20 Historical Facts That Ruined Our Perspective of the World
Over at r/AskReddit, people are sharing what historical facts ruined their perspective on the world. A lot of what we learn in school isn't always accurate, as the winners are usually the ones who write history.
Most of history is lost to time and we will never truly know what was actually going on hundreds of years ago, but we do know a lot of it was messed up and has ruined our outlook on how we view our world today. It doesn't look good for our future either.
1.
Ancient Antarctica was actually a rainforest, a lush and verdant paradise, filled with flora and fauna. Despite the interesting fact that there was a whole continent of animals who lived on this planet that we’ll never know about - as their remains are locked beneath miles of ice - it blew my mind that Antarctica only fully froze over about 35 million years ago, despite breaking from its supercontinent ~ 180 million years ago. That means Antarctica supported independent life for ~ 145 million years, which ruined any sense I have for time and perspective. We really are specks on this planet. u/oohaaahz
2.
Old norse runes were found carved up like 20 feet in a cave- when they were translated, they just said "this is very high" u/FireEnchiladaDragon
3.
Being raised in all catholic schools it was really surprising to me to learn that a lot of sections in the bible and a lot of religious practices were instated by people who basically decided so and justified it with ideas that were hammered to fit whatever they said Like it wasn't always that priests had to be celibate. Some pope decided that they should be and that was that but really all it would take to reverse that is a pope to say otherwise and a bunch of cardinals to support it. And it doesn't really matter what religious texts say, since the church basically controls the "official interpretation", they can say whetever they want. u/madkeepz
4.
It broke me the first time I learned that the library of Alexandria burnt down, and the scholars at the time still were trying to decipher parchment from even older and more ancient civilizations. I heard that and instantly realized we don't deserve our own intelligence. u/JayBisky
5.
We are taught that during the Great War, the allies were the good guys and the central powers were the bad guys. There were no good guys. Both sides used chemical warfare, both sides experimented with new tactics, both sides tortured and killed each other. u/thunderball500110
6.
More of a fun one, but lighters predate strike matches by a couple centuries. They originated from repurposed flintlock pistols that ignited tinder shoved in the barrel that were set aflame by the trigger mechanism. u/Kataphractoi
7.
There was a Spanish explorer that first visited the Inca empire and saw lots of prosperous cities and a great civilisation, and told his peers about it when he returned home. But when other folks went to visit the siad cities they found nothing but jungle and thought the explorer lied about his story. The fact that blew my mind is that nowadays we discovered that his story was true and the people he encounterd died from diseases brought into the new world and the cities and civilization they build were consumed by jungle in the spam of a few years. u/Manu82134
8.
There are graffiti that got preserved in Pompei and Herculanum. Because they didn't have paper, public announcement were directly painted on the walls. Some of those graffiti are on par with what you can find on the toilet's wall of trucker's stop. "i f*cked the barmaid", "Felix f*cks like a god", "Take of your clothes and show us your hairy privates" u/chinchenping
9.
Can't remember the exact quote but it went something like, If the entirety of human (Homo) history was condensed into a 500 page book, modern anatomical humans wouldn't show up until page 450, and homosapiens wouldn't build empires until page 490, the atomic bomb and the foundation of Rome would be on the final page and only a paragraph apart. And yet in all of this the vast amount of technological advancements from the discovery of the atom to the modern day would fit in the last few sentences, of the last paragraph of the last page. And people wonder why we are reckless, we're still effectively great apes, but with shiny toys. u/JitterySuperCoffee
10.
That we domesticated pigeons thousands of years ago and then decided we didn’t want them anymore. People treat them like vermin after we relied on them for so much (food, messengers etc) The pigeons you see in your cities are not wild, they’re abandoned. u/pizzkat
11.
That the Middle East was once then center of knowledge and learning, particularly Bagdad. As well as the amazing extent and advanced civilizations in South and Central America prior to the 1500s. u/i__Sisyphus
12.
The inventions of Nikola Tesla and what little Edison actually invented himself. u/0odreadlordo0
13.
That up until the 1980s newborn babies used to get operated on without anaesthesia because it was believed they couldn't feel pain. u/studyinthai333
14.
Victorian era London was a terrible place to be alive as a member of the working class. If I recall correctly. You could pay a penny to sit indoors on a bench but no sleeping! Two Pennies and you could swing your arms over a rope and sleep standing up or if you made hella money that day you could pay 4 Pennies and sleep in a coffin. The water is undrinkable and children expected working hours were 12 to 18 a day starting at 4 yrs old. By those standards a lot of us would look like royalty to them. u/UnicornBrainsRPointy
15.
I spent a lot of time at the library in my early 20's and learned that the Old Testament isn't very old and some of the oldest stories are just copies or much older Sumerian myths. The Exodus has no real world evidence whatsoever, and the Egyptians ruled over the holy land for thousands of years without ever mentioning the Hebrew people until the Bronze Age Collapse. u/zhivago6
16.
That, during WW2, all the other countries did not help the Jews escape from Nazi Germany, but on the contrary, closed their borders! For instance, the St. Louis was denied at a number of ports, until they finally had to return to Denmark, which was under Nazi occupation. They COULD have let those Jews on board in, say, Cuba or Florida or wherever! u/P44
17.
The Irish famine was an opportunity the British took to commit genocide against the Irish. They were intentionally starved, while other crops were shipped off island to the British citizens. u/Nintendorian
18.
When I learned that NASA had discovered over 100 billion GALAXIES and seeing the image to put into perspective that our entire solar system is only about the size of a coin compared to our galaxy which in relation would be the size of the United States. We are so incredibly small within the universe. u/cheeseburghers
20.
Alexander Hamilton, the guy who has a whole musical written about him, was a fascist. He advocated for the presidency to be a lifetime, unelected appointment buy the previous president (so....a king), participated in the Newburgh Conspiracy against Washington in 1783, and would slander political opponents to consolidate his own power, going so far as to even spread rumors that Aaron Burr what having sex with his niece, and cheating in the duel that resulted from that rumor (that he died in), only to have written a letter that would destroy Burrs life from beyond the grave, just cause. u/CptJaxxParrow
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