The Mighty WOLF (mouse)

specialagentartemis

People on this website will really mock anti-vaxxers and flat earthers for ignoring scientists and getting their alternative facts from facebook, and then turn around and insist they know more history than historians and more archaeology than archaeologists because they read an unsourced tumblr post once

angel-starbeam

Is there a real life example of this?

specialagentartemis

It happens a lot.

lostinhistory

I know it's bad but I kind of want to know more about the woman who thinks the Roman Empire never existed

funky-writer-man

Oh shit i believed the Leonardo Da Vinci one

Also why do people make these

What do you hope to gain

specialagentartemis

There are a lot of different misinformation dynamics at play here. Only some are innocent, only some are malicious. But that’s why it pays to fact-check things, because the innocent misunderstandings, the arrogant personal hypotheses stated as fact, and the malicious lies are all jumbled together.

Some of these are a misunderstanding or conflating of true facts. The Da Vinci one goes here. Many historians do believe that Leonardo da Vinci had a romantic/sexual relationship with his apprentice(s). And it’s well-established that his apprentices modeled for some of his paintings. But they did not model for any of his paintings of Jesus - which was the core point of the post that this fact came from, enjoying the irony. So this isn’t true because it’s a conflation of several true facts into a false but understandable conclusion.
Some of these are just a victim of internet telephone. The “Persephone’s daughter” and “fake Greek goddess” ones refer to Mespyrian, who was some teenager’s wattpad OC daughter of Persephone and Hades, that someone else on tumblr accidentally mistook as a real figure from Greek mythology.
Some of these come from people making their own conclusions about history, and then turning around and insisting that the experts therefore must be lying to you. This is where it gets dangerous. The “archaeologists broke the noses off Egyptian statues to hide the fact that they were African” one goes here. Many Egyptian statues are missing their noses, so several years ago someone on the internet claimed that it was because archaeologists deliberately broke them off, and this gained a Lot of traction because it felt true and people wanted it to be true. People overwhelmingly want to believe that they, ordinary citizens of the world with no special training, are actually smarter than the experts. People love to believe that, so it’s very, very easy for people to decide the experts are stupid and clueless (the “History Hates Lovers” song, the thing about the dodecahedron or the Roman hairstyles or the leather burnishers) while salt-of-the-earth ordinary folk are smarter than those ivory-tower eggheads. At worst, people decide the experts are maliciously hiding the truth about the world for their own gain (the Lovers of Valdaro one here is an example of this, but you also see this a lot regarding “all ancient cultures were feminist utopias until the Catholic Church invented misogyny and covered up the feminist past” type posts that are extremely popular with TERFs.) This is the dynamic I’m comparing to anti-vaxxers and flat Earthers, and yes, this kind of anti-intellectualism is dangerous.
Some people are just trolls because they like lying on the internet and riling people up. This cannot be discounted. People do do this. The tiktok woman who doesn’t believe in the Roman Empire and doesn’t believe that Vesuvius erupted is almost certainly a troll who likes the attention her wild false claims get.

It’s a combination of things, but it’s why you shouldn’t assume that historians are all old homophobic clueless idiots and only you, tumblr user persephonesmassivebadonkers or whatever, know the REAL truth. Because that’s how you get Flat Earthers, but more pressingly, it’s how you get antisemitic conspiracy theories and transphobic radfem proclamations of We Need To Return To The Ancient Feminist Utopia (By Destroying All Trans People)(And, Usually, Abrahamic Religions).

But also by believing easily-debunked falsehoods it makes genuinely well-meaning people easier to dismiss by bigots as Brainwashed By Those El Gee Bee Tees Who Will Lie Because They Want To Destroy Academia/Biological Sex/The Church.

Spreading misinformation on tumblr is an understandable consequence of the existence of the internet, but it’s not harmless and really ought to be challenged when it’s seen.

unkillablemonsterqueen

And it’s not remotely helped by the fact there’s plenty of similar true stories that can be pointed to. Like, here’s a list of things: Brits in the 1800s used to eat Egyptian mummies, numerous gay relationships in history were called “friendships” by Christian historians, the Vatican is hoarding almost all history ever written and refuses to let anyone access it, the original biographies of the Sons of Liberty were all works of fiction (like Washington and the apple tree), Greek and Roman statues were painted but the people who discovered them found it garish so they stripped the paint off, DaVinci invented a tank, Lancelot is a fanfiction OC, and the Catholic Church was founded after numerous other Christian churches and proceeded to burn the holy books that didn’t support their version (like the Gospel of Judas, which establishes that the “betrayal” was Jesus’s plan because how was he supposed to die as planned, and they plotted it together). It’s easy to believe bullshit when the truth is just as rank.

specialagentartemis

This is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about: confidently firing off a mix of half-remembered and out-of-context factoids with “lies and coverups in history!!!” to make them seem like they’re correcting the record rather than reducing a mix of truth, common misconceptions, conspiracy theories, misunderstandings, and poor reporting to pithy one-liners. Let’s go through them.

Brits in the 1800s used to eat Egyptian mummies,

It's complicated. There's definitely a grain of truth to this, but it's not quite what the common narratives suggest. For example, eating mummies was a Medieval thing more than it was a Victorian thing; Victorians did "Scientific" mummy-unwrapping parties, but they didn't then eat them - they were collectible antiquities. For another, the mummies used by Victorians for paint were rarely ancient Egyptian humans. I'll let @thatlittleegyptologist take this one because they've talked about it. A lot. Like a lot. So often.

numerous gay relationships in history were called “friendships” by Christian historians,

It's complicated. Have historians in the past denied that their favorite historical figures could possibly be gay? Absolutely. But people who were romantically and sexually involved with each other in the past very often did call each other "friend." (Or, in ancient Egypt, "brother"). Even husbands and wives would call each other "friend." (it's midnight and I am blanking on how to search for sources that show this but I have transcribed 18th century letters and diaries, I have seen this.) Like, while historical squeamishness and denial of gay relationships has been a thing... the modern assumption that friendship cannot possibly ever include any gay stuff is also not helping. And heteronormatively taking words at face value is somewhere in between. It's sometimes malicious, but you have to give space for simple hetero brain too. And give space for all the queer and queer-affirming historians working in the field. And for people like Oscar Wilde who were arrested for sodomy and the Ancient Greeks who were Ancient Greek so it's hardly like anyone's denying that, even if their interpretation was that it was Bad. It's not cut and dry.

the Vatican is hoarding almost all history ever written and refuses to let anyone access it,

This one isn't actually complicated, it's just a bizarre misunderstanding (generous interpretation) or an Evangelical conspiracy theory (less generous interpretation) of what the Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly known as the Vatican Secret Archive, is. They're not "hoarding almost all history ever written" (how would that work?). It's an archive of the Church's and the Vatican's records, accounting, correspondence, declarations, decisions, and other various affairs. Over the past several hundred years of dutiful documentary-keeping, that does add up to a lot of history about the development of European politics, culture, and colonization! There are in fact two archives; one which has been accessible to scholars since 1881, and one which is owned unilaterally by the Pope and only extremely rarely opened for any sort of access to outsiders. John Paul II actually made it easier for researchers to access those archives, though "easier" does not mean "easy" and is still very much at the Pope's discretion. However, they are archives pertaining to the Pope's and Church's affairs, not all of human history.

the original biographies of the Sons of Liberty were all works of fiction (like Washington and the apple tree),

True! But also a little complicated. The story about Washington and the cherry tree is complete fiction, and we know who to blame for it: Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, who wrote his famous biography of Washington right after Washington died and the nation was clamoring for tributes to him. He was kind of shameless about writing for the masses things that would sell. But at the same time, it was part of the myth-making of the new nation, part of a very common process at the time of nearly deifying Washington. But it is also true that we do in fact have a lot of letters and diaries written directly by these guys. We don't need to rely on Weems for fanciful stories about them, even if they have entered into the mythology-building of the US as a nation.

Greek and Roman statues were painted but the people who discovered them found it garish so they stripped the paint off,

Have you ever seen what happens to painted stone when left out in the elements over time? The paint chips off. Being exposed to the elements or buried in the dirt for hundreds or thousands of years does a number on the painted exterior of a statue. Here's a Jesuit scholar from 1913 lamenting this: "It is a notorious fact that the remains of colour fade very fast from marbles that are exposed to the light after centuries of burial and concealment. It is the universal experience of classical archaeologists. A French explorer describes some colours vanishing from sarcophagi found at Carthage "comme de la fumée" [like smoke]. Add to this the perfectly intelligible cleaning consequent on first discovery in the earth, and the still more disastrous and less pardonable washings with acid that, until recent years, were the fate of all classical statues. Even still another risk has to be remembered, the taking of casts […] Add these fates together, and say whether their total does not offer an explanation for a prejudiced view." Honestly, as Gisela M. A. Richter (1944) says, "The fact that any color at all remains is really more remarkable than that it has disappeared in the majority of cases." Greek and Roman statues, probably even marble statues, were painted! Yes! But there was probably little paint remaining even when the Renaissance sculptors and art collectors got ahold of them. And while the discoverers deliberately stripping off the paint because they decided it should not have been there is one potential reason (note the reference to acid-washing), and the pure white marble was a very ideologically-loaded Enlightment-era aesthetic highlighting the purity of the form, and 1700s-1800s English archaeologists and antiquarians had vicious debates over whether the marble statues were painted like the fate of their cultural hegemony rested on it, "removing the paint for its garishness" was not even close to the primary reason the colored paint does not remain. These are some resources about the Gods in Color exhibition that did experimental reconstructions of the colors of some statues.

DaVinci invented a tank,

Leonardo da Vinci drew designs for many devices, including a war machine that does resemble a modern tank! It's frequently described (with hedging descriptions) like "has been seen as a prototype of a tank." But there's no evidence that it was ever built, and it's unclear if the wheels and gear system would have worked. Can he be said to have "invented a tank"? I guess it depends on your definition of "invented."

Lancelot is a fanfiction OC,

This is either a flippant or deeply disingenuous way to describe the origins, evolution, and recording of King Arthur mythology, its use in literature and nationalist propaganda, and the way this is different from the way fanfiction interacts with a canon. @chimaerakitten knows much more about this than I do.

and the Catholic Church was founded after numerous other Christian churches and proceeded to burn the holy books that didn’t support their version (like the Gospel of Judas, which establishes that the “betrayal” was Jesus’s plan because how was he supposed to die as planned, and they plotted it together).

Ohhhh boy it's complicated. I am out of energy and by god it is late but there is a reason that books and books and books have been written about the history of Christianity, the early schisms, the creation of the canon, Gnosticism, and the origins of the Catholic Church.

Basically: if it can be summed up in one sentence as a "gotcha!" it is probably More Complicated Than That.

findingfeather

OP, you deserve many medals for not simply having many of the replies to this post become your supervillain origin story. Sympathy from the very bottom of my soul.

prismatic-bell

Something else I don’t see on this list that’s very true is “working from outdated or very niche information.”

Like. Here’s my favorite example because I saw it happen in real-time. My first day in History of Theatre I—which was a pretty rigorous course intended for theatre majors and dramaturges, this is not the core class you took in high school or college to get your humanities credit—our professor walked in and said “over this summer, your textbook became outdated.”

So quick—if you have taken an intro to theatre class, or you’re a theatre kid, where did theatre start?

If you very confidently said “Ancient Greece, it started when an actor named Thespis stepped out of the chorus to recite lines,” you are…..correct, technically, for a very specific definition of theatre. And if you said “ancient Egypt! In the 00s it was decided that the religious ritual reenacting the death of Osiris met the definition of theatre, pushing back the birth of theatre by over 1500 years!” You are….also correct, technically, for a very specific definition of theatre. Both answers are also wrong.

The definition that was used when I began study was “at least one actor, with scripted lines, and an audience, in a dedicated space.” (Note that “in a dedicated space” doesn’t mean “in a theatre.” If you’re doing a play at random in a park while people walk through your “set,” that’s not theatre. If you set up chairs in the park and have edges of a “stage” marked off, it is theatre. This is an academic definition, not one that’s making a value judgment.) By the time I left school there was a fierce debate going on over whether the definition should include religious ritual, and if so, how the rest of the definition should be classified, because you can’t include the reenactment of the death of Osiris and not include the religious rituals of a significant portion of Christianity (among other religions). You can see where this gets thorny real quick. As of 2023, the argument continues, and that is how both answers to my question are correct and incorrect at the same time. And it doesn’t get any less complicated! This is literally just the tip of the question.

But as far as I know, “Ancient Greece” is still considered the de facto answer for laypeople, because it neatly cuts out the religious questions and it’s way easier than getting into the weeds of theatrical theory with somebody who doesn’t know anything more obscure than Wicked and neither knows nor cares about the relationship between medieval street theatre, Renaissance royal courts, and the Barnum and Bailey circus. (And that’s fine. We can’t all be theatrical professionals, nor should we be.) Someone saying Ancient Greece is the birthplace of theatre isn’t wrong. They’re just working from outdated and simplified information, and that can lead to misunderstandings.

The Mighty WOLF (mouse)

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.