Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2217681" data-attributes="member: 30001">Yea, I think it's one thing to say that you don't know what happened at some point in the past. It's another for people to talk about Atlanteans and space ships. Mainstream historians have inherited some baggage that makes it hard for them to interface with the general public with unquestioned credibility.  One is the popular belief (probably correct) that the winners write history.  This causes people to scrutinize all history for political motive (as has been done on this thread).  And in fact historians (especially long ago) have made all sorts of mistakes based on bias.  Look at all the stuff about Aryans, or the fact (I think) that many historians could not give native peoples credit for the huge monuments that Europeans discovered.  I imagine the pendulum will continue to swing in both directions for a while, but I think historians need to be humble. Of course popular culture is probably going to far in the other direction (because Atlantis sells), and I worry (patronizingly, of course) that the degree to which students rely on the Internet now for information is going to be a serious problem.  I think "they" really need to start teaching people how to analyze information - because at this point all it takes is some doofus with a knowledge of HTML and some free time to spread around information.  If I were to teach a class on the topic, the first day would be a trip to snopes.com. (Gizmo gets off soapbox)</blockquote>

Verification