misconceptions popularized by Hollywood Archives - Page 2 of 4

Things That Did Not Cause the Fall of the Roman Empire

People have a lot of theories about what caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. In particular, many American conservatives seem to really love talking about the parallels that supposedly exist between the current situation in the United States and the fall of the Roman Empire. Usually, they try to argue that we need to reject liberal ideas and return to good old-fashioned traditional values and that, if we do this, we will be able to save our empire from its impending doom.

Unfortunately, the people who make these comparisons generally know nothing at all about what really caused the fall of the Roman Empire. They basically just impute things they don’t like about our current situation and claim that these things are what led to the Roman Empire’s downfall. (They also invariably seem to forget that only the western portion of the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century AD; the eastern portion managed to survive for a thousand years after that until the conquest of the city of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.)

Today, I’m going to talk about some things that definitely were not significant factors in the decline of the western Roman Empire, but that people—especially American conservatives—like to pretend were.

No, “Edelweiss” Is Not an Austrian Folk Song or a Nazi Song

There are a lot of popular misconceptions about the song “Edelweiss.” Many people think it is an age-old Austrian folk song. Many people even think that it is the national anthem of Austria. Other people have gotten the bizarre impression that it was composed as a Nazi song or even that it was the national anthem of Nazi Germany.

In reality, the song “Edelweiss” was composed by the American composing duo Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers as an original song for the 1959 musical The Sound of Music. Although Hammerstein and Rodgers were trying to imitate the overall genre of folk music, they did not base their song on any preexisting lyrics or melody.

No, Public Universities Aren’t Dominated by Evil Atheist Professors Seeking to Destroy Students’ Faith

The idea that evil, liberal, atheist professors are forcing their students to renounce their faith is an extremely longstanding and pervasive fear among conservative evangelical Christians here in the United States. Right-wing evangelicals have been blaming universities and their supposedly evil, liberal, atheist professors for increasing secularization in society since at least the late nineteenth century.

The trope of the atheist professor forcing his students to renounce God can be found in political speeches, cartoons, internet memes, and even films. Despite the longstanding prevalence of this idea, however, it is, for the most part, entirely unsupported by evidence.

Who Was the Pharaoh of the Exodus Really?

In popular culture, Rameses II (ruled 1279 – 1213 BC) is almost always portrayed as the pharaoh of the Exodus. He is most famously portrayed as such in the 1956 epic film The Ten Commandments, but he has also appeared in this role more recently in the 1998 DreamWorks animated musical drama film The Prince of Egypt, in the 2013 History Channel miniseries The Bible, and in the 2014 epic film Exodus: Gods and Kings.

It may come as a surprise to many people, then, that the Book of Exodus never actually gives the name of the pharaoh who supposedly tried to keep the Israelites from leaving. Instead, throughout the book, the pharaoh is merely referred to by the Hebrew word פַּרְעֹה (par‘ōh), which is the source of our English word pharaoh. How, then, did we all come to think of Rameses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus? And, more importantly, who was the real pharaoh of the Exodus? Let’s delve back into the mists of antiquity and find out the truth.

What Did Jesus Really Look Like?

One of the greatest mysteries of ancient history is the true appearance of Jesus of Nazareth. Most people today have an image that immediately pops into their head when they hear the name “Jesus” of a tall, handsome white man with long, flowing hair and a beard and maybe a halo. This is certainly not what the historical Jesus really looked like. In fact, the image we all have of Jesus actually has a quite fascinating origin. In ancient times, Jesus was represented in a wide variety of different ways, some of them downright bizarre, but the standard image we all know and recognize eventually became the canonical one.

We don’t know much about what the historical Jesus looked like, but the gospels and other ancient sources do provide some details that can allow us to reconstruct a very general sense of his possible appearance.

No, Aristotle Is Not Telling You to Unleash Your Inner Rage

Most people today believe that the word catharsis refers to the necessary release of negative emotions and destructive impulses for the sake of “purging” oneself of those emotions and impulses. Many people see this “purging” of negative emotions—usually specifically anger—as healthy or even necessary. This idea of catharsis as emotional purging is usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BC).

Psychological experiments, however, have shown that unleashing your anger does not cause that anger to go away. In fact, actually has a tendency to make people even more angry than they were originally. Furthermore, while Aristotle did use the Greek word κάθαρσις (kátharsis) in his Poetics, he certainly didn’t use that word to mean what many people today think he meant by it.

No, There Isn’t a Conspiracy to “Hide the Truth” about Ancient History

One of the most annoying and pervasive beliefs I have encountered in my time on the internet is the belief that there is a huge conspiracy among scholars or among government agents to “hide the truth” about ancient history. This strange conviction that many people seem to share forms the basis for countless conspiracy theories of all different varieties.

For instance, I’ve seen countless people online claiming that academics or the United States government are secretly hiding evidence that aliens really visited Earth in ancient times or evidence for the existence of unknown lost civilizations. Funnily enough, no one actually seems to agree on exactly what kind of “truth” that governments and scholars are hiding; the only thing they all agree on is that, somehow or another, they’re hiding something and its always something big.

Unfortunately, for the conspiracy theorists, I’m going to have to burst their bubble; not only are historians and governments not “hiding the truth” about ancient history, but they actually have every motivation to not hide it.

Modern Stereotypes about Ancient Civilizations

I’ve been debunking popular misconceptions about ancient civilizations online for a while now. One thing I’ve noticed is that the vast majority of the misconceptions I’ve debunked tend to play into a some very specific stereotypes about what certain ancient civilizations were supposedly like.

It is clear that most people who haven’t studied ancient history think of ancient civilizations in terms of stereotypes. Thus, lots of people (and not always the same people) imagine the Egyptians as mystics with secret knowledge; the Greeks as intelligent, progressive, scientific-minded lovers of freedom; the Romans as perpetually debauched, horny, and violent; and early Christians as fanatical, ignorant, obscurantist destroyers of civilization.

All of these stereotypes are wrong to some extent. Most of them are wildly inaccurate. In this article I want to look at these stereotypes, where they come from, and some of the smaller misconceptions that feed into them.

Sorry, Most Prehistoric Peoples Didn’t Live in Caves

If you’ve ever heard anything at all about prehistoric peoples, it’s that they all lived in caves. This is one of the most ingrained ideas in our society about what prehistoric life was like. You can find depictions of so-called “cavemen” all over the place in popular culture, such as in the comic strip B.C. (published 1958 – present), the cartoon The Flintstones (originally broadcast 1960 – 1966), the film One Million Years B.C. (released 1966), the film History of the World, Part I (released 1981), the film Quest for Fire (released 1981), the animated film The Croods (released 2013), and in countless other places.

The truth, though, is that living in caves has never been the norm for any species of hominin. Humans and human ancestors have always lived primarily in dwellings other than caves. The reasons why we always imagine our distant ancestors living in caves, though, are complex and fascinating and they reveal a lot more about us than they do about prehistoric peoples.

Why Flaming Arrows Are Kind Of Stupid

When I was in fifth and sixth grade, I played a game with my friends where we pretended we lived in a fantasy world called “Clod.” Most of my friends pretended to be rulers of various fictional countries within this world. One of my friends pretended that he was the king of the elves. Whenever there was a battle, he always made a big deal about how his elven archers shot flaming arrows, which he always said were so much more deadly than regular arrows.

As it turns out, though, flaming arrows were rarely ever used in open combat by pre-modern peoples and the idea of using flaming arrows in open combat is actually kind of stupid. Flaming arrows were a real thing, but they weren’t often used and, when they were used, they weren’t used the way they are normally portrayed in movies and books.