10 Common Misconceptions About the Ancient World
10.
The Library Of Alexandria was Quickly Destroyed in a Giant Fire
The stories you’ve heard are that the destruction of the Library of Alexandria was one of the
greatest tragedies of the ancient world.
The library had stood for centuries, a bastion of learning where we stored knowledge for
the future, and then one day, the city was overrun and the unthinkable happened.
The invaders ordered the library destroyed and it was burned to the ground.
However, the truth of that matter is that the popular story about the Library of Alexandria
is totally false.
While the library was eventually ordered destroyed by invaders, this was hardly the Library’s
first brush with danger.
For the long years it stood, the Library was subjected to multiple fires, due in part to
the volatile nature of the worlds’ borders at the time, and how often people were at
war.
However, historians believe that even more than war, it was budget cutbacks that slowly
destroyed the library over time.
By the time the library was finally destroyed, most of what was kept in the library were
spiritual texts and little else – the rest had long ago been sent to other libraries
in the ancient world where it would be cared for better.
9.
We Have Fully Discovered the Pyramids at Giza
The Pyramids at Giza are one of the most well-known monuments in the world, and are still considered
a wonder of the ancient world.
There have been countless documentaries, and other specials focused on the pyramids, the
meaning they had for the Egyptians, and most importantly, how they were built.
The truth is that to this day there is still no one consensus agreed upon by archeologists
or historians of any kind as to exactly how they were constructed.
However, despite the fact that we are no closer to being sure how they did it, most people
assume that we have fully explored the pyramids at Giza and are now making our theories based
on that evidence.
Unfortunately, while modern archeology continues to provide us with new insight, there is actually
much to discover still.
The Pyramids at Giza have many secret passageways, and rooms, some of which we only just recently
discovered exist for sure, and others that we could only guess at the existence of in
the past.
8.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were Built by King Nebuchadnezzar
Most people have heard of the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
An amazing city in a desert area, with beautiful gardens all over the city and walls.
Somehow, this wondrous paradise was kept alive with an advanced irrigation system that would
have perhaps even rivaled the best that anyone has used today.
However, some people in recent years started putting a damper on the beauty of the gardens,
claiming that there is a strong possibility that the whole thing never existed, and was
just made up as a fanciful story by writers at the time.
The reason is that while Babylon was one of the first civilizations to record things,
they never recorded anything about having a city full of hanging gardens.
Nor is there any evidence in any historical records at the time that Babylon had any such
thing.
People have started to believe that there never were any Hanging Gardens, but it turns
out they may have been looking in the wrong place all along.
After many years of research, a Dr. Dalley from the University of Oxford discovered that
the fabled hanging gardens were actually built by the Assyrians in the nearby city of Nineveh,
under the rule of King Sennacherib.
7.
Napoleon and His Men Shot Off the Sphinx’s Nose
The Sphinx has not had its nose for a very long time, and while it is definitely a great
historical loss, the reason is different depending on who you ask.
The popular story goes that Napoleon and his men were on a sort of tour of conquest heading
through Egypt, when they decided to camp by the great pyramids for a while.
While they were there they decided to practice their soldiering skills, and someone got it
into their head that they should do some cannon fire aiming practice.
Of course, considering there weren’t a lot of other good targets around, they decided
that the Sphinx’s face would be perfect for the job – the resulting target practice
destroyed the Sphinx’s nose.
However, we know the story is not true because artistic drawings dated well before the time
of Napoleon already showed the Sphinx clearly missing his nose.
6.
Da Vinci Dropped Iron Balls from the Tower of Pisa
Back in the ancient days a widely believed theory proposed by Aristotle was that objects
with different weights would fall at very different speeds.
The stories go that Da Vinci went to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and dropped
two objects of much different weight, as a demonstration of his opposing theory to his
students and surrounding crowds.
When both objects landed at the same time, it proved Aristotle wrong in one of the most
dramatic scientific demonstrations of all time.
Unfortunately, while the story is certainly fanciful and interesting, there is no reason
to believe that it is at all true.
Da Vinci did propose something similar as a thought experiment to his students when
arguing his point, but apart from the exaggerated claims of one student, there is no evidence
he actually went to the effort to do any such thing.
5.
The Ancient Amazons Were Man Haters
Most people think of the Amazon warriors of legend as a secret, fierce, women-only group
of nomads that used their great skill with the bow to take down their enemies.
They were known to be extremely brave and capable fighters, and their beauty entranced
the men of Greece.
For the longest time historians were not sure if they even existed, because the stories
about them were so fanciful.
The tales claim that the Amazons were a truly women-only society, and that they would occasionally
have sex with men from a village that they made a deal with, and would send back any
male children that were birthed, castrate them, or just leave them to die.
Despite some people being unsure if they existed, historians have recently discovered evidence
that there were a real people that the Greeks came to call Amazons, it’s just that many
of the tales about them are either exaggerated or wildly inaccurate.
The people they discovered archeological evidence of were called Scythians and many of the men
and women were buried with war gear, meaning that it wasn’t just a female society, and
it wasn’t just women who fought in battle either.
In fact, it’s likely the wild stories started among ancient Greek writers due to how strange
the idea of women fighting with bows on horseback was to their societal views.
While these women were certainly capable killers of men, there is also plenty of reason to
believe they loved and fought beside men, and did not do anything untoward to their
male children
4.
The Ancient Egyptians Visited the Grand Canyon
In the early 1900s a story was published in a newspaper claiming that a team of archeologists
funded by the Smithsonian had been checking out caves in the Grand Canyon, places that
almost no one ever looked at, and discovered something incredible.
They found ancient Egyptian ruins in the cave, suggesting that the Egyptians had managed
some form of sea travel advanced enough to make it all the way across to such a far continent.
More recently, these claims have resurfaced in the media and popular mindset, likely due
to the recent popularity of the ancient aliens theories.
However, while it would be really cool to think that the Egyptians actually managed
such a feat there is actually no evidence that there was any such expedition.
The Smithsonian has always denied that the two “archeologists” in the news story
ever worked for them or went on such a trip, and have stated flat out that they do not
believe there was ever any ancient Egyptian activity in the Americas.
3.
The Placement of the Easter Island Heads is an Impossible Mystery
You have probably heard before of the famous heads, also known as Moai, that show up all
over Easter Island.
The statues are enormous constructions of extremely heavy rock and weigh tons, and yet
the ancient people managed to move them incredibly long distances to place them on the shore,
and all over the island, without any advanced technology at all.
For the longest time the prevailing wisdom was that we simply had no idea at all how
they managed to do it.
Some people took this as proof that it must have been advanced technology of some sort,
instead of primitive tools.
However, a recent study by interested archeologists has yielded strong evidence as to how they
actually did it, and it didn’t require any advanced technology at all.
The experts who have been studying the statues believe that they were designed on purpose
so they could be moved long distances.
They theorized that the large bellies and the oddly proportioned base allowed people
to easily push the statue into a state of imbalance, and then rock it back and forth,
almost walking it across the ground to where they wanted it to go.
2.
The Romans Salted Carthage So Nothing Would Grow There Again
The tale goes that near the end of the Third Punic War, the Roman General Scipio finally
defeated Carthage, and decided to make sure they were well and truly punished for their
defiance.
He had their fields all plowed under, and then sowed them with salt so that nothing
would grow there again.
He then took all of the remaining people and made them slaves, destroying their civilization
forever.
This tale is fairly easy to believe, because the Roman Empire of the time is still looked
back on by many as a vast and unfeeling machine.
However, the claim that the city of Carthage was plowed under and salted after its defeat
bears no real historical evidence.
The claims that the city was thus ruined were not even written until the 19th century, and
no one but the historian who made the claim has ever suggested that such an action actually
occurred.
The more important truth here though is that it would perhaps not even be that effective
as a permanent means of messing with your foes anyway.
Given the right conditions, soil that was salted could meet the proper conditions for
growing plants again before long, so it would hardly be a permanent ruination of the land
to begin with.
1.
The Vikings Used Human Skulls as Mugs
The Vikings were known for performing daring raids across the European coastline, terrorizing
villages, and scaring Europeans into giving them money in order to avoid being raided
further.
They went on countless raiding expeditions, securing slaves and resources and then heading
back to their homeland with their hard won loot.
They were known for being brutal and skilled warriors in combat, but perhaps the most fearsome
claim about them was how they allegedly drank their booze.
The legends say that the Viking warriors were so metal that they would drink their alcohol
from the skulls of their defeated enemies.
However, it turns out that the whole “drinking from skulls” thing was likely nothing more
than a mistranslation.
What the Vikings actually used were drinking vessels made from the horns of animals.
When a scholar was trying to translate an old Viking death song, he misunderstand a
line that included the phrase “the curved tree of skulls”, to mean actual human skulls
instead of animal horns.
Due to how few people could read the original text that was being translated, the error
was not caught for a very long time and made its way into the popular mindset.