Pseudohistory
Pseudohistory is a form of pseudoscholarship that attempts to distort or misrepresent the historical record, often by employing methods resembling those used in scholarly historical research. The related term cryptohistory is applied to pseudohistory derived from the superstitions intrinsic to occultism. Pseudohistory is related to pseudoscience and pseudoarchaeology, and usage of the terms may occasionally overlap.
Although pseudohistory comes in many forms, scholars have identified common features in pseudohistorical works. Pseudohistory is almost always motivated by a contemporary political, religious, or personal agenda. It frequently presents sensational claims or a big lie about historical facts which would require unwarranted revision of the historical record. Another hallmark is an underlying premise that powerful groups have a furtive agenda to suppress the promoter's thesis—a premise commonly corroborated by elaborate conspiracy theories. Works of pseudohistory often point exclusively to unreliable sources—including myths and legends, often treated as literal historical truth—to support the thesis being promoted while ignoring valid sources that contradict it. Some works adopt a position of historical relativism, insisting that there is no such thing as historical truth and that any hypothesis is equal to any other. Many works conflate mere possibility with actuality, assuming that if something could have happened, then it did.
Notable examples of pseudohistory include British Israelism, the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, the Irish slaves myth, the witch-cult, Armenian genocide denial, Holocaust denial, the clean Wehrmacht myth, and the claim that the Katyn massacre was not committed by the Soviet NKVD.
Definition and etymology
The term pseudohistory was coined in the early nineteenth century, which makes the word older than the related terms pseudo-scholarship and pseudoscience. In an attestation from 1815, it is used to refer to the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, a purportedly historical narrative describing an entirely fictional contest between the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod. The pejorative sense of the term, labelling a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation. 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 of which the pseudoscience claims to be a part, and which offers little or no supporting evidence for its plausibility.Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman define pseudohistory as "the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes". Other writers take a broader definition; Douglas Allchin, a historian of science, contends that when the history of scientific 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.
Characteristics
has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo-historic works. He states that: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".
Other common characteristics of pseudohistory are:
- The arbitrary linking of disparate events so as to form – in the theorist's opinion – a pattern. This is typically then developed into a conspiracy theory postulating a hidden agent responsible for creating and maintaining the pattern. For example, the pseudohistorical The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail links the Knights Templar, the medieval Grail Romances, the Merovingian Frankish dynasty and the artist Nicolas Poussin in an attempt to identify lineal descendants of Jesus.
- Hypothesising the consequences of unlikely events that "could" have happened, thereby assuming tacitly that they did.
- Sensationalism, or shock value
- Cherry picking, or "law office history", evidence that helps the historical argument being made and suppressing evidence that hurts it.
Categories and examples
Main categories
Alternative chronologies
An alternative chronology is a revised sequence of events that deviates from the standard timeline of world history accepted by mainstream scholars. An example of an "alternative chronology" is Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology, which claims that recorded history actually began around AD 800 and all events that allegedly occurred prior to that point either never really happened at all or are simply inaccurate retellings of events that happened later. One of its outgrowths is the Tartary conspiracy theory. Other, less extreme examples, are the phantom time hypothesis, which asserts that the years AD 614–911 never took place; and the New Chronology of David Rohl, which claims that the accepted timelines for ancient Egyptian and Israelite history are wrong.Historical falsification
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. 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".Historical revisionism
The Shakespeare authorship question is a fringe theory that claims that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.Another example of historical revisionism is the thesis, found in the writings of David Barton and others, asserting that the United States was founded as an exclusively Christian nation. Mainstream historians instead support the traditional position, which holds that the American founding fathers intended for church and state to be kept separate.
Confederate revisionists, "Lost Cause" advocates, 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.
Connected to the Lost Cause is the Irish slaves myth, a pseudo-historical narrative which conflates the experiences of Irish indentured servants and enslaved Africans in the Americas. This myth, which was historically promoted by Irish nationalists such as John Mitchel, has in the modern-day been promoted by white supremacists in the United States to minimize the mistreatment experienced by African Americans and oppose demands for slavery reparations. The myth has also been used to obscure and downplay Irish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
Historical negationism
While closely related to previous categories, historical negationism, or denialism, specifically aims to outright deny the existence of confirmed events, often including various massacres, genocides, and national histories.Some examples include Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide denial, as well as Nanjing Massacre denial and Nakba denial in the 1984 work From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters.
Psychohistory
Mainstream historians have categorized psychohistory as pseudohistory. Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its stated goal is to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. It also states as its goal the combination of the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present.Pseudoarchaeology
refers to a false interpretation of records, namely physical ones, often by unqualified or otherwise amateur archeologists. These interpretations are often baseless and seldom align with established consensus. Nazi archaeology is a prominent example of this technique. Frequently, people who engage in pseudoarchaeology have a very strict interpretation of evidence and are unwilling to alter their stance, resulting in interpretations that often appear overly simplistic and fail to capture the complexity and nuance of the complete narrative.Various examples of pseudohistory
.Ancient aliens, ancient technologies, and lost lands
's books Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, and Earth in Upheaval, which became "instant bestsellers", demonstrated that pseudohistory based on ancient mythology held potential for tremendous financial success and became models of success for future works in the genre.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. 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 that they 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.
The ancient astronaut hypothesis was further popularized in the United States by the History Channel television series Ancient Aliens. History professor Ronald H. Fritze observed that the pseudohistorical claims promoted by von Däniken and the Ancient Aliens program have a periodic popularity in the US: "In a pop culture with a short memory and a voracious appetite, aliens and pyramids and lost civilizations are recycled like fashions."
The author Graham Hancock has sold over four million copies of books promoting the pseudohistorical thesis that all the major monuments of the ancient world, including Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids, and the moai of Easter Island, were built by a single ancient supercivilization, which Hancock claims thrived from 15,000 to 10,000 BC and possessed technological and scientific knowledge equal to or surpassing that of modern civilization. He first advanced the full form of this argument in his 1995 bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods, which won popular acclaim, but scholarly disdain. Christopher Knight has published numerous books, including Uriel's Machine, expounding pseudohistorical assertions that ancient civilizations possessed technology far more advanced than the technology of today.
The claim that a lost continent known as Lemuria once existed in the Pacific Ocean has likewise been categorized as pseudohistory.
Furthermore, similar conspiracy theories promote the idea of embellished, fabricated accounts of historical civilizations, namely Khazaria and Tartaria.