What Really Happened In The Past?
It is a broad, but fascinating topic for our round table this time. In this hectic time of change, with major new conspiracies regularly being unearthed, we should be reminded of, and appreciate, those who tried to preserve an accurate telling of past events in the face of cover-ups, white-washes, propaganda and blatant ignorance.
Many things in history did not happen as we are told in state education and main stream sources. What example do you have? Which topic do you find most intriguing?
Thanks to everyone who made a suggestion and voted and to u/Gottmituns for the winning suggestion.
For textual veracity, one need only look at the long list of scholars since his own time who have referenced and/or commented on Heroditus' texts.
The oldest purported examples of the work were found in the 1800's (goalpost shifting from 1920 much?) but the text was translated, read, critiqued and copied since antiquity. If it were forged, then the forging was done as long ago as when it was written anyway, so to claim it is "fake" is only to really say you think someone other than Heroditus wrote it then.
*One a tangentially related note, try to find sketches of the colloseum, Hagia Sofia, Parthenon, Pantheon etc before the 15th century... people did not do much architectural or landscape art before that, at least that survived anyway.)