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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andrew D. Gable" data-source="post: 1157217" data-attributes="member: 4144">I agree with Reapersaurus, somewhat.  While I do agree with other posters that it's not quite right to say we know absolutely nothing about the past, there is quite a bit we don't know.  Two specific areas I'd point to for this are the Three Kingdoms era, and the whole Jack The Ripper thing (although of course, there are others)... Three Kingdoms (along with Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.) is problematic because so many folktales and legends have sprung up around that period that it's extremely difficult to get through the embroidery to find the way things really happened.  JTR and other historical mysteries are tough because in the 115 years since it happened, there's been countless theories tossed about, and TONS of books by people who do really shoddy research and change the facts to fit their theories, rather than change their theory to fit the facts.  Part of the problem here is that while fairly good records were kept, for the most part they've been lost or destroyed.  Bottomline, it's really hard to say how much of what we know about it is true and how much of it is just crappy research by later authors.  One invention or common mistake which gets picked up on by other authors, and 100 years later it's accepted as fact.  I'll insert a slight off-topic comment and say that this is why I really believe that things like, for example, Jack the Ripper will NEVER be solved.  Everyone has a pet theory, and bottomline, no one can prove or disprove any of them.A good specific example here is the story of Samuel de Champlain's sighting of the Lake Champlain monster, which has appeared in cryptozoological books ad nauseum.  Research in the original sources (Champlain's journals, etc.) reveals that the actual sighting was made far from Lake Champlain, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence IIRC, and was simply a large garfish or pike at that.  Another is the piasa rock painting in Illinois.  Although we have this image of it as a thunderbird-type, consultation of Marquette's original journals and sketches reveals that the original painting lacked wings, and further research also reveals that the story of piasa-as-thunderbird was the invention of an author in the 1830s.</blockquote>

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