Stupidest things you have ever seen written (about ancient history)

[anubis88]

So i was reading the most popular website of the national tv channel of my country, and there was that piece on "mystical" historical cities, like El Dorado, Karakurum, Ys etc... Among those there was Carthage as well; Here is what was written under the picture of modern day carthage in a rough translation;

... It was a most powerfull city state, and the main rival of Rome in the 3rd century BC. Her strenght came from it's killer phoenican fleet and an army of elephants, which controlled mountain ranges under Hannibal. Even tought her nickname was the Shining city, it did not survive for long, as it was taken by Rome and destroyed.

I mean Christ, how could someone write this on the most read webpage in the country? I guess it's time for me to start writing something about nano-technology and publish it somewhere, since it seems people can write just about anything these days...

Did you ever read such bull**** in your native web pages, or for worse, in books?

[Populus Romanus]

300.

[fomalhaut]

sometimes ancient history is more useful in its forced parrallels and morals (or wonderous feats) than in telling of the factual events. I know that's obvious but it does console me when watching things like "Ultimate Warrior", "300", "300 Spartans", etc. but i don't think you mean entertainment media but rather 'factual' nonsense.

i'm not sure where you live OP but if you get the history channel then just about anything mentioned, ancient history or not, is usually laughably wrong or exaggerated. It teaches the type of history that forms our cultural heritage rather than facts.

but definitely, PopulusR, 300 is one of the worst offenders but that is almost trite to mention that novel now.

[Duguntz]

300 is an awesome movie... AWESOME. you hear me?

[fomalhaut]

No one is contesting the perceived entertainment value of said piece of media! just its historical accuracy which is clearly not its goal in any way, but rather to use a particular point in ancient history to explore certain modern themes!

to many myself included the work is Frank Miller creating a us vs. them dichotomy to justify wars abroad or reinforce xenophobia of the first decade of the 21st century. Notice the perfect white males fighting the aggressive foreigners from the east who are implied to be homosexuals. The perfect white males are through their superior elan and culture of the west overcome these aggressive homosexuals until a physically handicapped person turncoats and destroys them.

Hmm, what were you trying to tell us, Frank Miller?

[mlc82]

(seen on a forum post today, paraphrased)

"Hannibal (Barca) and Cleopatra were black. They were from Africa."
http://weeseeyou.com/wp-content/uplo...q_hannibal.jpg

[Basileus_ton_Basileon]

...Lorica Segmentata.

[jirisys]

...Lorica Segmentata.

On a camillan trairii.

Really.. My eyes burn on those shows. At least asterix's passable cause it's a comic.

~Jirisys ()

[vartan]

I don't know about you guys but if I'm getting paid to work as a history consultant, and my advice isn't taken seriously but rather twisted, I could care less. Puts the bread on the table, so to speak. Peoples should grow their critical analytical skills in order not to take silly exhibitions at face value.

[jirisys]

I don't know about you guys but if I'm getting paid to work as a history consultant, and my advice isn't taken seriously but rather twisted, I could care less. Puts the bread on the table, so to speak. Peoples should grow their critical analytical skills in order not to take silly exhibitions at face value.

You're welcome for the idea.

Problem is when things are not supposed to be silly... Oh the madness/sparta

~Jirisys ()

[Lazy O]

I dont think you can put 300(the parody) in this category,it was purely fictional and meant for entertainment. The 300 Spartans however was utter bt.

[Andronikos]

Many of those myths, like those that were created sometimes in romanticism which connect modern nations to absolutely unrelated ancient cultures and claim to be their descendants. Yes, perhaps these myths had some use in that era, but nowadays we need more critical approach to history. For example, some of the top are: as I come from Slavic country, I have read many claims that Slavs lived in antiquity where they live today, that they were by far the most developed people in the world (they had everything from advanced metallurgy, wireless communication - because no cables have been excavated to warp powered spaceships , come on, yes we Slavs are awesome and so we don't need this crap), that migrations are false theory, because whole nations simply can't migrate, that men do not originate from Africa, but from Eurasia, that history is some kind of manipulated western (Anglo-Saxon) propaganda and so on. Unbelievable what you can find on the internet.

[Lazy O]

Or in government published schoolbooks in my case

[anubis88]

Let's drop the 300 discussion, since it has been done to death, but i was thinking on focusing on examples like the one i put as an example.

If we are already mentining Slavs, there's a book in my country, the tiltle being; The Etruscans were Slavs . I mean wth.... The guy tries to prove using ancient Etruscan texts, that they can be paraprhased as ancient slovenian and slavic (which doesnt exist as a written languge). He uses his translations as proof, which end up sometimes like this;

Holding a horse, you can drink wine.

Absurd. Pseudo-science sucks

[DeathFinger]

There's a lot - a lot of stupid things written about history.
Some wikipedia articles are really bad, like some internet articles are too, but knowing the guys who posts them it cannot really be took into consideration. What's worse is when they are specialists. I took some weeks ago a book of the ancient marxists' universities, you know when they wanted to show that Parthians vs Romans was a classes war (and I better not to speak about Germanian invasions on this subject). Shame that I don't remember the book's title btw.

But to me the worse is the "New Chronology" thing. See the wikipedia article on this, it's enough. for example, a certain Dr. Ranajit Pal had argues that Diodotos of Bactria and Ašoka were the same.... There was a thread on this btw ^^

[Randal]

At my university's ancient history faculty, a decade or so back, we had this rather... spirited debate between two of the more eminent professors. (One from a rival university.)

It was about This book. I think this is the full text, I haven't read so I can't be sure.

Anyway, the book claims that Flavius Josephus invented christianity and the person of Jesus, and that he's actually based on Julius, i.e. Julius Caesar. And Galilee was Gaul, Judas was Brutus, etc.

Now taken by itself it seems like pretty ordinary crackpot-ism. What made it truly stupid is that when the thing got picked up by the media, even one ancient history professor started defending it. When the flames started coming in (This debate took place in newspaper editorials and letters and opinion pieces, but those are really just the precursors of internet fora) he quickly back-tracked and the argument was about whether it was scientifically permissible to dismiss this book as arrant nonsense -before- reading it or whether you had to actually read it first.

I didn't read it and am convinced it's nonsense, so I guess you all know which side I was on. ;-)

EDIT: Deathfinger posted while I was checking some facts for this, so I didn't see his post before. But that New Chronology stuff is very similar to this.

[anubis88]

There's a lot - a lot of stupid things written about history.
Some wikipedia articles are really bad, like some internet articles are too, but knowing the guys who posts them it cannot really be took into consideration. What's worse is when they are specialists. I took some weeks ago a book of the ancient marxists' universities, you know when they wanted to show that Parthians vs Romans was a classes war (and I better not to speak about Germanian invasions on this subject). Shame that I don't remember the book's title btw.

But to me the worse is the "New Chronology" thing. See the wikipedia article on this, it's enough. for example, a certain Dr. Ranajit Pal had argues that Diodotos of Bactria and Ašoka were the same.... There was a thread on this btw ^^

Yeah, i've heard about that. Imagine how shocked i was when i learned Kasparov was a supporter of this, since i'm very fond of chess... That's when he stopped being my idol

Interesting; i didn't know Jesus = Caesar

I've already written about this a few years back, but since we are mentioning professors; Our ex middle-ages proffesor told the whole class, that if we want to know how a typical battle of Romans vs Barbarians was fought, we should just watch the first battle in Gladiator, as it is 100% correct. LOL

[Olaf The Great]

"The Byzantine Empire"

[Fluvius Camillus]

On a camillan trairii.

Really.. My eyes burn on those shows. At least asterix's passable cause it's a comic.

~Jirisys ()

Triarii? Didn't they have 2nd Cent AD LS legionaires from 5th BC till 5th AD?

~Fluvius

[The_Blacksmith]

i think the most silly thing ive read wa that Africa was named after Scipio Africanus...

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

"What the Romans did is, they brought order to the Barbarian chaos.." David Dimbleby shamelessly - and with a straight face - espousing the Roman version of history, handed down to us by...Roman propogandists in the BBC series Seven Ages of Britain (not to be confused with the much better, imo, Channel 4 series, Seven Ages of Britain).

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

i think the most silly thing ive read wa that Africa was named after Scipio Africanus...

No.....not really? Surely not?

[antisocialmunky]

The Aeneid.

[Zarathustra Baktrios]

The Aeneid.

This is more about mythology than ancient history, antisocialmunky. I don't believe romans took it as facts, but they celebrated their own version(/copy) of Iliad and Odyssey, created this time by a roman about Rome. This is another way to see how romans used greek culture to build their own. It was a matter of entertainement and its obvious purpose is to glorified the roman society by giving it heroic and divine roots ; it's a tale.
At the same times, The Ovid's Metamorphoses had the same purpose.

[fomalhaut]

This is more about mythology than ancient history, antisocialmunky. I don't believe romans took it as facts, but they celebrated their own version(/copy) of Iliad and Odyssey, created this time by a roman about Rome. This is another way to see how romans used greek culture to build their own. It was a matter of entertainement and its obvious purpose is to glorified the roman society by giving it heroic and divine roots ; it's a tale.
At the same times, The Ovid's Metamorphoses had the same purpose.

Yes this is correct exactly. It was fabricated history as cultural background not as collection of facts. It was literally state created propaganda (Augustus was Virgils patron i believe) with a purpose to give the same sense of solidarity to the Romans as the Hellenes had for 800 years.

[A_Dane]

There's a lot - a lot of stupid things written about history.
Some wikipedia articles are really bad, like some internet articles are too, but knowing the guys who posts them it cannot really be took into consideration. What's worse is when they are specialists. I took some weeks ago a book of the ancient marxists' universities, you know when they wanted to show that Parthians vs Romans was a classes war (and I better not to speak about Germanian invasions on this subject). Shame that I don't remember the book's title btw.

But to me the worse is the "New Chronology" thing. See the wikipedia article on this, it's enough. for example, a certain Dr. Ranajit Pal had argues that Diodotos of Bactria and Ašoka were the same.... There was a thread on this btw ^^

oh the horror... Stuff like this reminds me just why I've lost my faith in humanity...

[Zarax]

On a tunisian "history" website: "After Zama, Hannibal rode out east with 100 knights and lived happily ever after".

Wish I still had the link as it had an excellent comedy value :P

EDIT: Although nothing and I say absolutely nothing can beat some indian ones, with vedic "power plants" and atomic bombs in the 2nd millenium BC

[Andronikos]

I have heard that one about Slavs and Etruscans.

EDIT: Although nothing and I say absolutely nothing can beat some indian ones, with vedic "power plants" and atomic bombs in the 2nd millenium BC

Oh, yes, this and things like lost wisdom of the ancients, that lost civilisations posessed technology advanced when compared to ours, psychic powers and so on. This stuff makes fantastic sci-fi and fantasy stories, but not in RL please.

[antisocialmunky]

I have heard that one about Slavs and Etruscans.



Oh, yes, this and things like lost wisdom of the ancients, that lost civilisations posessed technology advanced when compared to ours, psychic powers and so on. This stuff makes fantastic sci-fi and fantasy stories, but not in RL please.

Oh yeah, the fringe Vedic stuff is pretty out there like the claims that part of India have weird levels of radiation due to some sort of historic nuclear war.

[Ibrahim]

(seen on a forum post today, paraphrased)

"Hannibal (Barca) and Cleopatra were black. They were from Africa."
http://weeseeyou.com/wp-content/uplo...q_hannibal.jpg

even though Cleopatra was a Macedonian woman with not much Egyptian (let alone "African" in her, and Hannibal Barca was a Carthaginian, and from there a semite and accordingly similar to a guy from the Levant or North Africa (i.e." white"-a meaningless term, since it gradates to "blackness", and from there, we're all Africans..)?

god this stuff is stupid.

*end emo diatribe"

Interesting; i didn't know Jesus = Caesar

oh, you did not know? this was all figured out by this guy https://www.youtube.com/Calpurnpiso

Jesus IS Ceasar

yeah...listen to the sane penis obsessed guy who thinks crucifixion is a mythical punishment, never used by the Romans.

yeah, there really are people , who are this...undeveloped.