Pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is produced by the application of the research techniques of the historical method (primary sources and evidence) characteristic of legitimate history; yet, in itself, the work of pseudohistory is intellectually inconsistent with the historical record and with the common-sense understanding held in the collective memory of society. In practice, a pseudohistory presents a big lie—sensational claims—about historical fact that would require the revision (re-writing) of the historical record. The term pseudohistory is applied to works of historical revision that are based upon or derived from a theory or upon a re-interpretation or both; moreover, the related term cryptohistory applied to a pseudohistory based upon or derived from the superstitions inherent to occultism.

Definition and etymology

The term pseudohistory was coined in the early 19th century; a usage older than the term pseudo-scholarship and earlier than pseudo-science.[1] Similarly, in an 1815 attestation, it is used to refer to Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, a fictional contest between two historical poets.[2] The pejorative sense of the term, labelling a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation.[3] Pseudohistory is akin to pseudoscience in that both forms of falsification are achieved using the methodology that purports to, but does not, adhere to the established standards of research for the given field of intellectual enquiry to which the pseudoscience claims to be a part, and which offers little or no supporting evidence for its plausibility.[4]

Historian of science Douglas Allchin[5] contends that when history in science discovery is presented in a simplified way, with drama exaggerated and scientists romanticized, this creates wrong stereotypes about how science works, and in fact constitutes pseudohistory, despite being based on real facts.

Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman see pseudohistory as "the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes".[6]

Characteristics

Robert Todd Carroll has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo-historic works. He states that: "Pseudohistory is purported history which:

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke prefers the term "cryptohistory." He identifies two necessary elements as "A complete ignorance of the primary sources" and the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims".[8][9]

Other common characteristics of pseudohistory are:

Categories and examples

The following are some common categories of pseudohistorical theory, with examples. Note that not all theories in a listed category are necessarily pseudohistorical; they are rather categories which seem to attract pseudohistorians. Caution should be exercised with lists of theories, as proponents of any historical theory, or any ideology, may assert that theories with which they disagree are pseudohistorical, in order to discredit them and their promoters.

Ancient aliens, ancient technologies, and lost lands

Zechariah Sitchin, an influential proponent of the ancient astronauts hypothesis, posing with an enlarged photograph of a purported 6000-year-old cylinder seal impression

In 1968, Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods?, which claims that ancient visitors from outer space constructed the pyramids and other monuments. He has since published other books in which he makes similar claims. These claims have all been categorized as pseudohistory.[10] Similarly, Zechariah Sitchin has published numerous books claiming that a race of extraterrestrial beings from the Planet Nibiru known as the Anunnaki visited earth in ancient times in search of gold and genetically engineered humans to serve as their slaves. He claims that memories of these occurrences are recorded in Sumerian mythology, as well as other mythologies all across the globe. These speculations have likewise been categorized as pseudohistory.[11][12]

Christopher Knight has published numerous books, including Uriel's Machine (2000), expounding pseudohistorical assertions that ancient civilizations possessed technology far more advanced than the technology of today.[13][14][15][16]

The claim that a lost continent known as Lemuria once existed in the Pacific Ocean has likewise been categorized as pseudohistory.[17]

Alternative chronologies

An alternative chronology is a revised sequences of events, which deviates from the standard timeline of world history accepted by mainstream scholars. An example of an "alterative chronology" is Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology, which claims that recorded history actually began around the year 1000 AD and all events which allegedly occurred prior to that point either never really happened at all, or are simply inaccurate retellings of events that happened later.[18] Another, slightly less extreme example, is the New Chronology of David Rohl, which claims that the accepted timelines for ancient Egyptian and Israelite history are wrong.[19]

Catastrophism

The theories advanced in Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision have been categorized as pseudohistory.[20]

Historical revisionism

In the eighth century, a forged document known as Donation of Constantine, which supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope, became widely circulated.[21]

In the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth published the History of the Kings of Britain, a pseudohistorical work purporting to describe the ancient history and origins of the British people. The book synthesises earlier Celtic mythical traditions to inflate the deeds of the mythical King Arthur. The contemporary historian William of Newburgh wrote around 1190 that "it is quite clear that everything this man wrote about Arthur and his successors, or indeed about his predecessors from Vortigern onwards, was made up, partly by himself and partly by others".[22]

The Shakespeare authorship question is a fringe theory which claims that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.[23][24][25][26]

The belief that Jesus of Nazareth never existed is known as the Christ myth theory; it currently finds very little support among scholars and historians of all faiths and is often deemed pseudohistorical in modern academia.[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]

Confederate revisionists (AKA "Civil War revisionists"), Lost Cause of the Confederacy, and Neo-Confederates argue that the Confederate States of America's prime motivation was the maintenance of states' rights and limited government, rather than the preservation and expansion of slavery.[38][39][40]

Ethnocentric revisionism

Most Afrocentric (i.e. Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories, see Ancient Egyptian race controversy) ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical,[41][42] alongside the "Indigenous Aryans" theories published by Hindu nationalists during the 1990s and 2000s.[43] The "crypto-history" developed within Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism has likewise been placed under this categorization.[44] Among leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is believed to have been influenced by occultism and according to one theory, developed the SS base at Wewelsburg in accordance with an esoteric plan.

The Sun Language Theory is a pseudohistorical ideology which argues that all languages are descended from a form of proto-Turkish.[45] The theory may have been partially devised in order to legitimize Arabic and Semitic loanwords occurring in the Turkish language by instead asserting that the Arabic and Semitic words were derived from the Turkish ones rather than vice versa.[46]

A large number of nationalist pseudohistorical theories deal with the legendary Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. British-Israelism, also known as Anglo-Israelism, the most famous example of this type, has been conclusively refuted by mainstream historians using evidence from a vast array of different fields of study.[47][48][49]

The "Ancient Macedonia continuity theory" is another pseudohistorical theory, which postulates demographic, cultural and linguistic continuity between Macedonians of antiquity and the main ethnic group in the present-day Republic of Macedonia.

Antisemitic pseudohistory

American edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a fraudulent work purporting to show a historical conspiracy for world domination by Jews.[50] The work was conclusively proven to be a forgery in August 1921, when The Times revealed that extensive portions of the document were directly plagiarized from Maurice Joly's 1864 satirical dialogue The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu,[51] as well as Hermann Goedsche's 1868 anti-Semitic novel Biarritz.[52]

The Khazar theory is an academic fringe theory which postulates that the bulk of European Jewry are of Central Asian (Turkic) origin. In spite of mainstream academic consensus, this theory has been promoted in Anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist circles alike, arguing that Jews are an alien element both in Europe and in Palestine.

Holocaust denial and genocide denial in general are widely categorized as pseudohistory. Proponents of such claims include David Irving and others, who argue that the Holocaust, Holodomor, Armenian genocide, and other genocides did not occur, or were exaggerated greatly.[53]

Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories

Most theories of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas and other reputable scholarship, have been classified as pseudohistory, including claims that the Americas were actually discovered by Arabs or Muslims.[54] Gavin Menzies's book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America, has also been categorized as a work of pseudohistory.[17]

Psychohistory

Psychohistory was the ill-fated attempt to merge psychology with history, replacing historical method. Its most notable proponent is Lloyd deMause, the founder of The Journal of Psychohistory. Mainstream historians have categorized it as pseudohistory.[55]

Religious speculation

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a book which purports to show that certain historical figures, such as Godfrey of Bouillon, and contemporary aristocrats are the lineal descendants of Jesus Christ. Mainstream historians have widely panned the book, categorizing it as pseudohistory, and pointing out that the genealogical tables used in the book are now known to be spurious.[56]

Another example of religious pseudohistory is the thesis, found in the writings of David Barton and others, asserting that the United States of America was founded as an exclusively Christian nation.[57][58][59][60] Mainstream historians instead support the traditional position, which holds that the American founding fathers intended for church and state to be kept separate.[61][62]

Searches for Noah's Ark have also been categorized as pseudohistory.[63]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Monthly magazine and British register, Volume 55 (February 1823), p. 449, in reference to John Galt, Ringan Gilhaize: Or, The Covenanters, Oliver & Boyd, 1823.
  2. ↑ C. A. Elton, Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean 1815, p. xix.
  3. ↑ The Critical review: or, Annals of literature, Volume 1 ed. Tobias George Smollett, 1815, p. 152
  4. ↑ Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. pp 7–18. ISBN 978-1-86189-430-4
  5. ↑ Allchin, D. 2004. Pseudohistory and pseudoscience 1 Science & Education 13:179–195.
  6. ↑ Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman. Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, University of California Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-520-26098-6, p.2
  7. ↑ Carroll, Robert Todd. The skeptic's dictionary. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons (2003), p. 305.
  8. ↑ Goodrick-Clarke 1985: 224,225
  9. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism, page 225 (Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2005 edition). ISBN 978-1-86064-973-8
  10. ↑ Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-86189-430-4.
  11. ↑ Michael S. Heiser. "The Myth of a Sumerian 12th Planet" (PDF). Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  12. ↑ Carroll, Robert T (1994–2009). "Zecharia Sitchin and The Earth Chronicles". The Skeptic's Dictionary. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  13. ↑ Merriman, Nick, editor, Public Archaeology, Routledge, 2004 page 260
  14. ↑ Tonkin, S., 2003, Uriel's Machine – a Commentary on some of the Astronomical Assertions.
  15. ↑ Merriman, Nick, ed. (2004). "The comforts of unreason: the importance and relevance of alternative archaeology". Public Archaeology. London: Routledge. p. 260. ISBN 9780415258890.
  16. ↑ Tonkin, Stephen (2003). "Uriel's Machine – a Commentary on some of the Astronomical Assertions". The Astronomical Unit. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
  17. 1 2 Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. p. 11.ISBN 978-1-86189-430-4.
  18. ↑ Novikov, S. P. (2000). "Pseudohistory and pseudomathematics: fantasy in our life". Russian Mathematical Surveys. 55.
  19. ↑ "In his book A Test of Time (1995), Rohl argues that the conventionally accepted dates for strata such as the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in Palestine are wrong" - in Daniel Jacobs, Shirley Eber, Francesca Silvani, Israel and The Palestinian Territories: The Rough Guide, page 424 (Rough Guides Ltd., 2nd revised edition, 1998). ISBN 978-1-85828-248-0
  20. ↑ Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. p. 169. ISBN 978-1-86189-430-4.
  21. ↑ "Before Jon Stewart". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
  22. ↑ Thorpe, Lewis. The History of the Kings of Britain. p. 17.
  23. ↑ Hope, Warren and Kim Holston. The Shakespeare Controversy (2009) 2nd ed., 3: "In short, this is a history written in opposition to the current prevailing view".
  24. ↑ Potter, Lois. "Marlowe onstage" in Constructing Christopher Marlowe, James Alan Downie and J. T. Parnell, eds. (2000, 2001), paperback ed., 88–101; 100: "The possibility that Shakespeare may not really be Shakespeare, comic in the context of literary history and pseudo-history, is understandable in this world of double-agents . . ."
  25. ↑ Aaronovitch, David. "The anti-Stratfordians" in Voodoo Histories (2010), 226–229: "There is, however, a psychological or anthropological question to be answered about our consumption of pseudo-history and pseudoscience. I have now plowed through enough of these books to be able to state that, as a genre, they are badly written and, in their anxiety to establish their dubious neo-scholarly credentials, incredibly tedious. . . . Why do we read bad history books that have the added lack of distinction of not being in any way true or useful . . ."
  26. ↑ Kathman, David. Shakespeare Authorship Page: ". . . Shakespeare scholars regard Oxfordianism as pseudo-scholarship which arbitrarily discards the methods used by real historians. . . . In order to support their beliefs, Oxfordians resort to a number of tactics which will be familiar to observers of other forms of pseudo-history and pseudo-science."
  27. ↑ In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart Ehrman (a secular agnostic) wrote: "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees" B. Ehrman, 2011 Forged : writing in the name of God ISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. page 285
  28. ↑ Robert M. Price (an atheist who denies the existence of Jesus) agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars: Robert M. Price "Jesus at the Vanishing Point" in The Historical Jesus: Five Views edited by James K. Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy, 2009 InterVarsity, ISBN 028106329X page 61
  29. ↑ Michael Grant (a classicist) states that "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary." in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant 2004 ISBN 1898799881 page 200
  30. ↑ Richard A. Burridge states: "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that anymore." in Jesus Now and Then by Richard A. Burridge and Graham Gould (Apr 1, 2004) ISBN 0802809774 page 34
  31. ↑ Did Jesus exist?, Bart Ehrman, 2012, Chapter 1
  32. ↑ Van Voorst 2000, p. 16
  33. ↑ Sykes, Stephen W. (2007). "Paul's understanding of the death of Jesus". Sacrifice and Redemption. Cambridge University Press. pp. 35–36. ISBN 978-0-521-04460-8.
  34. ↑ Mark Allan Powell (1998). Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-664-25703-3.
  35. ↑ James L. Houlden (2003). Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: Entries A - J. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-856-3.
  36. ↑ Robert E. Van Voorst (2000). Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5.
  37. ↑ Dickson, John. "Best of 2012: The irreligious assault on the historicity of Jesus". Abc.net.au. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  38. ↑ David Barton (December 2008). "Confronting Civil War Revisionism: Why the South Went To War". Wall Builders. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  39. ↑ Barrett Brown (27 December 2010). "Neoconfederate civil war revisionism: Those who commemorate the South's fallen heroes are entitled to do so, but not to deny that slavery was the war's prime cause". TheGuardian.com. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  40. ↑ "Howard Swint: Confederate revisionism warps U.S. history". Charleston Daily Mail. June 15, 2011. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  41. ↑ Sherwin, Elisabeth. "Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism". Davis Community Network. Retrieved 2007-11-13.
  42. ↑ Ortiz de Montellano, Bernardo & Gabriel Haslip Viera & Warren Barbour (1997). "They were NOT here before Columbus: Afrocentric hyper-diffusionism in the 1990s". Ethnohistory. Duke University Press. 44 (2): 199–234. JSTOR 483368. doi:10.2307/483368.
  43. ↑ Nanda, Meera (January–March 2005). "Response to my critics" (PDF). Social Epistemology. 19 (1): 147–191. doi:10.1080/02691720500084358. Sokal, Alan (2006). "Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers?". In Fagan, Garrett. Archaeological Fantasies: How pseudoarchaeology misrepresents the past and misleads the public. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-30592-6.
  44. ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 1985. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Several reprints.) Expanded with a new Preface, 2004, I.B. Tauris & Co. ISBN 1-86064-973-4
  45. ↑ Aytürk, İlker (November 2004). "Turkish Linguists against the West: The Origins of Linguistic Nationalism in Atatürk's Turkey". Middle Eastern Studies. London: Frank Cass & Co (Routledge). 40 (6): 1–25. ISSN 0026-3206. OCLC 86539631. doi:10.1080/0026320042000282856.
  46. ↑ Zuckermann, Ghil’ad (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 165. ISBN 1-4039-1723-X.
  47. ↑ Melton, J. Gordon (2005). Encyclopedia of Protestantism. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 107. ISBN 0-8160-5456-8.
  48. ↑ Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192802903.
  49. ↑ Shapiro, Faydra L. (2015). Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. p. 151.
  50. ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", last updated 4 May 2009.
  51. ↑ Philip Graves. "The truth about "The Protocols"". The Times, August 16, 17, and 18, 1921. London.
  52. ↑ Segel, Binjamin W (1996) [1926], Levy, Richard S, ed., A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, University of Nebraska Press, p. 97, ISBN 0-8032-9245-7.
  53. ↑ Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume, 1994, Page 215, ISBN 0-452-27274-2
  54. ↑ http://hnn.us/article/23662
  55. ↑ Barzun, Jacques (1989). Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History and History. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780226038513. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  56. ↑ Laura Miller (2006). Dan Burstein, ed. Secrets of the Code. Vanguard Press. p. 405. ISBN 978-1-59315-273-4.
  57. ↑ Specter, Arlen (Spring 1995). "Defending the wall: Maintaining church/state separation in America". Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. 18 (2): 575–590.
  58. ↑ House Passes, Considers Evangelical Resolutions, Baltimore Chronicle
  59. ↑ David Barton – Propaganda Masquerading as History, People for the American Way
  60. ↑ Boston Theological Institute Newsletter Volume XXXIV, No. 17, Richard V. Pierard, January 25, 2005
  61. ↑ Boston, Rob (2007). "Dissecting the religious right's favorite Bible Curriculum", Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Humanist Association. Retrieved on April 9, 2013
  62. ↑ Harvey, Paul (10 May 2011). "Selling the Idea of a Christian Nation: David Barton's Alternate Intellectual Universe". Religion Dispatches. Retrieved April 9, 2013.
  63. ↑ Dietz, Robert S. "Ark-Eology: A Frightening Example of Pseudo-Science" in Geotimes 38:9 (Sept. 1993) p. 4.
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