While it's true that 19th and early 20th century archaeology was notoriously bad, "imperialist historical revisionism" is a bit much.
Romans really enjoyed making marble copies of Greek bronzes. They'd see a piece they like, copy it, and then melt the bronze down for other uses. Bronze was never painted (but it would have inlays or gold leafing), so why would the marble copies be painted? Furthermore, 19th century archaeologists were simply trying to clean the statues. That's it. They thought they were dirty from being, you know, really fucking old. It wasn't intended to be malicious. Also, there are occasions where archaeologists tried to "restore" works by adding color where it was lost.
This Minoan fresco is an excellent example. That fresco was almost completely chipped away from being old as balls, so 19th century archaeologists tried to restore it by painting in what they thought it looked like. By today's archaeological standards, they completely destroyed a piece of ancient history, but they really thought they were helping. Trying to hold 19th century archaeology to 21st century standards just doesn't work.
Why do none of these people seem to take into account that the state of something like an ancient sculpture depends entirely on the conditions it exists in? Something that's been exposed to the elements for thousands of years is not going to hold up as well as something that's been sealed away in a tomb for the same amount of time. And if they want to talk vandalizing ancient Egyptian works, why don't they talk about Hatshepsut?
As for "claiming to be heirs to" and mentioning of non-white individuals: if they're going off of the light-skinned dark-skinned dichotomy, then they're deliberately ignoring the fact that light-skinned meant female, and dark-skinned meant male. That's something that remained consistent through many cultures for many, many years. We also know the ethnicity of many ancient cultures,
including the Minoans who had been a mystery for god knows how long. They can try to scream "imperial historical revisionism" and ignore science all they want, but that doesn't make them any less uneducated and deliberately ignorant.
