Graham Hancock

View America Before The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation, by Graham Hancock on Odysee

odysee.com

As a (tiresome and should go without saying) disclaimer: I certainly do not agree with every hot take or conclusion this fellow has had. Within this particular video, he cites multiple examples of archaeological evidence which gets swept under the rug, and posits as best he can the purpose behind each. I would say he makes the beginnings of a compelling case that, if nothing else, our idea of history or a timeline is very incomplete if not outright fabricated in certain ways. The Experts™, as they are wont to do in any other field of SCIENCE!™, immediately shut down, ostracize, "cancel", etc, anyone who dares speak up about things that do not fit into the cozy narrative as you likely know it.

There are many, many, many other examples out there done by different people/institutions. The interested among you will have to go hunting on your own. Again, my entire point in nudging personal action was that there's a level of discernment one develops in hunting for this information. This skill of discernment is sorely lacking from the public at large, and if you're just spoon-fed everything then you probably won't ever develop it. That very inclination towards having shit handed out to be mindlessly absorbed has greatly contributed to the complete farce of modernity we currently find ourselves within.

 

[NoReturn]

There's no need to be hostile. The entire point was to nudge you, the reader, into poking around for yourself..

..but sure, I'll toss out one example video for fun.

America Before The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation, by Graham Hancock

View America Before The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation, by Graham Hancock on Odysee

odysee.com

As a (tiresome and should go without saying) disclaimer: I certainly do not agree with every hot take or conclusion this fellow has had. Within this particular video, he cites multiple examples of archaeological evidence which gets swept under the rug, and posits as best he can the purpose behind each. I would say he makes the beginnings of a compelling case that, if nothing else, our idea of history or a timeline is very incomplete if not outright fabricated in certain ways. The Experts™, as they are wont to do in any other field of SCIENCE!™, immediately shut down, ostracize, "cancel", etc, anyone who dares speak up about things that do not fit into the cozy narrative as you likely know it.

There are many, many, many other examples out there done by different people/institutions. The interested among you will have to go hunting on your own. Again, my entire point in nudging personal action was that there's a level of discernment one develops in hunting for this information. This skill of discernment is sorely lacking from the public at large, and if you're just spoon-fed everything then you probably won't ever develop it. That very inclination towards having shit handed out to be mindlessly absorbed has greatly contributed to the complete farce of modernity we currently find ourselves within.

Oh this shit for sure.
I love how the establishment loves to throw out "This hypothesis is RACIST!" when the very people who were in America in the 1400s THEMSELVES were all "Ok so there was at least one apocalypse here already."

 

[Ratboy Genius]

I do think about that a lot.
And the fact that I must rely on others' accounts to learn the truth if I don't see something with my own eyes. That takes a lot of trust.
But I'm just a zoomer, what do I know? Probably nothing really.

 

[Agarathium1066]

There's no need to be hostile. The entire point was to nudge you, the reader, into poking around for yourself..

..but sure, I'll toss out one example video for fun.
<snip>

I get what you're saying on inspiring investigation but a light dipping of your toes into a few topics makes sense for a discussion thread like this. Frankly no matter what you were to trot out or discuss much, MUCH worse has been spoken about with all seriousness on this site.

In the end I often wonder how much is covered up simply due to the ego or fierce disbelief of one party that then becomes accepted reality. How much could be considered if they weren't gung-ho to point at anyone who steps out of line and scream 'SCHIIIZOOOOO' or 'RACIIIIIST'.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

The biggest obstacle to historical research is that it's inevitably going to reflect the biases of the researcher. A famous example is Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where the writer had a very dim view on Christianity and its impact on the Roman Empire which came directly from contemporary anticlerical Enlightenment viewpoints that appealed to him.

And it still happens today. A great example is the focus on "ecology" in history and archaeology to the point where everyone just summarizes civilizations vanishing as "because of drought/temperature shift/etc." which is usually an oversimplification. Climate change has made people obsessed over these ecological models of history, and why shouldn't they? If you can blame everything on the climate or drought, you can preserve an illusion that every culture is equal (since the Experts in climate change say we have until 2030 to "fix" things or else we'll go extinct) and say people only did stupid or violent things because the climate made them.

The Norse in Greenland is a great example of this, since scholars desperately want them to have died out because of climate change and destroying their environment when in reality they actually improved their environment (they planted grasses and fertilized meadows for their cows), did not erode the land to any real degree (studies which claim they did mistakenly equate medieval Norse farmers with Inuit sheep farmers who were very inefficient and bad at what they did), and had plenty of available resources to subsist on that wouldn't just go away because it got a little colder. Worse, the reason they died out was because the Inuit killed most of them and government inefficiency impoverishing them, as medieval scholars wrote, but archaeology was forbidden from researching deeper into this because the government of Greenland believed it was racist.

But nobody actually looks through the records, instead we just get "experts" like Jared Diamond (an ornithologist who has also been proven dead wrong on Easter Island too lol) saying they died out because it got cold and they didn't eat fish, and this is what pop history on Reddit claims which then filters back into academia.

The cultivation of potatoes in South America still bugs me.

The OG potato had a wild solanine content which would've made anyone who ate them very sick or possibly killed them. Who the fuck was out there cultivating some random tuber that tasted bitter as hell and could kill you?

IIRC it's because when you process it in a particular way even Stone Age tribesmen knew how to do, the solanine decreases and it's got enough calories and the sort of growing cycle that it's worth cultivating.

 

[Aero the Alcoholic Bat]

because you cant really look like a hero if you were doing the same stuff you accused the enemy of doing now can you? so naturally they leave that out.

In 1944, 13 percent of US civilians and 50% of American GIs wanted to commit genocide against the Japanese. I suspect that witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust was part of the reason why we never followed through.

Look at what people claim about the Kiwi Farms that we know is objectively not true. And remember "peaceful protests" as buildings burned down and people were being beat to death? People lie about or disbelief stuff happening RIGHT NOW as they're able to see it, somehow. Lying about and rewriting things people aren't able to witness is even easier.

What's particularly frustrating is that it's all a repeat of the 60s and 70s. What people don't realize is that wokism is just SDS and Weather Underground ideology exhumed for the 21st century.

Same anti-white racism.

Same Dindu Nuffin attitude whenever the police cracked down on them for their violent behavior.

Same bourgeoisie degeneracy under the mistaken belief that it's totally revolutionary and not bourgeoisie degeneracy that is actively enabled by the same capitalism they profess so much disgust for.

Same misogyny whenever it became expedient, the Weathermen were particularly infamous for it.

The same tactics, directly inspired by Maoism.

The same unwillingness to judge people on their merits rather than their race, as Martin Luther King would say, as deeply flawed as he was.

But of course, we don't talk about these violent psychos on the left, because we need a bunch of idiotic, bored children and adolescents who lionize the civil rights movement of the past and want to LARP as them, as Dumbledore's army fighting the Death Eaters. The realization that most of those "heroes" were fucking psycho, and even inspired worse psychos like Charles Manson or Jim Jones, might give kiddies a nuanced perspective on the whole thing and realize there were hardly any heroes back then, only assholes and even worse assholes. The fact that we must learn from the mistakes and dumbassery of both.

 

[Pissmaster]

You (singular and plural) might like this channel:

Anyone who uses CE/BCE, as opposed to AD/BC, is a revisionist. That's some anti-Christ bullshit that came along in the 1990s. You can safely throw out whatever that channel says, alongside anything else that uses that notation.

 

[Lyster]

Pretty much every bit of history before 1600 or so is guaranteed to have exaggerations and distortions. The history of Ancient Rome is a great example. The first 400 years of Roman history (everything before the first sack of Rome) like the kings of Rome and them getting overthrown (which is legend) or the wars with the Etruscans is all bullshit made up hundreds of years later in the grand historical tradition of glorifying you and your buddies' ancestors and condemning your rivals' ancestors. Our only surviving source is Livy who cobbled together whatever shit he could find plus myths and stories he heard, but then the Romans themselves started accepting Livy as factual. It's fake and gay and made up.

Absolute bullshit. We know very little of Roman history because the majority of Roman books, accounts, inscription, etc were lost during the Christian persecution of pagans, the the fall of the Western empire and later the Arabic conquest. There were plenty of ancient sources and books that were available and know by Ancient Romans and many more that builded upon such, as Plutarch show us in his books where he quotes from some of such sources, however the majority of such works were lost to time and as such leave us with a extremely incomplete picture of Roman history, but the Roman, well the educated elites anyways, had a pretty good understanding and knowledge of Roman history in their time.

I know that to expect intelligence from a degenerated lolicon is difficult but at least don't just go around spreading bullshit here

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Absolute bullshit. We know very little of Roman history because the majority of Roman books, accounts, inscription, etc were lost during the Christian persecution of pagans, the the fall of the Western empire and later the Arabic conquest. There were plenty of ancient sources and books that were available and know by Ancient Romans and many more that builded upon such, as Plutarch show us in his books where he quotes from some of such sources, however the majority of such works were lost to time and as such leave us with a extremely incomplete picture of Roman history, but the Roman, well the educated elites anyways, had a pretty good understanding and knowledge of Roman history in their time.

I know that to expect intelligence from a degenerated lolicon is difficult but at least don't just go around spreading bullshit here

There is plenty of archaeological evidence that the early Roman Republic and everything about the Roman Kingdom is self-serving myths. Almost all of Roman history before the Gauls sacked Rome in the 4th century BC is little more than legend since the Gauls destroyed whatever books existed. Whatever "happened" is oral history and is inherently unreliable. Hell, even the tradition of Roman historians isn't until after Brennus's Sack of Rome since the Roman style of history was imported from the Greeks.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

"Caligula was probably a decent, ordinary dude, Nero was a good emperor, popular in his day" -loli enjoyer

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Nero was popular in his day among everyone but Christians and some powerful people who made up funny stories like him gay marrying a slave. Even Caligula probably wasn't so bad, he just pissed off powerful people.