Pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to a type of historical revisionism. It purports to be history, and uses ostensibly-scholarly methods and techniques (which in fact depart from standard historiographical conventions), but is inconsistent with established facts and/or with common sense. It often involving sensational claims whose acceptance would significantly require rewriting accepted history. The term may apply to a theory or to a work or works based on that theory. Cryptohistory is a related term, sometimes applied to pseudo-historical publications based on occult notions.

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. Similarly, in an 1815 attestation, it is used to refer to Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, a fictional contest between two historical poets. 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 to which the pseudoscience claims to be a part, and which offers little or no supporting evidence for its plausibility.

Historian of science Douglas Allchin 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".

Characteristics

Robert Todd Carroll suggests that a work that is pseudo-historic will meet at least one of the following criteria:

• the work uncritically accepts myths and anecdotal evidence without skepticism.
• it has a political, religious, or other ideological agenda.
• it is not published in an academic journal or is otherwise not adequately peer reviewed.
• the evidence for key facts supporting the work's thesis is:
  • selective and ignores contrary evidence or explains it away; or
  • speculative; or
  • controversial; or
  • not correctly or adequately sourced; or
  • interpreted in an unjustifiable way; or
  • given undue weight; or
  • taken out of context; or
  • distorted, either accidentally or fraudulently.
• competing (and perhaps simpler) explanations or interpretations for the same set of facts, which have been peer reviewed and have been adequately sourced, are rejected or not addressed, contrary to the principle of Occam's razor which favours a simpler and more prosaic explanation of the same facts. For example, the work may rely on one or more conspiracy theories or "hidden-hand" explanations.

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

Categories and examples

Further information: Historical revisionism (negationism) and Pseudoarchaeology

The following are some common categories of pseudohistorical theory, with examples. NB;

• 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:

American edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

• Ethnocentrism and Anti-semitism-inspired (see also Blood libel)
  • The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fraudulent work purporting to show a historical conspiracy for world domination by Jews.
  • The Khazar theory, 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.
  • Genocide denial: claims of such writers as David Irving that the Holocaust, Holodomor, Armenian genocide, or other genocides did not occur or were exaggerated greatly.
• Ancient astronauts, Archaeoastronomy and Lost lands (see also Atlantis location hypotheses)
• Catastrophism
  • Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision
• Alternative chronologies - revised sequences of events or other alterations to the timeline of ancient history.
  • Anatoly Fomenko's theory New Chronology
• Confederate revisionism - argues that the slave-holding Confederate States of America was the defender, rather than the instigator, of the American Civil War.
• Ethnocentric pseudo-history (see also National mysticism)
  • Most Afrocentric (i.e. Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories, see Ancient Egyptian race controversy) ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical
  • The 1619 Project is a pseudohistorical project developed by The New York Times to "reframe" American history exclusively around slavery and racism.
  • The Indigenous Aryans theories published in Hindu nationalism during the 1990s and 2000s.
  • The "crypto-history" of Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism. Among leading Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is believed to have been influenced by occultism and according to one theory, developed the SS base at Wewelsburg to an esoteric plan
  • British-Israelism (Anglo-Israelism).
• Psychohistory The ill-fated attempt to merge psychology with history, replacing historical method.
• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas and other reputable scholarship
  • Arab or Islamic discovery of the Americas.
  • Gavin Menzies's book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America.
• Religious speculation (see also scientific foreknowledge in sacred texts)
  • works such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which purports to show that certain historical figures, such as Godfrey of Bouillon, and contemporary aristocrats are the lineal descendants of Jesus Christ, using genealogical tables that are now known to be spurious:
  • The writings of author David Barton and others postulating that the United States of America was founded as an exclusively Christian nation.
  • See also Searches for Noah's Ark
  • The theory of Lemuria and Kumari Kandam.
  • Chariots of the Gods? and other books by Erich von Däniken, which claim ancient visitors from outer space constructed the pyramids and other monuments.
  • Publications by Christopher Knight, such as Uriel's Machine (2000), claiming ancient technological civilizations.
  • visits to Earth by spacefaring aliens
• The Shakespeare authorship question, which claims that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works traditionally attributed to him.

See also

• List of pseudohistorians
• Historiography and nationalism
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Pseudoscientific metrology

External links

• "Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience" Program in the History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.
• Pseudohistory entry at Skeptic's Dictionary
• The Hall of Ma'at
• "The Restoration of History" from the American Skeptic magazine.