History Main / DatedHistory

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!!Early Modern Age
[[folder:General]]
* UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition:
** Thanks to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_(Spain) Black Legend]], the Spanish Inquisition is seen as one and the same with generic Medieval Church tropes above, to the point of assuming that inquisitions were unique or original to Spain (both ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'' and ''[[Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresIII III]]'' include "Inquisition" as a Spanish unique technology), guaranteeing that if an inquisitor shows up he will have a Spanish ([[SmallReferencePools Castilian]]) name even if he's not (''Series/{{Inquisitio}}''), or that the most SinisterMinister in a work with clerics from different countries will be Spanish even if it's set before the Spanish Inquisition existed (''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose''). In reality, the first inquisition was created in 1184 in France; it was established, but inactive in Aragon and Navarre in the 13th century and Portugal in the 14th, but Castile resisted Papal requests to follow until the Spanish Inquisition was created in 1480. Thus the Spanish Inquisition was [[NewerThanTheyThink largely a Modern Age phenomenon, not Medieval]], and unusual in that it was under control of the Spanish monarchy rather than the Papacy (contrary to ''Literature/{{Candide}}'''s portrayal as the real power behind the monarchy, based on old French travel literature and repeated on the ''Encyclopédie'' and ''Encyclopédie Méthodique''). Spanish inquisitors didn't even have to be ordained priests, though many were Dominicans. One [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#The_%22Enforcement_Across_Borders%22_hypothesis modern theory]] is that a prime motivation of the Inquisition was to keep the nobility and high clergy in check, be they from Castile, Aragon, Navarre, or other kingdoms (all having functioning borders and different courts otherwise until the 18th century, despite sharing monarch), as they were disproportionally subjected to investigation by the Inquisition compared to the common people, unlike what might appear from pop culture.
** In ''Series/TrueBlood'', the Spanish Inquisition are zealous [[TheWitchHunter witch hunters]] ([[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy and vampires]]), and their methods amount to [[BadHabits raping]], torturing, and burning [[MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial women]] to death ForTheEvulz. As previously said, the mass witch hunts of the Early Modern Period largely happened in central and northern Europe, while in Spain they can be counted with one hand; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_witch_trials they were limited to the Pyreneean region]], clearly influenced by events in France, and the Grand Inquisitor intervened to stop the process in almost all cases (as the Inquisition's own position was that witchcraft was not real, as it would give Satan creation powers equal to God). Altogether, it is estimated that 59 alleged witches were executed by the Spanish Inquisition in 300 years of history, compared to thousands killed in Germany or France during the 17th century alone. The [[UsefulNotes/ZugarramurdiWitchTrials 1610 Logroño witch trials]] referenced in the series were the largest ever in Spain; yet of 7000 people investigated by the Inquisition, only eleven were burned as unrepentant heretics (not witches), five after they already died in prison. Eighteen more confessed to heresy and were pardoned. This would have been unusually merciful in England and France, where the witch hunters Matthew Hopkins and Pierre de Lancre were active around the same time, but in Spain, it was a scandal: the Supreme Council of the Spanish Inquisition launched an investigation into the previous process, concluded that the original inquisitors had overreached, and that witchcraft was for the most part [[SatanicPanic mass hysteria]] that appeared only after anti-witch preachers and literature showed up in an area (predating similar realizations in other countries by over a century). In 1614 they even ordered to remove the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanbenito sanbenitos]]'' of the people burned in 1610 from public display so their descendants wouldn't be maligned as relatives of heretics.
** Were they not [[KnightTemplar stalwarts for Catholic dogma]], the Spanish Inquisition would be considered FairForItsDay: it was the first judicial body in Europe to have established rules of evidence, recognize an insanity plea, ban arbitrary punishments, and dismiss anonymous accusations. It was closer to modern jurisprudence than most secular courts of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, and might have been the most progressive and humane tribunal in its heyday, not the opposite. They even believed that the ''accuser'' held the burden of proof, whereas most secular governments at the time required the accused to prove their own innocence; accused persons were also allowed to have counsel, testify on their own behalf, and present evidence, something many secular courts also forbade. Many people died in prison before getting to trial, although this was not unique to the Inquisition - diseases spread like wildfire inside prisons at the time. Inquisitorial prisons actually had better conditions than their lay counterparts, to the point that arrested people would blaspheme so they could fall under religious jurisdiction and be moved there. It is also typical to attribute the Spanish Inquisition to all sorts of bizarre torture machines that likely never existed, like the IronMaiden, or that were used in other countries. ''Series/OneThousandWaysToDie'' [[RecycledInSpace adapted]] the story of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull Bull of Phalaris]] as a 15th century Spanish inquisitor inventing the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooden_horse_(device) Wooden Horse]], which was actually used in [[http://revisioneshistoricasopusincertum.blogspot.com/2023/02/el-burro-espanol-ni-medieval-ni-espanol.html France, Britain, and North America]] to [[SymbologyResearchFailure punish soldiers]] during [[AnachronismStew the 18th and 19th centuries]], but not in Spain. Yet one of its names in English is "Spanish Donkey", and the German ''Schandmantel'' (one of the possible inspirations of the Iron Maiden) is called the "Spanish Coat". The Inquisition used torture, which again was common at the time, but it had limits that lay and foreign courts didn't have: children under 14 and the elderly couldn't be tortured, torture could only be applied in 15-minute sessions, confessions during torture weren't valid (between sessions and under the threat of torture were), and the only three approved methods were the rack, [[WaterTorture waterboarding]], and strappado - because they didn't draw blood. Finally, the point of torture was to extract confessions, so it was applied sparingly and to people believed to be lying, not systematically to everyone, all the time.
** Its longevity notwithstanding, the Spanish Inquisition [[BrieferThanTheyThink also changed over time]]. High-profile cases moved from Crypto-Jews to Crypto-Muslims, Protestants and ''Alumbrados'' (religious mystics that the Inquisition considered the same as the former, but were much more common in Spain), Jansenists (who identified Catholic but thought [[ItsPersonal the Inquisition should be abolished]] among other things), Deists, Atheists, and UsefulNotes/{{Freemasons}}. In the 18th century, the Bourbon dynasty severely limited the powers of the Inquisition: they lost their censorship duties, prison conditions improved, common tropes like ''sanbenitos'', [[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edicto_de_fe Edicts]] and Autos-da-fé were abolished, and the vast majority of cases ended with the accused being released in a matter of weeks with no penalty. However, the fact that ''it existed at all'', and that it could be potentially weaponized against proponents of the Enlightenment made it a scandal in Spain and the rest of Europe; even after ([[TorchTheFranchiseAndRun or because]]) several pro-Enlightenment figures, [[HireTheCritic critics of the Inquisition]], and suspected Jansenists were appointed to the post of Grand Inquisitor themselves, and commissioned studies on the Inquisition's historical misdeeds. ''Film/GoyasGhosts'' is a stereotypical AnachronismStew, portraying the Inquisition as all-powerful in the 1790s, the King unwilling to oppose it, and accused Crypto-Jews still being arrested after an Edict of Faith, tortured and raped in prison for decades with no trial or charges ever being brought against them. The movie even ends with an auto-da-fé in 1814, with imagery taken from Creator/FranciscoDeGoya's ''Caprichos'' without realizing that these were based on the Logroño trials from two centuries before, not in Goya's own time.
** Most of the time the Inquisition was occupied with more mundane cases like uprooting peasant superstition (like belief in witchcraft), counterfeiting, censorship, blasphemy, and sexual misconduct including bigamy, induction to prostitution, bestiality, and sodomy (both sexes). In the 17th century, only 30% of cases investigated dealt with charges of religious ignorance, and roughly 3% with full charges of heresy, fewer of which were burnt. Most guilty cases ended in confession and light penance. In 1818 the former secretary of the Inquisition Juan Antonio Llorente published ''Histoire critique de l'Inquisition espagnole'', in which he claimed the Inquisition had punished 341,021 people and burned 31,912. This work had great repercussions but was denounced as grossly inflated by American historian Henry Charles Lea already in 1870 (despite Lea not being a fan of Catholicism himself). Notably for a period where Llorente claimed over 11,000 burnings in the Canary Islands alone, Lea found 11. Modern historians estimate that the Inquisition executed about 3000-6000 people total, half during its first twenty years under UsefulNotes/TomasDeTorquemada. Nevertheless, as late as 1998 the anti-Catholic work ''A Woman Rides the Beast'' cited Llorente to claim that the Spanish Inquisition had burned 300,000 (either taking all punished for burnt, or multiplying Llorente's number by 10) before throwing even that out and claiming that the true number must have been "millions".
** The legend of the Holy Child of La Guardia (a young boy said to have been crucified by Jews and later brought back to life, one of the basis of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's ''The Rose of Passion'') was thought to have been a complete myth due to the similarities of the story with antisemitic blood libels. However, in 1992 historians uncovered evidence that there had been a real Inquisition case in 1491, very reminiscent of the Salem witch trials, in which six men of Jewish descent and two Jews accused one another of crucifying a Christian child, and were burned at the stake for it. The case may even have played a role in the decision to make the Alhambra Decree. Historians believe that the child most likely [[AllForNothing never existed]]; ''Series/{{Isabel}}'' portrays a real child being reported missing, but the accused being completely unrelated to it.
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[[folder:16th century]]
* Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas claimed in his multi-volume ''History of the Indies'' that the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola alone was over three million. Subsequent research has indicated that Las Casas' figures were greatly exaggerated, with 2020 genetic studies estimating the maximum population of the Caribbean islands' indigenous peoples to be in the mere tens of thousands.
* Norwegian historian Yngvar Nielsen concluded in an 1889 study that the Sámi of Norway lived no further south than Nord-Trøndelag county until they started moving south in around 1500. This hypothesis was accepted as the truth until the 21st century when several archaeological finds indicated a Sámi presence in southern Norway and Sweden in the Middle Ages.
* While Juan Ponce de León has long been said to have been [[ImmortalitySeeker searching]] for the FountainOfYouth, most historians now consider this claim apocryphal, since there are no mentions of it in any of his writings and the first known mention of him wanting to find it is in 1535, more than ten years after his death.
* Traditionally, the subject of Da Vinci's ''Mona Lisa'' was assumed to not be anyone in particular, with even one extravagant theory positing that it was a '[[AttractiveBentGender female self-portrait]]' of Leonardo. Nevertheless, many fictional works that included Da Vinci as HistoricalDomainCharacter would sometimes include a generic woman posing as a model. Turns out they were right: In 2005, it was discovered that Da Vinci was commissioned to paint a portrait of a Florentine noblewoman named Lisa del Giocondo ("Mona" is an Italian honorific, akin to "Miss" or "Madam"). Lisa’s husband was a silk merchant who was friends with Leonardo’s father and it’s believed the painting was commissioned to celebrate a pregnancy.
* The Borgias:
** Contemporaries viewed Lucrezia Borgia as a scheming, amoral poisoner who abetted her father and brother (UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI and Cesare Borgia, respectively) in their plans to dominate Europe. This belief became even more prevalent in Victorian times when her name became shorthand for "female serial killer" -- she's Creator/AgathaChristie's favorite murderer to namedrop, it seems. Scholarship casts doubt on this belief, as there is no historical proof that Lucrezia harmed a flea herself, let alone committed multiple murders. If anything, Lucrezia's life might have been easier if she ''had'' been a poisoner. It's thought now that Lucrezia was blamed by her contemporaries because she was a safe target compared to her relatives.
*** ''Radio/OldHarrysGame'' references this in one episode where Edith tells a man that there's no evidence Lucrezia Borgia ever murdered anybody. However, since the person she's talking to is {{Satan}}, he knows from personal experience that the rumours are true.
** The rumor that Lucrezia was incestuously involved with her brother and father was started by Lucrezia's first husband after being forced into an annulment that required him to sign papers declaring himself to be ''impotent'' (and thus unable to consummate the marriage). A child of unknown paternity (the ''Infans Romanus'', Giovanni Borgia) appeared around that time, allegedly the son of Lucrezia and either one of her relatives or a man named Pedro who was found dead in the river after delivering letters to her. It's almost certain that the child's parents were actually Rodrigo and [[AgeGapRomance his much younger mistress]] Giulia Farnese, (whose brother Alessandro got a cardinal's hat from Rodrigo and later became Pope Paul III).
** Then there is the Borgias' alleged poison, ''la cantarella'', a potent yet undetectable brew whose formula could be adjusted so that the victim could die at any time the poisoner wished. Too bad it's not actually possible for such a thing to exist. Rodrigo probably used plain old arsenic while Cesare and Juan strangled their enemies and threw them in the Tiber.
** Juan, Cesare's younger brother, was found dead in the Tiber in 1497. He had been stabbed 9 times. Cesare is often [[SiblingMurder blamed]] for the murder, but it was more likely committed by a member of the Orsini family, with whom the Borgias -- and Juan in particular -- had had several feuds. Both ''Series/{{Borgia}}'' and ''Series/TheBorgias'' give Cesare (and Lucrezia) [[AssholeVictim compelling reasons]] for wanting him gone, which work well in a TV series, but are likely pure fiction.
** Did we mention that the Borgias were probably no more murderous than any other prominent Italian family of the time? They most likely got the bad rep they did because they were {{social climber}}s and had non-Italian origins, not because they were particularly evil. Additionally, UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI's religious tolerance and philanthropy to Rome's Jewish population was seen by his [[ValuesDissonance anti-Semitic successors]] as NotHelpingYourCase.
** The biography ''The Borgias: The Hidden History'' by G.J. Meyer maintains that there's actually no evidence that Alexander VI had any children. Cesare, Lucrezia, and Juan were related to him ''somehow'', but the Borgia family tree is [[TangledFamilyTree tangled]] and records are uncertain. At a time when diplomats sent their masters every bit of gossip they could get their hands on, Meyer claims that there's no contemporary record of the pope having a mistress or children. [[TurbulentPriest Reformist preacher]] Girolamo Savonarola denounced the Borgias in general and Alexander in particular in the harshest possible terms and accused them of every kind of corruption imaginable, ''except'' sexual immorality. In any case, if they actually were his bastards, that still wouldn't make Alexander the only pope with known illegitimate children -- Innocent VII and Julius II had them as well. Meyer also claims that Giulia Farnese wasn't Rodrigo's mistress, simply Lucrezia's best friend -- certainly enough to get her brother a cardinal's hat.
* Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli, author of ''Literature/ThePrince'', was a staunch supporter of the concept of a free republic. So, why did he write ''The Prince'', which tells a leader how to rule with an iron fist? It was his only well-known piece for a long time. Some scholars think that he was most likely a satirist because that was his only pro-Medici screed, and after writing it, he went right back to writing pro-republic stories. He was also often portrayed as a cynical, somber, and shrewd politician. Contemporary data, including his letters and works, portray him rather as a very sociable satirist who also happened to be an observant historian and a good rhetor. On the other hand, we can look at the last chapter of ''The Prince'' and Machiavelli's praise of Cesare Borgia ("Il Valentino") throughout, taking the vindication of the Borgias into account (see above). In that last chapter of ''The Prince'', Machiavelli states clearly ''why'' he was giving this advice -- someone needed to conquer Italy and unify it in order to protect against invasions by France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and plenty of other forces who had invaded in the decades before. Cesare tried, with the backing of his father the Pope, and failed. The then Medici duke of Florence also had an uncle on the papal throne at the time (Leo X, Cesare's college classmate and likely friend). Machiavelli and Cesare weren't the first to dream of it -- Creator/{{Petrarch}} had, and Machiavelli quotes him directly. Creator/DanteAlighieri also did, in ''Monarchia'', and in his ''Paradiso'', he gives the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VII a special place in Heaven for trying to "save" Italy "before she was ready". This is the view taken up by ''Manga/CesareIlCreatoreCheHaDistrutto'', though that series has Cesare and Machiavelli meeting and working together much earlier than they did in real life (as does ''Series/TheBorgias'').
* Once, it was universally accepted that Juan Sebastián Elcano and the other survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition became the first people to circumnavigate the globe when they returned to Spain. But now there are many people who believe the first person to do so (albeit not in one trip) may have been expedition member [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_of_Malacca Enrique of Malacca]], who left the expedition to return home.
* While the Spanish Empire and Spanish Inquisition were viewed in a resoundingly negative light in other countries for a long time, it's now believed that the bad reputation Spain had was the result of the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend_(Spain) Spanish Black Legend]], demonization campaigns by Spain's rivals, which at the peak of the empire were basically all of the western world.
* The claim that UsefulNotes/HernanCortez was [[GodGuise mistaken for a god]] by the Aztecs (and possibly other Mesoamericans), once widely accepted, is now generally viewed in the historical community as false. Skeptics point to the fact that the story seems to originate from a much older Cortés' chaplain and secretary, López de Gómara, who had never even been to Mexico and whom Cortés' lieutenant and chronicling aficionado Creator/BernalDiazDelCastillo outright calls a liar. As proof, neither Díaz nor Cortés' own surviving writings mention anything about the Spanish being thought of as gods. They only recorded that natives initially thought the Spaniards were ''teules'', a word that does translate roughly as divine yet carries a lot of possible meanings. Applied to a human being, which the natives knew the Spaniards were because they had watched them eat, sleep, have sex, bleed, and die, its meaning became closer to a wizard or a Greek hero, that is, someone of flesh and blood who still could do incredible things (like having those strange four-legged monsters and boom sticks, for instance).
* It was believed that Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha from the Ottoman Empire was married to Hatice Sultan, the sister of UsefulNotes/SuleimanTheMagnificent, though this was based on conjecture and scanty evidence. In the late 2000s, research done by scholar Ebru Turan brought up a woman called Muhsine Hatun and discovered references to her in multiple Venetian and Ottoman texts, including a letter signed by her to Ibrahim. It is now generally accepted that Muhsine Hatun was his wife, and no marriage to the sultan's sister existed.
* The eventful and controversial reign of UsefulNotes/HenryVIII has engendered many myths:
** Whig history often depicted Henry as "Bluff King Hal", a jolly Falstaffian monarch whose general good cheer was interrupted only by the tragic necessity of sending his whoring wives to the Tower. In reality, Henry was a complex, mercurial hypochondriac with a horrific temper and a complete inability to accept criticism or see himself as he really was. It was ''his courtiers'' who were forced to display forced jolliness, lest Henry's temper be directed against them. Some of his later reputation may have been based on the fact that he was incapable of overt deceit. Even if true, this wouldn't make him bluff but sneaky.
** It was also said that Henry was unusual for monarchs of his era in that he had more wives than mistresses and was attentive to his wives -- at least before he divorced or beheaded them. Evidence from the Letters and Papers of Henry's reign tell a different story: payoffs to numerous women, more grants of land to his laundresses' bastard children than a baron would normally receive, etc.
** Yet the same historians who claimed Henry was a paragon of marital devotion also claimed that he suffered from syphilis, with the sore on his leg as evidence of the infection. The Letters and Papers again tell a different story. Syphilis was the HIV of the early 16th century; it beggars belief that Henry's team of experienced, educated physicians would have missed the most obvious diagnosis of their time. But Henry's apothecary bills show that he was never treated with any drug that was used to fight syphilis at the time. As for the sore on Henry's leg, there's some evidence that it was much worse than previously thought; instead of a single sore on one shin, both of Henry's lower legs were apparently covered in abscesses. Whether this was caused by a bone infection or by a combination of varicose veins and diabetes is anyone's guess.
** The belief that Henry went through six wives because he was a misogynist has also been called into question. Henry's father took the throne after [[UsefulNotes/WarsOfTheRoses a long series of devastating civil wars]]. These came about because the ruling king was deemed weak and unfit, and there was no clear next in line, setting the stage for various houses to vie for the crown. Henry VII had two sons but one died young of an illness (Henry VIII's older brother Arthur) which served as a reminder that one heir is not enough to declare the succession secure. Reportedly, on his deathbed, he told his surviving son that the most important job of a king was to secure the throne and produce heirs. Henry VIII was married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, for over two decades and did not seek to divorce her until the prospect of her bearing a son became nil. Anne Boleyn bore a daughter but miscarried a son and was then accused of adultery. Jane Seymour gave birth to a prince but died shortly after. He deemed Anne of Cleves too unattractive and said it would be impossible to get aroused by her and impossible to sire sons. Katherine Howard was believed to have been unfaithful and thus any sons she gave birth to [[MamasBabyPapasMaybe could be suggested not to be the king's]]. UsefulNotes/CatherineParr survived the monarch.
* UsefulNotes/AnneBoleyn gets the worst myths, being given a [[ExtraDigits sixth finger]], a projecting tooth, a facial defect, and a goitre in the late 16th century (and a ''[[{{multiboobage}} third breast]]'' in the 20th courtesy of the ''Book of Lists''). None is contemporary. Rather she was said to be attractive by even her enemies (if not the most conventionally beautiful of women). Had Anne suffered from any obvious defects she wouldn't have been sent to court in the first place.
** Historians long believed that Anne had been born in 1507, which sat well with Whigs who didn't think Henry would marry a woman much over 25 if he wanted to have children with her. But a letter from Anne to her father has been dated to 1513-1514. The content and penmanship imply that Anne was around 13 when she wrote it, pushing her birth back to c. 1501. It may be that the 1507 date came from a document where the "1" was misread as a "7".
* There is a myth that UsefulNotes/{{Jane Seymour|Royalty}} died after delivering the future Edward VI via Caesarian section. This sprung up very shortly after Edward's birth; there's even a [[Literature/ChildBallads Child Ballad]] about it. But there is no evidence either in the historical record; if Edward had been born via Caesarian, Jane wouldn't have survived the birth, let alone been seen by dozens the next day sitting up in bed healthy and hale. There would also be a surgeon's bill in the records, which there is not.
* Anne of Cleves's ugliness is a myth propagated by Henry himself, who was enraged that she didn't recognize him when he showed up in disguise at her lodgings. Courtiers who wrote home about the controversy said that Anne was perfectly pleasant-looking; one calls her Henry's most attractive queen to date. An X-ray of a painting of Anne shows that she may have had a longer nose than we in modern days would deem attractive, but in Tudor times a long, thin nose was considered a sign of royal blood and therefore widely seen as desirable. There is no contemporary evidence for Anne being ugly, pockmarked, or overweight. She may not have fit Henry's [[HasAType tastes]], but that doesn't mean she was unattractive.
* Catherine Howard was assumed to be older. Most historians had agreed that [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hans_Holbein_d._J._027.jpg this painting]] by Holbein was of Howard, and that the notation proved that she had reached the age of 21 by the time of her arrest. However, it was found that the painting was originally owned by the Cromwell family, who were unlikely to have commissioned a painting of the queen involved in their downfall.[[note]]The work is now considered to be of an unknown sitter officially, though many suspect that it's Elizabeth Seymour, Jane's sister and Thomas Cromwell's daughter-in-law.[[/note]] There's no consensus for Catherine's date of birth, though few historians believe she was over 20 at her execution, and many that she was as young as 16.
* Catherine Parr was often portrayed by Protestants as well-educated and fluent in Latin and Greek before she married Henry. Recent biographers haven't found evidence that she was particularly erudite, and it appears that she only spoke English when she arrived in court in 1543 and taught herself Latin and Greek so she could read The Bible in its 'original'.
* Due to his untimely demise, Edward VI is often said to have been a sickly child. But courtiers and ambassadors wrote that he mostly enjoyed good health until he caught measles in his teens. It was this infection that weakened his immune system and caused him to fall ill with a fatal chest infection in 1553.
** It was once thought that Edward's last days were prolonged by the Duke of Northumberland (Jane Grey's father-in-law) feeding the tuberculous Edward a concoction containing arsenic (keeping him alive but in agony) until he agreed to write a will disinheriting his sisters in favour of Jane. This is nonsense, from a medical standpoint as much as a historical one. For one, it's not certain that Edward had tuberculosis in the first place; for another, feeding a patient with terminal TB arsenic is immensely more likely to kill him faster than to extend his life. Most importantly, we have Edward's notes making it clear that the idea to disinherit Mary and Elizabeth and put the staunchly Protestant, undeniably legitimate Jane on the throne was his own idea, taken before his illness. His first intention was to limit the succession to Jane's sons, but he didn't survive long enough for Jane to have any.
* UsefulNotes/MaryTudor's most pervasive myth is about her false pregnancy. It was only in the early 20th century that the idea of a "phantom pregnancy" arose, but historians and fiction writers ran with it. Current thinking is that Mary had some kind of tumour that caused abdominal swelling.[[note]]"Phantom pregnancy" may also be a catch-all category for all kinds of pelvic conditions and diseases that have been labelled "neurotic" only because they occur in women.[[/note]] As for the "Bloody Mary" sobriquet, it stems from books published by her religious enemies after her death; her sister Elizabeth ordered about three times more executions than Mary did (but also ruled nine times longer).
* UsefulNotes/OdaNobunaga was well known for his use of volley fire, but the idea that he was the first in Japan to use the tactic is now considered questionable since some recently-discovered sources imply that the Ikkō-ikki were using it before him.
* The popular claim that UsefulNotes/UesugiKenshin was assassinated by a [[InstantAwesomeJustAddNinja ninja]] is now considered probably apocryphal, and he more likely died of cancer or cerebrovascular disease.
* Catherine de' Medici was one of the cruelest royals of the early [[UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance Renaissance]]. She followed the ([[StealthParody in retrospect, probably sarcastic]]) advice of Machiavelli, to ensure that her husband and three of her sons ruled France; hundreds of noble and wealthy Frenchmen died either directly at her hand or otherwise. She even arranged for her son Charles to be sexually abused by courtiers in an unsuccessful attempt to [[RapeAndSwitch turn him gay]] so that he would die childless and his younger brother Henry ([[ParentalFavoritism whom she adored]]) would eventually become king. Given her deservedly bad reputation, it's not surprising that contemporaries in England blamed her for instigating the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre]]. Screeds called her a "Catholic bigot" who washed her hands in the blood of Protestants. This is a tough one to be sure -- accounts are confusing and the Massacre seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment occurrence, which makes figuring out the responsible difficult. Modern historians believe that the massacre was actually instigated by the Guise family, who feared Catherine's alliance with the Protestant Navarre family. However, Catherine probably bears the brunt of the blame for making the Massacre an honest-to-God one. As for the Guises, contemporary accounts note that after (quite possibly accidentally) kicking it off by killing Admiral de Coligny, the Duke of Guise went around placing Huguenots under his personal protection -- furthermore, he was one of the only Catholic participants to apologize for the affair.
* It was once generally accepted in both the Western world and the Middle East that the death of Sultan UsefulNotes/SuleimanTheMagnificent caused the Ottoman Empire to enter a period of stagnation and decline from which it never recovered. However, starting in the late 1970s, the fundamental assumptions of the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Decline_Thesis Ottoman Decline Thesis]] were re-examined, and studies over the course of the following two decades led to the rise of a new consensus in the 21st century: that the decline of the Ottoman Empire did not truly begin until significantly later than previously thought, and the period after Suleiman's death instead marked the beginning of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_of_the_Ottoman_Empire an era of transformation]] that lasted until around the year 1700.
* UsefulNotes/ElizabethI:
** There is no evidence of the "Virgin Queen" being accurate or not. Certainly no evidence that she had sex with Robert Dudley. There's also no evidence that she was incapable of bearing children: the old myth that she was born without a vagina (or that she was a man! which would have delighted her father Henry VIII) is disproved by the numerous examinations she underwent as part of marriage negotiations, often in the presence of foreign ambassadors who would have no reason to keep anything they saw secret.
** The "she was a man" myth is just sexism, a chauvinistic Victorian fantasy that no woman could have made Elizabeth I's accomplishments, so she must have been a man (compare the "[[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare]] didn't write his plays and poems" conspiracy theory, which was also made up by aristocrats who couldn't fathom a commoner writing their favorite works, around the same time). One version promoted by Creator/BramStoker in his 1910 book, ''Famous Imposters'', claims the real Elizabeth died of illness as a child and the members of her household forced a farm boy who was about her age to dress up as her to keep Henry VIII from blaming them. Forgetting for a minute that lots of people died young in those days (Henry himself lost a brother and a sister), concealing such a thing for the entirety of Elizabeth's life would have required such a massive conspiracy as to render it impractical, and raises the question of why a boy would be used in place of a girl anyway.
** It's known that while she was living with Catherine Parr and her husband Thomas Seymour after Henry's death, she was in some kind of intimate relationship with Seymour. Whig historians blamed her for the liaison, claiming that since Tudor-era girls could marry at age 12, they must have been fully sexual adults at that age, and that Seymour was the victim of a [[FilleFatale sexually precocious]] Elizabeth. No wonder Parr sent her away! But not only is this a misreading of Tudor beliefs on marriage and sexuality, it's one of the most obvious [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming victim-blaming]] exercises in history. Even in Tudor times, a gentleman was supposed to be proper toward any young girl under his roof. He could offer honourable marriage to a ward unrelated to him by marriage or blood, but a stepdaughter was sacrosanct. But it's only in the 21st century that historians have had the detachment to label Seymour's actions as the sexual abuse they most undoubtedly were.
** Contrary to some claims, Elizabeth, unlike Mary, did not have an unhappy childhood. She was not sent away in disgrace after Anne's execution; in fact, Henry VIII was seen playing with her and judged to "love her very much" the Christmas after his marriage to Jane Seymour. Court sycophants praised the young Elizabeth to her father -- which they certainly would not have had she been in disfavor. She seems to have spent time at court whenever there was a queen to chaperon her and was living there under the care of Catherine Parr during Henry's last years.
* UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible blinding architect Postnik Yakovlev after the construction of Saint Basil's Cathedral was complete so that he could never design anything so beautiful again is now considered to be probably a myth, since it's now known that Yakovlev collaborated with Ivan [=ShirIai=] on some projects in Kazan after he finished his work on the famous cathedral.
* One popular explanation for the existence of the "Black Irish" (a dark-haired phenotype appearing in people of Irish origin) was that they were descended from survivors of the [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOfTheSpanishArmada Spanish Armada]]. However, historical analysis has shown that what few survivors weren't immediately killed or handed over to the English couldn't possibly have left such a large impact on the Irish genome, and genetic analysis suggests that the Black Irish have far deeper roots.
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Terraces_of_the_Philippine_Cordilleras Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras]] were once thought to be ancient agricultural relics that were over 2000 years old. However, they were later found to be from the sixteenth century at the very earliest, developed as a response to Spanish colonization of the islands driving lowlanders up the cordillera, where taro was previously farmed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:17th century]]
* Once, the general consensus was that Native Americans had developed scalping independently of the Old World and practiced it for centuries if not millennia. In the latter half of the 20th century, a competing theory occurred, claiming that scalping was unknown among Native Americans until they learned how to do so from Europeans, who offered to pay allied tribes bounties for the scalps of members of enemy tribes. This competing theory was debunked after the discovery of the Crow Creek massacre site, which proved that Native Americans were scalping people over a century before Columbus first arrived in the New World, and it's now thought that the Europeans paid Native Americans for scalps because they were already known to be good at collecting them.
* Once upon a time, the prevailing view was that Australia was completely isolated from the rest of the world until Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed there in 1606. Today, it's known that there was (admittedly somewhat isolated) contact with other areas beforehand; perhaps most notably, people from Indonesia and New Guinea visited Australia's north coast, developing trading and social relationships with the Aborigines who lived there.
* John Smith never mentioned a romance with UsefulNotes/{{Pocahontas}}. This story first appeared in the 1803 book ''Travels of the United States of America'' by John Davis and it stuck. Pocahontas (who was actually about 10 when they met) and John Smith were [[IntergenerationalFriendship friends]], though. Historians agree that Smith was captured by the Powhatan but was released without Pocahontas' involvement; he didn't write that Pocahontas rescued him from death until 1616 in a letter to the queen of Denmark -- possibly to build up Pocahontas' reputation as TheChiefsDaughter. In 1995, historians pointed out that this story is suspiciously similar to that of the Spaniard Juan Ortiz in Florida, mentioned in the narrative of the De Soto expedition which just happened to be translated and become a best-seller in England a few years before, in 1609.
* While Jan Pieterszoon Coen was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, his legacy has become more controversial since the 19th century when certain unpleasant facts about his conduct were brought back to light. Now he's widely criticized for the violence he employed, such as in the final stages of the Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands, which was excessive even by the standards of his time.
* The conventional black-and-white view of the UsefulNotes/GalileoGalilei affair as a conflict between reason and dogmatism is now considered a gross oversimplification of a more grey-shaded reality, in part because Galileo never actually conclusively proved heliocentrism. Tellingly, he had no answers for the strongest argument against heliocentrism: if the heliocentric model were the truth, there should be observable parallax shifts in the position of the stars as the Earth moved.[[note]]There ''are'' such parallax shifts, but they're too subtle to be seen with the naked eye; the technology to prove they existed wouldn't be developed until decades after Galileo died[[/note]] Furthermore, before Galileo's trial began, he received a proposal from cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a staunch defender of heliocentrism, that was actually a brilliant workaround to reconcile Galileo's position with the Church: he could teach heliocentrism as a ''theoretical model'', on the basis that the apparent motions of the planets could be better understood [[LoopholeAbuse if Earth was imagined as if it rotated around the Sun]]. However, Galileo was too stubborn to settle on a workaround instead of having his theory accepted as it was.
* Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba was a ruthless political operator and certainly had blood on her hands, but contemporary historians are by and large skeptical of certain negative claims made about her (that she murdered one of her own servants to prove a point, that she took the throne by having her brother poisoned, that she forced her lovers to fight each other to the death), mostly because they were originally made by her Portuguese enemies.
* After the death of Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Lützen, rumors circulated that he was assassinated by Prince Francis Albert of Saxe-Lauenburg. While these rumors continued to be retold as late as the 19th century, it's now generally accepted that he was killed by enemy fire.
* Scottish journalist Charles Mackay's 1841 account of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania Tulip mania]] was more or less taken as fact for over a century. But in the 1980s, historians and economists began to examine the story with a more critical eye. Nowadays, Mackay's story is generally considered to have been incomplete and inaccurate. For example, the economic fallout from the bubble is now believed to be greatly exaggerated; contrary to claims that Dutch commerce suffered a severe shock, there's no evidence that anyone besides a relative handful of merchants and craftsmen was seriously affected by the bubble. Some of the anecdotes he recounts are also now considered very unlikely; for example, the story about a foreign sailor who ate a tulip bulb thinking it was an onion and got locked up for it was probably a lie, since tulip bulbs taste nothing like onions and are poisonous if not prepared properly.
* Rembrandt's iconic painting ''Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq'' was thought to be a night scene for a very long time, hence the more common (and succinct) name ''The Night Watch''. However, after World War II, it was discovered to be coated in a dark varnish.
* For a long time, it was believed that UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell's son Oliver Cromwell II died in a skirmish. But in the 20th century, letters were rediscovered proving that he died of smallpox.
* Once, it was nearly universally held that the Han Chinese managed to "sinicize" their Manchu conquerors, leading to the idea that the Qing dynasty was run by people who were Chinese in their thoughts and institutions. Nobody seriously doubts that there was strong Chinese influence on the Manchu: Manchu people today are overwhelmingly Chinese speakers, while native Manchu speakers count a few hundreds at best. However, the opening of Chinese archives in the 1990s led to the growth of a competing theory: that the Qing merely manipulated their subjects, used Central and North Asian models of rule as much as they did Confucian ones, and regarded China as only a part (though admittedly a very large and important part) of a much wider empire that extended well into Inner Asia. While there are critics of this new theory, one of the most prominent being the Chinese-American academic Ping-ti Ho, the older conception of the Qing dynasty is now considered debatable.
* When historian John Fiske came up with the name "UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfPiracy" in 1897, he defined it as lasting 70 years, spanning the era between 1650 and 1720. Between 1909 and the 1990s, the trend for defining the age was one towards narrowing its scope, with some defining it as lasing only ten years or even less. However, in the new millennium, influential research suggested that Fiske was closer to the truth after all and may have actually been ''underestimating'' its length (some scholars have proposed ending dates as late as 1730, a full decade after Fiske said it ended), even if the idea of the Golden Age has changed to less of a singular period and more of a series of similar but distinct phases.
* Nowadays, it's believed that the idea of the Great Fire of London putting an end to the Great Plague is a myth. By 1666, the plague was already on its way out, and the city had been on the road to recovery for more than six months. That being said, it did help bring about conditions that helped mitigate the impact of future outbreaks; London was rebuilt to better standards and more sanitary conditions prevailed.
* Traditionally, it has been said that the Sikhs saved the Hindus from the depravations of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Rediscovered information shows that things were more complicated: the Sikhs initially took up arms to defend ''themselves'', the Sikh leadership were more reliant on Hindu Rajputs to train their troops and fight for them than previously thought, and some Sikhs (perhaps most notably Guru Har Rai’s eldest son Ram Rai) actually fought on the side of the Mughals against their fellow Sikhs.
* UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment was interpreted in the post-revolutionary and early modern era as embodying a largely aristocratic culture and society. The dominant image is still a bunch of cosmopolitan individuals gathering in a salon hosted by liberal nobles and later trickling down to upstart middle-class societies who wanted to be TheTeamWannabe and who later misinterpreted ideas during the Revolution, at least as seen by the pro-Enlightenment Anglophones. This exploded when Robert Darnton published ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'' and explored the fact that many Enlightenment ideas and works proliferated to ordinary people via pirated books or in some cases disguised as cheap pulp and pornography, some of them written by Enlightenment types like Mirabeau specifically to flout censorship and pass BeneathSuspicion, and this played a crucial role in spreading and disseminating ideas to a larger audience than previously envisioned.
* The accounts of multiple great waves in the earthquake that destroyed the Jamaican city of Port Royal were once thought to be exaggerated. That is, until geological surveys of the area showed that it was indeed possible for a tsunami to enter the harbor, hit one side, rebound, hit the other side, rebound and repeat.
* The standard story about 17th century London's private fire brigades has always been that, if a building didn't have a firemark indicating that they were insured with that company, the firefighters would let it burn. Investigating this claim, however, suggests there isn't any evidence it was ever official policy, and that it possibly derives from rival fire insurance firms refusing to assist each other, which wasn't an official policy either, but did happen. As Creator/TomScott [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif1EAgEQKI&t=294s put it]], when he discovered one of his sources had removed the claim after he made a video on the subject:
-->'''Scott''': I was wrong. ''Series/{{QI}}'' was wrong. ''Series/HorribleHistories'' was wrong. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of pop-history books and storytellers were wrong. ''({{beat}})'' We think.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:18th century]]
* Charles XII of Sweden was noted during his lifetime for never marrying, having no mistresses, and very likely abstaining from sex altogether. The reasons why continue to be debated, but one popular theory held that he was intersex. In 1917, his remains were examined to test this hypothesis, and it was found that he had no traits of an intersex person.
* The Will of Peter the Great, a document purporting to show Russian ambitions to dominate Europe, is now known to have been forged by French essayist Charles-Louis Lesur as an attempt to justify Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
* King George III's madness was once thought to be a result of RoyalInbreeding. Now, however, it's generally believed to have been a side effect of porphyria, a disease that has nothing to do with inbreeding.
* Some myths about the Battle of Culloden are now understood to be just that:
** Not only were not all the Highlanders swordsmen, it seems likely that most of them ''weren't''. Only 190 broadswords could be discovered on the battlefield, as opposed to the more than 2,000 muskets that were found.
** Bayonets were not the decisive factor that allowed the government forces to win the battle. One widely-touted eyewitness account reported that the men of Barrell’s and Munro’s regiments killed one or two men each with their bayonets, but some quick math makes this seem very dubious. Barrell’s numbered just over 300 men; supposing the estimate is correct, that means this regiment alone accounted for 3-600 enemy casualties with just their bayonets. This doesn’t tally. Nor does the historical record. Cumberland instructed his infantry to stab into the body of the man opposing the soldier to his right. This proved effective at first but in fact, while it blunted the Jacobite charge, it neither stopped it nor repelled it. The Clans cut clean through the center of Barrell’s and were only stopped by the concentrated firepower of the second line.
** Lord George Murray, one of the Jacobite commanders, later claimed that the [[GeoEffects plain, open flatness]] of the battlefield inordinately favored the English cavalry and artillery while proving unsuitable for the Highlanders. This was accepted as fact for many years but is now not considered credible because the Highlanders had fought and won on much flatter ground at Prestonpans. In reality, the problem was the boggy state of the field, which actually disadvantaged ''both'' sides.
** While it was once thought that most of the Jacobite casualties occurred at the hands of the government artillery, it's now known that the artillery's effectiveness has been greatly exaggerated. True, it played an important role in provoking the fateful charge, but the softness of the ground prevented the cannonballs from bouncing as they should have. In fact, the artillery didn't become effective until they switched to canister shot ''after'' the clans charged. Because of this, estimates have been lowered from a 30-minute-long barrage of unanswered cannon fire that killed hundreds to a bombardment that lasted 15 minutes at most and only killed 150 at a maximum.
** One popular legend claims that the three regiments of Clan [=MacDonald=] on the left flank didn't close with the enemy because they never charged. The story goes that they were in a snit about Lord George allocating the right flank to the Atholl battalions and refused to obey orders. However, while it's true that they failed to strike a blow against the government forces, it's not because they didn't charge. What really happened is more complicated. They stubbornly refused to redeploy when the Jacobite line was moved closer to the longitude of the Culwhiniac enclosure, thus accounting for the strange skewed nature of the Jacobite line. When the main charge went in, the [=MacDonalds=] also charged... but they had further to run and they encountered knee-deep bogs in the terrain they had to cover, which impeded their momentum. Thus, when they met with the steady platoon volleys of the Royals and Pulteney’s regiments, their advance was checked and they were forced to withdraw by the movement of the enemy cavalry.
* For a long time, it was believed that after Fort William was captured by Bengali troops in 1756, 146 people (consisting of British soldiers and Indian sepoys and civilians) were locked in a dungeon known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_of_Calcutta Black Hole of Calcutta]] overnight, and 123 of them died from the ordeal. This was thought to be credible due to it being based on an eyewitness account by John Zephaniah Holwell, but in the 20th century, it came to be questioned, not least because it was dubious as to whether it was even possible for that many people to have been crammed into a room 14 feet long and 18 feet wide. Today, more modest estimates are considered far more likely, with the highest considered credible being 64 prisoners (of whom 21 survived).
* Mason Locke "Parson" Weems wrote a hagiographic biography of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington that contained many anecdotes about him that later became iconic, such as him refusing to lie about chopping down a cherry tree and praying in the snow at Valley Forge. While these stories were generally accepted as true for many years, they are now considered apocryphal, probably invented out of whole cloth by Weems to provide moral instruction to America's youth.
* As the United States came into increasing conflict with Native Americans over the course of the 19th century, Daniel Boone was falsely characterized as a man who hated Indians and killed them by the score. In reality, Boone respected Native Americans and was respected by them, and by his own admission could only be sure of ever killing a grand total of three Amerindians.
* Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart:
** Mozart's composition method was the subject of myths in the 19th century, with a prevalent claim being that he composed entirely in his head and then wrote the music down in a single draft. However, the rediscovery of earlier drafts of his compositions has since proven that his sheet music went through numerous revisions.
** The idea that Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave is now generally understood to have been based on a misunderstanding of funeral practices in 18th-century Vienna. While it's true that he was buried in the same plot as several other people, this was standard practice for middle-income families at the time; the burial was organized and dignified, a far cry from the images of corpses being unceremoniously dumped into an open pit now synonymous with "mass graves". His remains really were later dug up and moved somewhere else to make room for more burials, but once again, this was commonly done due to grave space being at a premium in Viennese cemeteries; it had nothing to do with the wealth and status of those interred.
* One popular myth is that the kangaroo got its name when James Cook and Joseph Banks asked a local Aborigine what it was called, and the local responded with "kangaroo", which actually meant "I don't understand". This was disproven in 1972 when linguist John B. Haviland in his research with the Guugu Yimithirr people was able to confirm that "gangurru" referred to a rare large dark-coloured species of kangaroo (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilopine_kangaroo antilopine kangaroo]], to be exact).
* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution:
** It was widely believed that the Revolution was caused solely due to the imposition of British taxes without any representation from the colonists, who held no power in the American colonies. While taxation is still considered to be a major reason behind the revolution, more recent historians cite the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar as sowing the seeds for America's independence, as not only did the war drain Britain's economy and lead them to impose heavy taxes on America in the first place, but the Proclamation of 1763 forbade any settlement west of the Appalachians, in order to prevent future conflicts with Native Americans. This angered colonists, who were eager to settle new lands. In addition, the British were initially lenient on colonists who wouldn't pay taxes; it wasn't until the Tea Act of 1773 that they began to seriously enforce these new taxes, which became the straw that broke the camel's back and caused revolution to erupt.
** While the basic facts of Paul Revere's ride are relatively well known, their interpretation has gone back and forth based more upon the tenor of the times and the personal slant of historians than the known facts of the event itself. A recent history devoted nearly a third of the book to the perpetual debate between Revere's skeptics and partisans. What's certain is that most people get their view of Revere from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem. It gets a lot wrong, the most crucial being that he didn't actually get to his destination. He was arrested, while another rider was the one who got through. But "Revere" [[RhymesOnADime rhymed best]], so he got the credit (the successful rider in reality was the far more obscure Dr. Samuel Prescott).
** When ''[[Theatre/SeventeenSeventySix 1776]]'' was written, not a lot of information about James Wilson was available. The playwrights tossed in a bit of ArtisticLicense and created a climax where his desire to remain a nobody is the crucial factor in him breaking with Dickinson and voting for independence. They note in the DVDCommentary that this was never singled out by historians as a major misstep, but later findings show that James Wilson was a staunch proponent of independence, and that the delay in the vote which the play attributes to stalling techniques by Adams was in reality partially due to Wilson wanting to go home and check that his constituents were all right with his vote.
** No, the Hessians probably weren't drunk at the Battle of Trenton. While they weren't as alert as they should've been, it's now generally believed that they (or at least most of them) were sober when they were attacked by the Continental Army. Some of Washington's officers believed that the Hessians ''would'' have a boozy German Christmas, and [[CurbStompBattle the sheer magnitude of the Hessian defeat]] makes it easy to believe. However, Colonel Rall had been tipped off that Washington was up to something and asked for reinforcements, only to be denied by British commanders who no longer believed Washington's army to be a threat.
** The claim that Martha Washington [[WeNamedTheMonkeyJack named a feral tomcat]] after UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton to make fun of his [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuity]] was generally accepted as true for decades, but is now considered dubious due to there being no evidence of the story circulating until after Hamilton died. Nowadays, it's widely suspected to be posthumous slander against Hamilton, possibly by UsefulNotes/JohnAdams who was still bitter about Hamilton trying to undermine his administration, possibly by vengeful Loyalists who were trying to diminish [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff Hamilton's popularity abroad]].
** Conditions at Valley Forge were indisputably awful, but the idea that inclement weather was a major problem is now considered a myth, or at least an exaggeration. While it was once claimed that the encampment was blanketed in snow and many soldiers were killed by frostbite and hypothermia, no contemporary accounts or sources state that death occurred from freezing temperatures alone, even if some soldiers needed amputations. Rather, snowfall occurred infrequently, above-freezing temperatures were regular, and ice was uncommon. Stories of harsh weather are most likely the result of unintentionally conflating Valley Forge with the later winter encampment at Jockey Hollow in New Jersey, which saw the coldest winter of the war. At Valley Forge, disease and a lack of supplies were far bigger problems than the weather.
* The original [[LuddWasRight Luddites]] of the 1810s took their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver who, in 1779, broke two stocking frames in a fit of rage. While Ludd's existence was accepted for a long time, he's now considered a legendary figure, since the first mention of him is in an 1811 article in ''The Nottingham Review'' that has no independent evidence of its veracity.
* Stories of UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson having children with one of his slaves, a woman named Sally Hemmings, were once considered mere political mudslinging. However, DNA testing has proven that some of her descendants were ''also'' descended from a member of the Jefferson family, which almost certainly means that at least some of her children were fathered by Thomas.
* For decades, George Washington was credited with starting the tradition of adding "so help me God" to the presidential inaugural oath. While this wouldn't be out of character, since Washington was one of the most religiously devout founding fathers, an investigation by the Library of Congress found no evidence that the phrase was ever used in that context before the inauguration of UsefulNotes/ChesterAArthur, almost a century after Washington first swore the oath.
* One famous story claimed that Grigory Potemkin built fake settlements in Crimea using hollow facades to fool UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat when she paid the area a visit with some foreign dignitaries. While it gave rise to the term [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village "Potemkin village",]] most modern historians believe the tale to be an exaggeration or even an outright myth.
* While UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat is now considered by most historians to have been his period's equivalent of a homosexual, this fact about his life was denied even while he was still alive, with his physician, Ritter von Zimmermann, publishing an entire book claiming that a botched surgery on his genitals had rendered him impotent. Despite this claim being immediately denied by the very surgeon who performed the operation, the idea of Frederick being impotent stuck around for decades after his death. In UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, where homosexuality was violently suppressed, it was believed that Frederick simply had a mere hatred towards women, prioritizing administration of the state over romantic pursuits. With the discovery of several love letters exchanged between Frederick and his male partners, it is now generally accepted by historians that Frederick was in fact gay.
* The death of Adolf Frederick of Sweden being attributed to [[DeathByGluttony an excessive meal consisting of 14 helpings of his favorite dessert]] has since been doubted by modern historians, who generally attribute his death to a heart attack.
* UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution, being one of the most controversial events in world history, is often periodically updated and revised:
** UsefulNotes/MarieAntoinette's spending habits were not a major contribution to the financial crisis that helped cause the revolution. Not only do financial records prove that her spending was actually significantly ''less'' than that of many other people at Versailles (and certainly not enough to be one of the main causes of the economic problems facing the country), but France's finances were also already in a shaky situation before she arrived. While calling her spending extravagant isn't entirely inaccurate (at least taken in a vacuum), it didn't even come close to bankrupting the country; her "Madame Deficit" nickname was undeserved. If she hadn't spent a single livre between 1770 and 1789, the situation still wouldn't have been salvaged. She was simply scapegoated for a number of reasons.
** On the topic of Antoinette, the idea that the Petit Trianon royal estate was a completely private getaway where she pretended to be a commoner is now considered apocryphal by most serious historians. While it was described as "private" by contemporary sources, it was only private by the standards of a royal estate; her entourage there consisted of "only" a single footman and maybe some friends, which was small compared to the much larger one she had at Versailles. Notably, contemporary depictions of the estate make it clear that there would have been many guests and servants there. There's no evidence to back up the stories that she pretended to be a farm girl, milkmaid, shepherdess, or anything of the sort when she was there either; claims that she did can be dated to 1798 at the absolute earliest, and even that may be too generous. All contemporary evidence points to her running the ''hameau de la reine'' the way any elite landowner of the time would have managed a country estate they owned. Contemporary criticism of the hameau was about its relative secrecy and seclusion, about the supposed unethical sexual and political dealings going on there, about its expense; they make no mention of her pretending to be a peasant woman.
** Revolutionary propaganda claimed that the Storming of the Bastille resulted in the release of numerous mistreated prisoners who were locked up for political reasons. It's now known that at the time of the storming, there were only seven prisoners, none of their imprisonments were political in nature [[note]]they included four forgers, an Irishman accused of spying for the British government, a failed assassin of UsefulNotes/LouisXV, and a "deviant" aristocrat suspected of murder[[/note]] and [[LuxuryPrisonSuite they were treated quite well]]. For that matter, contrary to revolutionary claims, the Bastille was stormed to seize armaments said to be inside it, with liberation of prisoners being a secondary concern at best.
** The Sans-Culottes weren't exactly the prototypical urban proletariat they were long imagined as. In reality, they were a RagtagBunchOfMisfits that included shopkeepers, artisans, unemployed youth, low-rent actors, dissident clergy, and even aristocrats who were SlummingIt, among others.
** Mostly thanks to Anglophone portrayals, the Revolution is often painted as undone by revolutionary excess, thanks to misunderstandings of the original ReignOfTerror which is almost never presented in its original context of [[EmergencyAuthority a series of emergency laws]] to save France from CivilWar and invasion. Later historians see the Terror as being part of the Revolution's war effort, calling it the first Total War. They also note that many key reforms happened during this period: increased participation of citizens with the government, restructuring the army, building institutions like the Louvre and Jardin des Plantes, and in 1794, the [[SlaveLiberation abolition of slavery]]. Almost none of this ever gets so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a depiction, outside France itself.
** While it was long taught that the French nobility was one of the primary victims of the Reign of Terror, this is now known to be not entirely accurate. In reality, only 8% of the Terror's victims were aristocrats (though since the aristocracy made up less than 2% of the population, they still suffered disproportionate casualties), and for most of its existence, the Terror mainly targeted clergy, food hoarders and actual or accused counter-revolutionaries. There ''was'' a greater focus on nobles during the "Great Terror" after the Law of 22 Prarial, but even that was abolished in a matter of days after Robespierre fell.
** Edmund Burke's ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' was perhaps the most influential commentary on the Revolution in the Anglosphere and is still heavily cited by the most conservative commentators. However, Burke is no longer taken seriously by the majority. Alfred Cobban, a conservative historian himself, noted that Burke did very poor research on France, basing his work on memories of a single visit to the country. Burke's defenders argue that he predicted the ReignOfTerror, but the Terror was a consequence of the declaration of war, made by the Girondins and supported by Louis XVI (i.e. the more traditionalist side) and opposed by radicals like Marat and Robespierre. In addition, the essay is dated for its classist dismissal of the Third Estate as malicious rabble and "[[ValuesDissonance Jew brokers]]", and its echoing of Augustin Barruel's conspiracy theory that TheIlluminati and Freemasons orchestrated the Revolution as part of a ploy to overthrow Christendom.
---> '''Alfred Cobban:''' "As literature, as political theory, [[DamnedByFaintPraise as anything but history]], [Burke's] ''Reflections'' is magnificent."
** UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre was once often depicted as a proto-Lenin and/or a proto-Stalin when Robespierre never had anything near that level of influence and authority in actual policy-making. David A. Bell remarked that "No serious historian of the French Revolution of the past century has accepted the idea that Robespierre ever exercised a true personal dictatorship." But thanks to HollywoodHistory and Robespierre being far more well-known than most other revolutionaries, this fact has yet to trickle down to the common public.
** Speaking of Robespierre, for many years, it was said that the Reign of Terror ended after his fall from power. Today's historians take a more nuanced view. While it's true that certain laws and procedures were abolished after he and his supporters were executed, the mechanisms of the Terror continued to operate for many months.
** The Revolution has also been misunderstood as being a case of "anarchy" and mob rule with the masses rising against the nobles. In reality, the French Revolution was predominantly a middle-class revolution. The most radical major party, the Jacobins, advocated for what we would call free market capitalism. The Parisian mob so often sentimentalized and demonized rather was a highly literate community for the era (Paris had an almost entirely literate male population). More left-wing factions were actually repressed by the Jacobins.
** In the years following the Revolution, stories cropped up of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bals_des_victimes Victims' Balls,]] where people targeted by the Reign of Terror wore mourning clothes and red sashes around their necks to symbolize the guillotine they narrowly avoided. Generations of historians both inside and outside France accepted their existence as fact, but later scholarship suggested that, based on a near-total lack of primary evidence, they were more likely fabrications after the fact. Historian David Bell went so far as to call them "an invention of early 19th-century Romantic authors".
* The 1790 Footprints, a set of footprints discovered near Kīlauea on the island of Hawaiʻi, were long thought to have been left by retreating war parties led by the warlord Keōua Kūʻahuʻula that are known to have been in the area during an eruption that year. However, a 2008 forensic study determined that many of the footprints were actually left by women and children, strongly indicating that at least some of them can be attributed to everyday activities rather than warfare.
* The Haitian Revolution:
** It used to be generally thought that Haiti's population of black slaves always wanted independence. But it's now known that the majority actually supported continued French rule initially, because the first calls for independence came from slave owners, and the slaves justifiably feared even harsher treatment from their masters without the threat of retribution from the French government to keep their abuses in check.
** The story used to go that Haiti's population was divided by race. While not ''wrong'', per se, that view is now known to be a considerable simplification of how things actually were. The white population was divided based on class[[note]]the wealthy slaveowners (especially the planters) generally scoffed at the more "common" whites, while the less affluent whites resented and envied the richer ones[[/note]] and origin[[note]]French-born whites often looked down on Haiti-born whites as "provincials", while white Haitians frequently viewed the French as "outsiders"[[/note]]. As for the black population, it was also divided between the free and the slaves, as well as between those born in Haiti and those born in Africa (the former tended to view the latter as "savages", while the latter considered the former "lapdogs") and between Christians and Voudoun practitioners. Only the free people of color could really be called united.
** Until 1938, it was believed that Toussaint Louverture, the most prominent and well-regarded of the revolutionary leaders, had been a slave until the start of the revolution. That year, the discovery of a 1776 marriage certificate that referred to Louverture as a freeman proved that he had been [[SlaveLiberation manumitted]] over a decade beforehand, possibly as early as 1772.
[[/folder]]

!!Late Modern Age

[[folder:19th century]]
* UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte and UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars:
** Napoleon is now believed to have been of about average height for a man of his era. The commonly held Anglosphere idea that he was short is derived from the fact that the French foot was longer than the English foot, so the English unknowingly shaved a few inches off his height after seeing reports of how tall he was. Other possible factors were his AffectionateNickname ''le petit caporal'' and the fact that he was often surrounded by members of the Old Guard (who were mostly of above average height, making him look shorter in comparison).
** A once-popular myth about the Ulm campaign is that Austrian and Russian armies failed to join forces in time because the Austrians used the Gregorian calendar while the Russians were still using the older Julian calendar. Some historians have pointed out that this idea is contradicted by the fact that virtually all known Russian correspondence with Austria during the War of the Third Coalition made sure to include both the Gregorian and Julian dates of events as a matter of course. It's now believed things were more complicated than that: the Austrians believed Napoleon would choose to give battle in northern Italy, and their planning with the Russians reflected that fact, so both were caught off guard when Napoleon chose to focus his efforts in southern Germany instead.
* It was once generally accepted that African Americans largely had the same names as their white counterparts up until the 1960s at the earliest. This narrative was cited in Chapter 6 ''Literature/{{Freakonomics}}'' as part of an extended discussion of nominative determinism. However, [[https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-black-names-from-perlie-to-latasha-130102 analysis of census records and birth and death certificates]] has shown that "distinctively black" names have been around for much longer than that; they've been around since the Antebellum era. It's just that the names that were recognized as such were different across different eras; for example, the 1920 census shows that 99% of Americans named Booker who were alive at the time were black.
* The German Coast uprising of 1811 was long written off as a fight against bandits, if not omitted altogether. Now, though, it's understood as a major slave rebellion. The prevailing theory as to why the truth was suppressed was because an organized, politically sophisticated slave revolt that ''wasn't'' wantonly murderous didn't gel with the popular narrative among slaveowners and slavery defenders that holding on to slaves was good for everyone involved.
* 2021 saw [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/20/liberia-purchase-agreement-1821-burrowes/ the unearthing of a document]] detailing the purchase of land that would become UsefulNotes/{{Liberia}}'s capital Monrovia, which proved several widely accepted facts about said purchase to be myths.
** Once it was said that local chieftains rejected the contract because their societies prohibited the purchase and sale of land. The fact that this purchase agreement shows formal approval of the land sale proves this wrong.
** While it was said that the locals couldn't comprehend the contents of the contract because they had no knowledge of English, there is now proof that at least two of the West African signatories knew at least enough of the language to conduct negotiations in it.
** The notion that Robert Stockton forced the locals to sign the contract at gunpoint is now known to be based on a misunderstanding. While he did draw his guns during the meeting, it was to ward off two pro-slavery outsiders who tried to sabotage the negotiations. In any event, the signing only happened the day after he drew his guns, so even if he had threatened the rulers he was in talks with, they would've had ample time to mobilize their troops, many of whom had guns of their own.
* Ranavalona I, Queen of Madagascar, was not viewed in a kind light by foreign contemporaries. They strongly condemned her policies and made her out to be little more than [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen a cruel and xenophobic tyrant]], and possibly a [[TheCaligula madwoman]] to boot. However, more recent historical analyses have taken a less overtly negative stance on her, with many recharacterizing her as an astute political operator who worked to expand her realm's territory and influence and tried to preserve Malagasy political and cultural sovereignty from European encroachment.
* British machinations during the Great Game were motivated by fears that Russia would use its expansion into Central Asia as a springboard to threaten the British presence in South Asia. While this was considered a very real possibility even after the original Great Game ended, most contemporary historians believe that Russia had no serious plans for South Asia.
* Scholarly consensus on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee Thuggee]] seems to be constantly in flux. Were they really motivated by warped devotion to Kali, or were they just after money? Had they existed since antiquity, or did they only arise much later? Were they as divided as they seemed, or were they decentralized cells of a larger organization? Did they even exist at all?
* Like George III's porphyria, UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria's status as a carrier of hemophilia was also originally blamed on RoyalInbreeding. As is the case with George's porphyria, hemophilia is caused by a single mutated gene and is therefore not more common in inbred populations. The mutation is believed to have first occurred spontaneously in the gametes (=eggs/sperm) of either of Victoria's parents, making her the first person in her family ever to have the mutation. It’s now believed the mutation probably came from her father since he was in his early fifties when she was born and these types of mutations tend to pop up in the children of older fathers. Thus, inbreeding would have absolutely nothing to do with it. If anything, it's in''ter''breeding with Victoria's daughters that spread hemophilia to so many other nations' royals, whether they were previously related to her or not. American television shows ''love'' this trope, though.
* Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's reputation as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman is now known to stem from character assassination by his literary [[TheRival rival]] Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who wrote a slanderous biography of Poe full of distortions and outright lies after Poe's mysterious death in 1849. This biography was treated with undeserved credibility for a long time and became the standard for characterization of Poe.
* Franklin's lost expedition:
** Inuit accounts that some members of the expedition [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty resorted to cannibalism to survive]] were once largely considered unreliable, with the [[{{allegory}} allegorical]] play ''The Frozen Deep'' (co-written by Creator/WilkieCollins and Creator/CharlesDickens) including a TakeThat at the idea that such respected sailors and researchers would do such a disgusting thing. However, in 1992, Canadian researchers discovered the skeletal remains of some expedition members that showed evidence of having been cannibalized, most notably cut marks on bones consistent with de-fleshing. On the basis of this evidence, it's now accepted that the Inuit witnesses were right and at least some among the men turned to eating their own dead in desperation.
** More recently, the idea that lead poisoning may have played a part in the expedition's fate, showcased in both ''Series/TheTerror'' and ''ComicBook/ImEisland'' has been disproven. Although large quantities of lead were discovered in the bodies discovered from the expedition, studies indicate that they aren't enough to be harmful and are equal to others of the time.
* The Revolutions of 1848 were once considered largely failures. However, it's now believed that they had more success than previously thought. Governments were forced to change how they acted or at least presented themselves, and the revolutionaries did obtain some political successes, both immediately (such as the end of feudalism in Austria and Prussia) and in the longer term (greater self-determination for the Hungarians).
* Empress Dowager Cixi's reputation in her own lifetime and for some decades afterwards, both within China and abroad, was that of a cruel, self-serving, reactionary despot more concerned with prolonging the existence of the ailing Qing dynasty and using state resources for her own benefit than the wellbeing of her country and people, who played no small part in China's downward spiral during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This traditional appraisal, however, was called into serious question by revisionist historians starting in the 1970s. Through examination of primary sources, it has become clear that much of her bad reputation comes from backdoor gossip and misrepresentation. Within China, both Nationalist and Communist historians scapegoated her for deep-rooted problems that created a virtually unsalvageable situation; while in the Western world, Orientalist stereotypes were a contributing factor to her vilification. Many historians have painted a more nuanced portrait of her as a charming, shrewd, and conscientious administrator and political operator who had to balance multiple internal and external influences and whose leadership was probably the best option China had at the time. She was also not as anti-reform as she has often been painted; she was involved in the abolition of slavery and torture in China and led a program of sweeping political change whose main flaw was not being implemented until late in the Qing dynasty's decline.
* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar:
** After the war, it became a common refrain (especially in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy Lost Cause]] mythology) that the Confederate states seceded partly or even entirely for reasons other than slavery, the most popular one being states' rights (with the nature of those "rights" usually left nebulous). However, examination of primary sources (including the declarations made by the seceding states) reveals that the Confederate politicians were motivated largely if not completely by wanting to preserve slavery in perpetuity, which is why they were so reluctant to accept proposals that they boost their dwindling manpower by giving slaves their freedom in exchange for service in the Confederate military. Their supposed commitment to states' rights is now considered particularly laughable since the federal government of the Confederacy actually passed laws ''prohibiting'' any of its constituent states from abolishing slavery, showing where their priorities truly lay. This myth appears as recently as the 1996 ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E23MuchApuAboutNothing Much Apu About Nothing]]". When Apu is taking the US citizenship test, his examiner asks him about what caused the Civil War; Apu responds with a long-winded explanation of the complexities, to which the examiner annoyedly responds with "just say 'slavery'". Ironically, this means the joke has the opposite effect of its original intent; while it was originally meant to show how intelligent and knowledgeable Apu was, it now makes it look as if he unknowingly bought into a debunked myth.
*** It should be noted that the idea of the "lost cause" as we think of it was specifically created in the later part of the 19th century by those in the Confederacy who didn't want to be viewed like they supported slavery, especially as slavery became less and less popular after the passage of the 13th Amendment. The term "lost cause" specifically comes from an 1866 book by southern journalist Edward A. Pollard titled ''The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates'', Pollard having previously endorsed slavery in his writings (which even got him arrested in 1865) and still being a supporter of both segregation and white supremacy until the end of his life. Still, by this point he understood that slavery was immoral and wanted to distance those who fought on the side he supported from such a cause.
** A popular idea rose in the 1920s that the Confederacy's supposed commitment to states' rights [[WeAREStrugglingTogether prevented the Confederate states from properly coordinating with each other and the Confederate central government]], which hamstrung their war effort. This is now considered a myth: while the Confederacy did have problems with internal divisions, the impact they had is believed to have been exaggerated, and the Union ''also'' had serious internal divisions.
** The once-popular idea of the Confederates as "libertarians in gray" has been shown to be a sanitization of a more complicated reality. Throughout the Confederacy's short-lived existence, there were increasingly vocal and widespread calls for it to abandon liberal democracy and free-market capitalism in favor of adopting a more authoritarian political system (such as a military dictatorship or an absolute monarchy) and much stronger government intervention in economic matters (with some going so far as to call for something akin to a command economy).
** Robert E. Lee's traditional reputation is now believed to have been overblown. Not many seriously doubt that he was a talented commander, but it's thought that he wasn't ''as'' talented as once thought. While it was once thought that his defeats on the battlefield were the result of incompetence and/or disobedience by his subordinates (with James Longstreet in particular taking flack due to some of his postwar statements and actions), the fact that Lee willingly accepted the blame for them during his own lifetime combined with scholarly analysis of his tactics and strategies have shown that he wasn't quite the infallible general he was often made out to be.\\
\\
Lee pursued aggressive, flashy attacks which -- while they often intimidated more timid Union commanders like [=McClellan=] -- ran up casualty lists for the South, something the Confederacy could not afford as they were up against a more industrialized opponent with almost four times as many men of fighting age, and often failed to win strategic advantages in the war. For example, Lee's greatest victory in the war -- the Battle of Chancellorsville -- cost him [[PyrrhicVictory more than 20% of his troops killed or wounded (including one of his best commanders, Stonewall Jackson) in a series of audacious but bloody frontal charges, without gaining a single yard of ground for the Confederacy]]. Despite Grant's traditional reputation as a butcher, he suffered fewer casualties while commanding three armies in two different theaters than Lee did while commanding one army in one theater.
** It was traditionally held that the Confederate leadership was qualitatively superior to their Union counterparts, an advantage the Union overcame through its quantitative edge, overwhelming the Confederacy with its greater manpower, bank deposits, and industrial capacity. While these advantages certainly played a key role in the eventual Union victory, the idea that the Confederate generals were straight-up superior is now considered an exaggeration, or at least a simplification. Many Union generals, like William Tecumseh Sherman and George Henry Thomas, are now considered to have been very good commanders in their own right, while quite a few prominent Confederate generals (such as Braxton Bragg and Gideon Pillow) are now believed to have been straight-up incompetent.
** Contrary to the idea that Union generals won largely by [[WeHaveReserves sending wave after wave of troops into the meatgrinder]], it's now known that Confederate casualty rates were actually significantly higher than Union ones. In fact, Robert E. Lee had the highest casualty rates of any general on either side of the war. UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant in particular was [[HistoricalDowngrade unfairly labeled a "butcher" who won mainly through brute force]]; starting in the 1950s, the view among historians has increasingly shifted towards him being a calculating and skillful strategist and commander who had the talent to utilize the Union's potential advantages and understood how to wage war in an age of industry better than many of his contemporaries.
** Nowadays, it's known that the use of "hooker" as slang for a prostitute doesn't come from Joseph Hooker hiring prostitutes to service his soldiers. This use of the word with its popular meaning occurred in print as early as 1845 and likely comes from the fact that the Corlear's Hook area of Manhattan was a notorious RedLightDistrict in the early 19th century.
** Gettysburg as the war's main turning point is now considered a flawed idea by many historians, as it ignores the impact Union victories in Tennessee and Mississippi had. Even those who believe it ''did'' mark a turning point in the overall war generally say a large part of its impact was due to it happening the day before Vicksburg's surrender, which meant the Confederacy had been put on the backfoot in the Eastern Theater at the worst possible time.
** While the Union's conduct during the war was by no means spotless, the stories of marauding Union troops are now believed to be exaggerations. Evidence suggests that the worst offenses were generally perpetrated by opportunistic criminals and pro-Union partisans and paramilitaries, not by Union regulars. The only theater where the stereotypical raving, rapacious bluebellies could be considered the norm was the brutal fighting in Kansas and Missouri (due to a combination of preexisting strife from Bleeding Kansas and people using the conflict as an excuse/opportunity to settle old scores), and even then, pro-Confederate forces didn't exactly hold a moral edge.
* The Dunning School of Reconstruction, which held that granting blacks the vote and the right to hold office had been a mistake and Radical Republican efforts to reform the postwar South were just a means of attacking it after it had already lost the war, dominated scholarly and popular depictions of the era from the 1900s to the 1930s. Elements of this narrative appeared in ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'', a movie that infamously painted the first incarnation of the UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan as a band of morally justified vigilantes retaliating against abuses the legal authorities couldn't or wouldn't punish. However, its fundamental precepts were re-examined as [[UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement the African-American civil rights movement]] gained steam in the mid-20th century and found to be wanting. While it was true that corruption and oppression were problems, the bad parts of Reconstruction were blown out of proportion while the more positive elements were minimized or twisted. One recurring thread that got particular criticism was the characterization of freedmen as either ignorant dupes who were used and abused by unscrupulous whites (both Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags) or unthinking savages whose depredations threatened civilized society. New attention was paid to the role African-Americans played in shaping the course of events as this racist attempt to diminish their capacity as independent actors capable of constructive activity fell out of favor.
* Thanks to the influence of a famous 1930s biography, it was once widely believed that Sitting Bull was made "Supreme Chief of the whole Sioux Nation" sometime during Red Cloud's War. Later historians and ethnologists have found that Lakota society was highly decentralized, with different bands being largely autonomous and their elders making most decisions, meaning that this concept of authority was probably foreign to them.
* Spurious precision exaggerated the Paraguayan casualties of the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheTripleAlliance. The traditional view was that Paraguay lost 84% of its pre-war population. This estimate was based partly on anecdotal evidence and partly on an 1857 census that is now known to have accidentally or purposely inflated the country's population. While the number of casualties will probably never be known for certain (though just about everyone agrees that military-aged males suffered disproportionate losses) and even the lowest estimates are pretty terrible in their own right (a country losing 7% of its population is certainly nothing to sneeze at), figures of more than 69% are now considered unlikely at best.
* TheWildWest:
** It's now believed that the Old West probably wasn't as violent or "wild" as generally imagined. The overall homicide rate was actually rather low in most places, about 1.5 murders per year per average western town. Additionally, those murders weren't likely to be committed with guns, and gunfights/shootouts/duels in general were not as common as is thought due to many frontier towns putting restrictions on guns. However, death from diseases like cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis, or in an accident like being kicked/dragged by your own horse, makes for far less compelling media. While there were large-scale violent events like range wars and family feuds, similar or even worse events could be found elsewhere in the country at different times (with the Coal Wars notably continuing well into the 1930s).
** The west is accepted as having been much more racially diverse in modern times than in years past or in the media. There are estimates that anywhere from about 30-50% of cowboys were black, Hispanic, or Native American. The media is largely still quite far behind on this matter as well.
** Famed gunslinger Doc Holliday was reputed in his own time and for decades afterward to have killed over a dozen men in various altercations. Modern historians have concluded that a more modest body count of between one and four men is far more likely.
* 19th-century German historians promoted what is now known as the Borussian myth, the idea that German unification was inevitable and it was Prussia's destiny to accomplish it. After World War II, this myth was deconstructed and analyzed, and is now considered merely an attempt to work backwards and rationalize why German history took the course it did.
* Assessments of George Armstrong Custer have shifted over the years. While he initially received criticism after his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, it wasn't long before the public saw him as a tragic military hero, due in no small part to a number of hagiographic books written about him by his widow Elizabeth. The disaster was frequently blamed on Marcus Reno's alleged cowardice and Frederick Benteen's alleged tardiness. This portrait of Custer translated into countless works of fiction, perhaps most famously ''Film/TheyDiedWithTheirBootsOn''. However, later historians cast a more critical eye on Custer's conduct, pointing to his refusal of reinforcements and leaving behind a battery of gatling guns despite knowing he was facing superior numbers, as well as his decision to divide his command. Though Custer still has a number of defenders, the "tragic hero" Custer is no longer the consensus. The more critical view has bled into the mainstream, with many works of fiction and popular history characterizing him as a reckless, arrogant GloryHound who needlessly got himself and hundreds of his men killed.
* For a long time, it was believed that one of the key reasons for the British defeat at Isandlwana was that the soldiers ran out of ammunition because Quartermaster Bloomfield dispensed reserve bullets to soldiers in an absurdly slow, "orderly" fashion. However, it appears this story is exaggerated, if not a myth; while Durnford's Native troops did run out of ammunition, it was mostly because they had been deployed too far from the camp to ensure a steady supply of ammo, not Bloomfield's poor handling of supply. Most British units closer to the main camp were able to keep up a steady stream of fire until they were overrun, as attested by both British and Zulu accounts of the battle. A related myth is that Bloomfield and his aides weren't able to open the ammo boxes because the commissary had misplaced their screwdrivers; even if this had been the case, the boxes could've easily been broken open with rifle butts or other tools. Both of these myths appear in the ''Film/{{Zulu}}'' prequel ''Zulu Dawn''.
* The [[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2570/did-90-000-people-die-of-typhoid-fever-and-cholera-in-chicago-in-1885 Chicago cholera epidemic of 1885]], which is claimed to have killed up to 90,000 Chicagoans after a thunderstorm washed polluted water into Lake Michigan. Historian Libby Hill debunked this in her 2000 book ''The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History'', showing that there were no contemporary records of such an epidemic; no more than 1,000 Chicagoans died from cholera, typhoid, or other diseases in 1885. Hill's book hasn't stopped newspapers, novelists, and even historians from propagating the claim, including Creator/ErikLarson's popular nonfiction book ''The Devil in the White City''.
* While the First and Second Boer Wars were commonly thought of as "white men's wars" (even when they took place), in more recent times increasing scholarly efforts have been undertaken to document the role black Africans in the region played in the conflicts, both as military personnel and non-combatants. Black people living in the Boer Republics were also forced into concentration camps, though they were separated from interned Afrikaners; Africans were also the victims of massacres (at the hands of Boer forces) and forced labor during the war.
* Painters and musicians of the 18th and 19th century were captivated by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism Orientalism]], and especially by the concept of the Turkish [[RoyalHarem harem]]. They were enraptured by the idea of hundreds of beautiful young concubines or "odalisques" loitering around in various states of undress, fawned on by cringing slaves and guarded by eunuchs, all existing solely for the pleasure of the Sultan. The best-known works influenced by this are probably Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart's ''Abduction from the Seraglio'' and Ingres's ''Art/GrandeOdalisque''.
** We now know, of course, that the RealLife Turkish harem was very different from the imaginations of these artists; most inhabitants were older female relatives of the sultan or of previous sultans, and the concubines that did live in the harem were often left to wither on the branch, most sultans being either too old, too drunk, or too uninterested to make use of them. In fact, non-castrated men were generally forbidden to enter the harem, which included the sultan himself. The task of choosing his bedmate generally fell to his mother.
** The majority of women in the Seraglio weren't on the concubine track at all, but engaged in various professions necessary to the running of the Sultan's household. A woman could make a nice little fortune for herself and look forward to eventual retirement and marriage.
* Creator/VincentVanGogh's last painting was once believed to be ''Wheatfield with Crows''. However, new studies conducted in 2020 have cast this into doubt, and a competing theory that ''Tree Roots'' was his final painting has gained significant credence.
* Some beliefs about the beatified Chilean girl Laura Vicuña are now known to be inaccurate:
** For many years that included the time of her beatification, no photograph of her was known to exist. This meant that representations of her were derived from a portrait painted by Italian artist Caffaro Rore, which was based on an account of Laura's appearance by her younger sister Julia decades after the fact. This portrait made her appear very European-looking, and other depictions followed suit. However, a rediscovered school picture of Laura has made it clear that she was actually Mestizo and looked it, and church depictions have been changed to match.
** Popular accounts of Laura's life and death have been debunked by biographers Bernhard Maier and Ciro Brugna, who have pointed out multiple inaccuracies, especially in regards to Laura's father José Domingo. Unlike in the earlier accounts, he never legally married her mother Mercedes Pino and didn't die before the family moved to Argentina; in actuality, [[OutlivingOnesOffspring he outlived Laura]], as shown in rediscovered notes saying that Laura actually offered her life for ''both'' her parents.
* While the notion that Creator/BramStoker based {{Dracula}} on UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler has been seriously discussed since at least 1958, it was the 1972 publication of ''In Search of Dracula'' that popularized it. However, the rediscovery of Stoker's notes has cast this idea into doubt:
** The notes give no indication that Stoker even knew Vlad the Impaler ''existed''. According to them, he got the name from the book ''An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia'', which contained references to multiple voivodes known as "Dracula" and a footnote claiming that "Dracula" meant "Devil" and was a name given by Wallachians to people who were particularly courageous, cruel or cunning. This strongly indicates that he chose the name because of its devilish associations, not because of the history and legends attached to its owner.
** For that matter, the idea that there was a singular model for Dracula has itself come under attack. More likely, he was a [[CompositeCharacter composite containing aspects of multiple people]], both historical figures and people Stoker knew personally.
** We now know a great deal of where Stoker's knowledge of vampire lore came from. He consulted numerous books on superstitions and added a few inventions of his own to make his vampires stand out from others. We also know more about how the novel changed over time. Originally, the count wasn't from Transylvania at all; he was from Styria in Austria. And before he came across the name Dracula, it appears Stoker was calling his vampire Count Wampyr. There are actually multiple places in his intermediate manuscripts where the name "Wampyr" is crossed out and replaced with "Dracula". If Stoker had based Dracula on Vlad, it seems likely that he would've been named that from the beginning. The evidence points to Dracula being an amalgam like many other fictional characters, a mix of information Stoker found interesting and ideas he developed on the way. Dracula isn't even representative of one European state: he's a pinch of Transylvanian folklore with a Wallachian name, a Hungarian ethnic background, and a feudal estate straight out of English GothicHorror.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:20th Century]]
* While it was once believed that Ty Cobb was one of the most violent and racist individuals to ever play baseball, it's now generally accepted among historians that his bad reputation was based on sensationalized and even outright fictionalized biographies. Cobb really did get into a number of fights, but his reputation for violence was exaggerated and what he did wasn't as extreme by the standards of the time as it would be today; though it's true that he assaulted a heckler, that was hardly uncommon in those days. Not only was he not as violent as claimed, he was also an advocate for racial equality, in contrast to the once-accepted image of him as a virulent racist, and his advocacy was recognized and praised in black newspapers of the era. He noted his approval when UsefulNotes/JackieRobinson broke the color barrier and called Roy Campanella one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, hardly statements one would expect from a man who hated black people. Before the traditional image of him was proven wrong, this characterization of Cobb was the norm in both fiction and non-fiction for decades; WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob even jokingly alluded to it (and implied it was true) in his review of ''The Babe Ruth Story''.
* For over 70 years, it was taken for granted that ill-fated Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott was a brave and noble hero undone by bad weather and bad luck. That changed dramatically with the publication of a 1979 book called ''Scott and Amundsen'' (later re-titled ''The Last Place on Earth'') which characterized Robert Scott as a bungler out of his depth. According to this view, Scott made a series of blunders that led to the deaths of him and his party, including: using ponies that were ill-suited for polar conditions (and getting weak, poor-quality ponies at that) when he had been advised to use dogs, deciding to rely on man-hauling sledges to the Pole instead of using dogs, failing to ensure that the motorized sledges would actually work, failing to lay enough fuel and supplies, choosing to take a fifth man to the Pole when they had rationed for four, and not issuing clear instructions for a dogsled party to come to his rescue. Full publication of Scott's diaries has also revealed some pretty unflattering passages, including what can only be described as irritation towards Edward Evans for dying. There has been pushback against this view since, with Scott defenders pointing out that he actually ''did'' leave orders for a relief party to come get him (although it was phrased to not be a priority), and Scott falling victim to what was, even for the Antarctic, a terrible blizzard. But even as the issue has continued to be debated, it's basically consensus that Scott's party met with failure and disaster, while Amundsen got to the Pole first and got back alive, because Amundsen's expedition was planned better and led better than Scott's.
* For decades, western historians attributed the fall of the [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Qing Dynasty]] solely to the Qing's own corruption and misrule of the Chinese people, who had since become enlightened by western ideals of democracy and political revolution. With the rise of RedChina as a serious world power, however, this consensus has been largely discredited, with the collapse of the Qing Dynasty now being attributed to the expansion of European colonial empires and the Qing's own failure to industrialize, resulting in their defeat and subjugation by their much more powerful neighbors. The 1911 revolution that ultimately brought down the Qing was caused largely by the fact that the Qing were seen as too weak to ward off foreign control, and thus the Chinese people in their revolution aimed to establish a new Chinese state which could defend itself against European intrusions.
** It was also once believed in the west that one of the main reasons the Qing were overthrown was due to their being perceived by most Han Chinese as foreigners due to their Manchu roots. This theory has also been largely disproven, as the distinction between Han Chinese and non-Han peoples was not prevalent in China at the time, and didn't become so until later in the twentieth century.
* The ''UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic'' sank on a dark, moonless night. Most survivors in lifeboats thought they saw the ship sink in one piece, while the few survivors struggling in the water thought it broke in two. The inquiry into the sinking accepted that the lifeboats had a better vantage point, and it was accepted that the ''Titanic'' sank whole. In 1985, however, the ship was found on the ocean floor in two pieces, surrounded by a debris field that could only have been created by the two pieces separating at or near the surface. All movies about the sinking filmed before 1985 show the ship sinking whole, while the ones made afterwards show it splitting before sinking.
** Creator/CliveCussler's bestseller ''Literature/RaiseTheTitanic'' (published 1976 and [[FailedFutureForecast set in 1987]]) imagines the ship in one piece. Furthermore, the book argues that thanks to the icy cold temperatures, the ship would be nearly perfectly preserved and capable of salvaging. Cussler himself wrote in later editions how he was working off the assumptions of the time and how happy he was the novel was finished before the discovery invalidated the entire plot.
** TheFilmOfTheBook was outdated even faster, being released in 1980. Here, the ship has the bridge and three of four funnels intact, and there is even a barely decomposed human body aboard!
** ''Raise the Titanic!'' also mentions the ship having a massive gash across the bow from the iceberg. In reality, the iceberg just pushed in the hull's plating to allow water to seep in (had there been such a huge gash, the ship would have sunk in half the time).
** Some works written before the wreck was found, like ''Literature/Millennium1983'' by John Varley, have the wreck never being found at all. In this case, the ship and the "casualties" were taken forward in time.
* The fatalities that occurred as a result of the Colorado Coalfield War are now believed to be significantly higher than official records suggest. Modern estimates vary significantly, but even the minimum suggested death toll of 69 is more than twice as high as the contemporary figures.
* [[UsefulNotes/TheMexicanRevolution Mexican revolutionary]] Pancho Villa signed a contract with Mutual Film Company, one where the studio paid him for the exclusive right to film his troops in battle. This much is true. However, the supposed clauses demanding Villa conduct his battles in certain ways (such as saying he could only fight in the daytime) while being recorded were proven to be apocryphal when Villa's biographer Friedrich Katz found a copy of the contract in a Mexico City archive and discovered that they were nowhere to be found.
* On a more light-hearted note, the bra was considered a very modern invention, and post-WWI women's fashion was considered revolutionary, with the earlier eras of costume popularly perceived as very restricting to women (although this latter view is often more HollywoodHistory than actual fact). With the 2008 discovery of some well-preserved textile remnants in the Austrian castle of Lengberg, it suddenly turns out that bra-like garments with separate breast cups were worn ''[[OlderThanTheyThink in the 15th century]]'', and [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336532748_The_Lengberg_Finds_Remnants_of_a_lost_15th_century_tailoring_revolution the tailoring techniques of that time bear some surprising similarities to 1930s fashions]]... In other words, 20th-century women's fashion only reinvented the wheel.
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI:
** Studies of German documents after the fall of the Berlin Wall suggest that there might have never been a "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_plan Schlieffen Plan]]", at least as most commonly presented in post-1918 literature. This is, however, hotly contested among historians.
** In Britain and the US at least, even historians who saw the war as worthwhile depicted Western Front generals like Douglas Haig and Sir John French as blundering incompetents wantonly sacrificing their men for little appreciable gain. This view was propagated by popular histories like Basil Liddell Hart's ''The History of the First World War'' and Alan Clark's ''The Donkeys'', not to mention fiction like ''Film/PathsOfGlory'' and ''Series/{{Blackadder}}''. More recent historians (Hew Strachan, Brian Bond) tend to emphasize the tactical and logistical difficulties brought by the war's unprecedented scale and new technologies (planes, tanks, gas) making it extraordinarily difficult for generals on either side to adapt. More extreme claims, like Haig's supposed obsession with cavalry, have been sharply revised. This is by no means a consensus view (see John Mosier and Denis Winter for opposing views), but analysis of WWI became less one-sided in just 20 years.
** UsefulNotes/TELawrence's reputation seems to shift with each passing decade. From the '20s through 1955, he was viewed as a ChasteHero and military genius serving both the British and his Arab allies. After Richard Aldington's ''Biographical Enquiry'' of 1955, he was viewed as some combination of ConsummateLiar, SmallNameBigEgo, and DepravedHomosexual. In the '60s, it was common to depict him as an imperialist agent knowingly selling out the Arab rebels, based on a selective reading of declassified War Office files. From the '70s onward, biographies like John Mack's ''Prince Of Our Disorder'' focused on his psychosexual hangups and literary output. More recent volumes typically explore Lawrence's military and diplomatic achievements, framing them in light of more recent events in the Middle East.
** Unlike what was claimed in some contemporary accounts, UsefulNotes/MataHari almost certainly never blew a kiss at the firing squad that executed her.
** The Treaty of Versailles was seen in its time, mostly thanks to J. M. Keynes' book ''The Economic Consequences of the Peace'', as a "Carthaginian peace" or a victor's justice forced unfairly on UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany. This was an explanation shared within Germany, [[EnemyMine by liberals, by conservatives, by centrists, by socialists, by fascists, and by communists]], who agreed with Keynes because of his later fame as an economist. Decades later, the French economist Etienne Mantoux debunked Keynes' analysis, and historians A.J.P. Taylor, Fritz Fischer, and Hans Mommsen argued that Imperial Germany was truly culpable for the First World War, and deserved to pay reparations. They also claimed that the real problem with the reparations was that they were ''too lenient'', [[https://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Guilt-trip--Versailles--avant-garde---kitsch-7942 as Germany was in a position to pay]], meaning that Versailles was a GoldenMeanFallacy that humiliated Germany politically but left it in a militarily and economically secure position to act on its desire for vengeance, while at the same time leaving the League of Nations with no force and authority to enforce the conditions of the Treaty.
* Remember [[UsefulNotes/RasputinTheMadMonk Rasputin]]? The mad monk who was [[RasputinianDeath poisoned, beaten, and shot in the head four times before being thrown in the icy Neva River, and when they fished him out they discovered that he'd drowned]]? Turns out, the entire story was probably not true. The autopsy report (discovered after the fall of the Iron Curtain) states that Rasputin was shot in the head by a .455 Webley revolver, a gun normally issued at the time to British Secret Intelligence Service, and died instantly. There was no evidence of poison, no evidence of pre-mortem beating, and no evidence of drowning. Whether he was killed by the SIS or by Prince Felix Yusupov, who had close ties to the British government, using a British gun, will probably never be known, but the story of poisoned cakes and wine and the indestructible mad monk seems to be an invention. It's even unwise to read too much into the murder weapon being a Webley because, while it was issued to the SIS, the revolver and its ammunition could be bought all over the world and was a popular sporting and self-defence weapon.
* It was speculated for decades that [[DidAnastasiaSurvive Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia survived the execution of her family by the Bolsheviks]]. This inspired two movies and numerous pretenders who claimed to be Anastasia or one of her sisters.[[note]]In Russia, the sister believed to have survived was either Maria or Tatiana; in the West, it was Anastasia.[[/note]] Later, the Romanovs' mass grave was found and five of the seven family members were identified; Alexei (the only son) and either Anastasia or Maria remained missing. In 2007, charred remains of a boy and girl were found near the mass grave, and in 2009 they were proven through DNA testing to be Alexei and one of his sisters, proving definitively that the whole Romanov family was killed.
* [[http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp Mussolini did not make the trains run on time.]] Even in his own time, some observers (namely American journalist George Seldes) called Mussolini on this, but the myth persisted (and nobody stopped him from lying about it).
* Thanks to the influence of UsefulNotes/LeonTrotsky and his writings, it was once a common belief among the anti-Stalinist left that UsefulNotes/JosefStalin was just being used as a [[PuppetKing front-man]] by a nebulous conspiracy of "Bolshevik Rightists". It's now understood that this viewpoint was due to Trotsky fatally [[UnderestimatingBadassery underestimating]] Stalin, a fact he himself acknowledged later on.
* The Zinoviev letter, a supposed directive from the Comintern to the Communist Party of Great Britain, was widely thought to be genuine for decades. Since the 1960s, however, the consensus has been that it was a forgery designed to energize the Conservative Party's base and undermine support for UsefulNotes/RamsayMacDonald's government.
* In 1928, a young woman named Nan Britton wrote a book claiming that her daughter Elizabeth Ann had been fathered by US President UsefulNotes/WarrenGHarding, dead with no known children in 1923. She was generally dismissed as delusional: the book was terribly written, it had outright ridiculous parts like Britton claiming to have had sex with Harding in a closet in the executive office of the White House, and Harding's family said that he was infertile. Yet in 2015, a DNA test proved that Harding really was the father of Britton's daughter. Funnily enough, in a rare inversion of this trope, ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'' presented Nan's claims as true [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting several years before they were proven right]].
* Today, it's generally accepted that UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan didn't really have a coherent state ideology. Different nationalist and military leaders had different interpretations of how to achieve an ideal nationalist state, with different degrees of militarism and authoritarianism, and they frequently disagreed with each other. Some were into ultratraditionalist Buddhist esotericism, others were arch-modernizers and wanted a totalitarian state to industrialize more and more, and still others were even genuine pan-Asianists that wanted Japan to become leaders of an anti-colonial East Asia (members of this last group generally had little authority outside the production and distribution of propaganda).
* While Eliot Ness certainly disrupted UsefulNotes/AlCapone's operations, the animosity between them is now considered to have been exaggerated. Capone was significantly more concerned with rival gangsters than he was with federal agents, and there's no hard evidence that the two ever met until 1932 -- at the very end of Capone's criminal career when Ness was helping escort Capone to prison.
* There were a lot of misconceptions widely held about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked, and even his own personality that were taken as fact until quite recently:
** It was commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn's ''Hitchcock at Work'' reveals, while Hitchcock ''did'' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, not all of his films were such models of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood the Golden Age]], and it meant that a surprising number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful at the box office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies actually went into production without a complete script. These included the remake of ''Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch'' and ''Film/StrangersOnATrain'' and also ''Film/{{Notorious|1946}}'', which was more or less [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants made up as it went along]]. Likewise, while Hitchcock did storyboard a large portion of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in ''Film/NorthByNorthwest'' wasn't storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise, many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn't work. In the case of ''Film/{{Suspicion}}'', he said that the film's ending was rejected because audiences didn't want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally ''approved'' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. It's now known that in actual fact, the original ending of ''Film/{{Suspicion}}'' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn't find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock's real ending had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant's character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* Ma Barker was once thought to be the [[TheQueenpin leader]] of the Barker–Karpis Gang, gaining a reputation as a ruthless criminal matriarch who organized and controlled her sons' activities. J. Edgar Hoover's characterization of her as "the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade" was cemented in popular culture for a long time with her depictions in movies like ''Ma Barker's Killer Brood'' and ''Bloody Mama''. Nowadays, however, most historians believe this popular image of her is an exaggeration. While she did know of her sons' criminal activities and provided a certain degree of support (which made her an accomplice to their crimes), there's no evidence that she was personally involved in planning or executing them, surviving members of the gang insisted she was only tangentially involved, and the gang's actual leader was more likely a Canadian gangster named Alvin Karpis. It's widely suspected that Hoover tarnished her reputation to avoid criticism for her death in a shootout between the FBI and her son Fred; according to this theory, he figured it would be easier to stomach the death of an old woman with no warrant for her arrest if she was made out to be a criminal mastermind who shot at {{FBI Agent}}s.
* When UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg suffered its infamous explosion, suspicions that it was destroyed in an act of deliberate sabotage led to decades of speculation. This even became a major part of the plot of ''Film/TheHindenburg1975'', where a Luftwaffe colonel investigates a plot to bomb the zeppelin on what would turn out to be its fateful final voyage. However, examination of declassified FBI documents has led most historians to conclude that the disaster really was an accident, and any "evidence" pointing to one or more people trying to destroy the zeppelin was most likely mere coincidence.
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there were huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles that are now known to be false:
** The initial radio broadcast of ''Radio/TheWarOfTheWorlds1938'' allegedly causing mass hysteria and chaos because people thought that Earth really ''was'' being attacked by Martians: there is no evidence of any "mass hysteria," riots, looting, or chaos taking place that night or in the days that followed. Also, according to a kind of ratings data, the entire United States was ''not'' tuned in to that particular broadcast; only a relatively small number of people actually listened to it, certainly not enough for there to be "mass hysteria." Even among those, very few could be described as panicking. Most just called up the newspapers and police to learn if something was really going on.
** Due to the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles was often held as the emblematic "irresponsible director" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now, of course, Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn't in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike, say, Creator/{{Michael Cimino|Director}}); indeed, Welles was critical of UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large amounts of money]] for personal films, feeling it would lead to irresponsible behavior, concerns that were [[CassandraTruth dismissed at the time]]. Even ''Film/CitizenKane'' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production; the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles' films were made on low budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** Many once widely believed misconceptions about ''Film/CitizenKane'' and its production originated in Creator/PaulineKael's essay "Raising Kane", written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the CommonKnowledge that Welles carelessly forgot to explain how anyone knew Charles Foster Kane's last words when there was nobody around to hear them,[[note]]In actuality, Kane's butler Raymond says he was there when his boss died; we just don't see him because the entire scene is shot in extreme close-ups (in fact, the scene may have been shot from Raymond's POV)[[/note]] she argued at length that Creator/HermanMankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] -- an argument that's still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles' completed films (''Citizen Kane'', ''Macbeth'', ''The Tragedy of Othello'', ''Chimes at Midnight'', ''The Trial'', ''The Immortal Story'', ''F For Fake'') are now known to exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood (who would be lucky to even be allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often; for just one example, ''Film/AStarIsBorn1954'' was butchered worse than any of Welles' films (in fact, the movie's ReCut version has to be filled in ''with production stills''). It also differentiates him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of ''Blind Husbands'' faced ExecutiveMeddling ''on each and every one of his films''). The butchering of some of Welles' films (''Touch of Evil'', ''The Magnificent Ambersons'', ''Mr. Arkadin'') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he's relatively fortunate for the fact that, ''Ambersons'' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* About UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, the conversations Hermann Rauschning claimed to have had with UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, which he wrote down in his book ''Conversations with Hitler'' (''Hitler Speaks'' in the UK). Modern historians specializing in Nazism have since questioned the authenticity of said conversations, and the most serious among them such as Ian Kershaw tend to simply disregard them. Some documentaries such as ''Film/DeNurembergANuremberg'' made ample use of them before more research was done.
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII:
** For a while, it was assumed that Nazi Germany was [[GermanicEfficiency efficiently-run]] because of its fast ascension from economic devastation to conqueror of Europe. For example, in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Patterns of Force", this view led a misguided historian to believe he could make it work without the ethical problems. Creator/PhilipKDick also wrote the AlternateHistory novel ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle'' on the assumption that the Nazis were capable of overrunning half the planet. Since then, a lot of evidence has drawn historians to the conclusion that the regime was full of internal corruption and egotistical rivalries, which [[FascistButInefficient hurt its efficiency in many ways]]. Some of this was by design: Hitler wanted his subordinates feuding with each other, both out of [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinist ideology]] and because bitter rivals would be much less likely to join forces and [[TheCoup seize power from him]]. Ultimately, the modern historical view is that Germany did as well as it did in the first half of WWII ''in spite of'' the Nazi regime, and a lot of it had more to do with Allied {{General Failure}}s and unwillingness to take decisive action until the winter of 1939-40.
** While the image of Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances and sabers is undoubtedly iconic and has been interpreted in many different lights, it's now known to be based on a misunderstanding. War correspondents saw the corpses of Polish cavalrymen and horses near German tanks in the aftermath of the Battle of Krojanty and incorrectly assumed the Poles had tried to charge them, a misinterpretation Nazi and later Soviet propaganda ran with. What really happened was that a group of Polish cavalry made a surprise charge that dispersed a resting German infantry unit, only to be themselves surprised by a German armor column that drove up a nearby road. Note also that the cavalry unit was not a traditional 19th century cavalry that attacked with swords from horseback, they were a modern (for the time) partially mechanized unit armed with anti-tank rifles and TKS tankettes that dismounted to fight.
** Italo Balbo's death in a 1940 friendly fire incident was long suspected to be an assassination ordered by UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini. These rumors have been conclusively debunked, and it's now generally accepted that Balbo's aircraft was simply mistaken for a British plane.
** The Pearl Harbor attack has become enshrined in history as brilliantly planned and executed primarily as a CYA and face-saving gesture for both sides. In reality, Fuchida's execution was effective but not brilliant and Genda's attack plan contained fundamental errors that become apparent in hindsight. The US Military played up the brilliance of the attack to make their own mistakes seem less important. And the mythical "third wave" attack on the oil storage facilities was not considered by Genda or Fuchida until after the war when they realized it was what their US interrogators wanted to hear and went SureLetsGoWithThat. A lot of this is thanks to the Pearl Harbor raid only being a small part of a simultaneous attack at targets right across the Pacific that was otherwise a complete success.
** The Battle Off Samar:
*** It became ShroudedInMyth fairly quickly: Modern scholarship comparing photographs and cinematography with the various ship's logs and action reports revealed that the traditional narrative of the battle promulgated in Samuel Eliot Morrison's ''Literature/HistoryOfUSNavalOperationsInWorldWarII'' simply cannot be reconciled with the courses and positions of the Japanese ships involved. Even if Morrison had access to Japanese primary sources the heroic nature of the engagement and triumphalist tenor of the times could have prevented him from cross-checking "his" heroic sailors' accounts against their defeated enemies'. Among other things, the battleships ''Yamato'' and ''Nagato'' played a much bigger role in the battle than previously believed (the shell that crippled USS ''White Plains'' was almost certainly fired by ''Yamato'' from an estimated range of 31.6 km, eclipsing by a wide margin the record-setting 24 km hits by ''Scharnhorst'' against HMS ''Glorious'' and by HMS ''Warspite'' against ''Guilio Cesare''), and the torpedo salvo that forced ''Yamato'' to steam north out of battle was probably fired by USS ''Hoel'', and not USS ''Johnston'' as commonly reported.
*** Japanese cruiser ''Chokai'' was proposed to have been fatally damaged by hits from USS ''White Plains'' sole 5-inch gun but it sank leaving only one survivor, and the sole surviving Japanese source (''Haguro''[='=]s action report) to mention ''Chokai''[='=]s damage states that it came from an air attack. ''Chokai'''s wreck was found in 2019 with all of her torpedo launchers and reloads intact, debunking its sinking by ''White Plains''. Instead, evidence was found for a disabling hit on one turret, which was also mentioned in her action log.
** It was once generally held that the battleship ''Yamato'' was sunk mostly intact. But it's now known that this was not the case: the ship's ammunition exploded while sinking, splitting off the bow and forcing out its monster turrets, and the wreckage is more or less torn to pieces.
** During the war, much was made of a document known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Memorial "Tanaka Memorial"]], supposedly written by Japanese Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka in the 20s and detailing the steps that Japan would take to conquer Asia and then the world.[[note]]Essentially: Step 1 -- conquer Manchuria and Mongolia; Step 2 -- Use that as a springboard to conquer China; Step 3 -- Use the conquest of China to dominate and eventually conquer the rest of Asia; [[MissingStepsPlan Step 4 -- ???]]; Step 5 -- JapanTakesOverTheWorld[[/note]] The document was widely believed to be genuine (as shown in ''Series/WhyWeFight''), though well-informed observers doubted it already, and it was decisively exposed as a forgery following the Tokyo Trials. It's still not sure who committed the forgery (some sources say it was the Kuomintang regime or the Chinese Communist Party trying to garner more foreign support for their wars against Japan,[[note]]This theory has credence as the "memorial" was first published in 1929 in a [=KMT=] newspaper[[/note]] others say it was the Soviet NKVD hoping to pull a LetsYouAndHimFight between the West and Japan). The document seemed credible because Japan was indeed engaged in an (undeclared) war with China at the time.
** ''Film/EnemyAtTheGates'' is often mocked for its portrayal of Stalingrad (most notably for showing unarmed Russians charging German machine guns and getting killed by their own officers for retreating). However, the film is actually (loosely) based on a 1973 non-fiction book of the same name, which draws its content from archives and actual anecdotes from soldiers. Unfortunately, governments classified most of their WWII archives at the time and only granted the author access to a select few, and many of the soldiers interviewed turned out to be {{Unreliable Narrator}}s. The {{sniper duel}} is largely based on an interview with the real-life Vasily Zaitsev during the battle, but scholars have failed to find the dueling sniper in German archives (called Major Walter König in contemporary Soviet news, and Heinz Thorvald in Zaitsev's biography). It's now generally accepted to be Soviet propaganda.
** For decades, it was believed that the ''Wehrmacht'' was (aside from the top brass and a handful of "bad apples") a mostly apolitical fighting force that was by and large not involved with the Holocaust or other Nazi war crimes. This was largely because the ''Wehrmacht'''s history immediately after the war was written in part by the very same generals who ran it and who sought to 'rehabilitate' its image, as well as their own actions. While there were some [[note]]like William L. Shirer, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Manfred Messerschmidt, Klaus-Jürgen Muller, Volker R. Berghahn, Christian Streit, Omer Bartov, Alfred Streim, Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm[[/note]] who dissented from this consensus, they were a distinct minority, especially in Germany. The idea started to crumble in the 1980s as new avenues of research opened up, and the fall of communism allowed historians access to documentation and material evidence that had previously been shut up in archives behind the Iron Curtain. By the mid-1990s, evidence that the ''Wehrmacht'' had been complicit and even actively involved in Nazi war crimes (including the Holocaust) became overwhelming. Now the consensus is that, while there were many within the ''Wehrmacht'' who were not involved in these crimes and some who even actively tried to protect people, the ''Wehrmacht'' as an institution was intimately linked with the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
** Albert Speer's conduct during the war has also had some reappraisal over the years. This started at the Nuremberg Trials, where Speer presented himself to the court and the wider public as the [[TokenGoodTeammate token 'Good Nazi']], a ConsummateProfessional devoid of ideology who was Hitler's only true friend, did not know anything about the Holocaust beyond rumors, and whose conscience drove him to refuse Hitler's final "scorched earth" orders and even attempted to assassinate him. While the assassination claim was dismissed as a fabrication even by his former colleagues, his sudden atonement saved Speer from the hangman's noose and he was sentenced to twenty years at Spandau Prison instead. This 'Speer Myth' became the dominant narrative, later codified through his own memoirs. Several historians who did more digging into his record came to question this, including proof that he was present at the 1943 Posen Speeches where UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler clearly outlined what was happening in the SS camps, and Speer's rather eager use of slave labor as Minister of Armaments, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths of primarily 'Eastern workers'. He also directly ordered the dispossession of Jewish tenants in Berlin when he was still simply Hitler's chief architect before the war. While several works of fiction until the mid-2000s (such as ''Film/{{Downfall}}'') still give him a fairly sympathetic portrayal, some more recent works (such as ''ComicBook/{{Uber}}'') have accurately reflected the fact that he was one of the key Nazis leading Germany's war effort, not a blameless bureaucrat.
** Isoroku Yamamoto's talk of dictating peace talks in the White House was far from the jingoistic boast it was thought to be at the time. The actual context of the quote was him trying to impress upon his superiors the true enormity of the task they had set themselves in attacking Pearl Harbor — Yamamoto wasn't promising to dictate peace terms in the White House, he was saying that the only way for Japan to definitively win against the United States was to invade, fight across the breadth of the American continent and do just that. In short, he was telling his superiors "you're asking the impossible. They're not going to roll over and die with one bloody nose."
** The idea that Hitler could have won the war had he just listened to his generals is now mostly considered a myth [[UnreliableNarrator promoted by surviving German generals]]. While Hitler certainly made some serious mistakes during the course of the war, it's believed that there were multiple times when he made the right calls, with many historians pointing to cases where he went against his generals' recommendations and succeeded and instances when he went along with his generals (sometimes despite his own misgivings) and things went poorly. Even his long-derided decision to prioritize the Caucasus offensive over taking Moscow is now thought to be a case where Hitler was right and his generals were wrong: taking Moscow wouldn't have made the Soviets capitulate, and Germany and its allies ''really'' needed the oil that the Caucasus oil fields could provide.
** The Kokoda Track campaign was long mythologized in Australia as part of the "Anzac spirit", which has led to some myths about the campaign gaining credence for a long time. One well-known example is the Battle of Isurava: for a long time, it was mythologized as "Australia's Thermopylae", where an Australian force that was defeated by the Japanese nevertheless fought a successful delaying action against an overwhelmingly more numerous enemy and managed to inflict more casualties than it sustained. However, it's now known that the Australians outnumbered the Japanese in the battle, and their successful withdrawal had more to do with Japanese tactical errors than any special Australian moves.
** Outside of Poland, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Wednesday_of_Olkusz Bloody Wednesday of Olkusz]] was long misrepresented as a specifically anti-Semitic event. Now it's generally understood that the atrocity indiscriminately harmed both Jewish and non-Jewish Poles; in fact, the majority of the victims were actually Gentiles.
** There was no Japanese propaganda radio broadcaster who went by TokyoRose. It was a nickname given by American newspapers to describe these broadcasters, who were later conflated into one person by propaganda. While the idea of a singular "Tokyo Rose" started out as merely symbolic for Japanese propaganda as a whole, it was later taken at face value.
*** Further, the woman who was finally identified as "Tokyo Rose", Iva Toguri d'Aquino, wasn't the mythical propagandist either. She broadcasted under the name "Little Orphan Annie" among others. Also, she was not a dyed-in-the-wool Japanese supporter by any means. She was actually a ''Nisei'' (American born of Japanese descent) and [=UCLA=] student who had encountered the great misfortune of being in Japan visiting a dying relative at the time of Pearl Harbor. Due to her fluency in English, she was forced into making propaganda broadcasts aimed at the Allied forces, with the unwilling help of American and British [=POW=]s. She and they colluded to try to defang any propaganda value that the broadcasts would have, according to testimony from those same prisoners during Toguri's 1946 treason trial.
** Few historians now seriously consider the idea that Operation Sea Lion had a realistic chance of defeating Britain. Even if the Luftwaffe had managed to defeat the Royal Air Force, the invasion would've been a logistical nightmare, German intelligence efforts against Britain had already been subverted, and the Royal Navy would've wrought merry havoc on German shipping. The Germans also had a crucial lack of vessels that could be used as landing craft, with their best substitute being river barges that would have had a rough time coping with the strong seas of the Channel, meaning that it's questionable whether an invasion would have even been feasible. Indeed, at least one reason Hitler shifted his gaze East was that he knew Germany didn't possess the navy needed to invade Britain. A 1974 wargame conducted by Royal Military Academy Sandhurst concluded that the invasion, if attempted, would have been a resounding failure.
** Some once generally uncontested claims about the sinking of the USS ''Indianapolis'' have become more controversial or have been outright proven false.
*** The ship's captain, Charles B. [=McVay=] III, was long held responsible for the sinking, especially after he was convicted on charges of incompetence and negligence. While he always had defenders who claimed he was convicted unfairly so he could be used as a [[TheScapegoat scapegoat]] for the loss of life, they were a distinct minority. That was, until research conducted by Hunter Scott in 1998 brought renewed attention to extenuating circumstances that undermined the case against [=McVay=], notably the fact that he was not warned about Japanese submarines in the area and also that his request for a destroyer escort was rejected by naval command, who assumed the area he was sailing in was safe. Now, he's generally considered to have been a fall guy to draw the blame away from the higher-ups who were responsible for putting the ship in danger, and he was exonerated in 2000.
*** While it's long been claimed that huge numbers of the ship's crew were killed by [[ThreateningShark sharks]], perhaps most famously in Quint's iconic monologue from ''Film/{{Jaws}}'', these claims have become hotly contested in the 21st century. Many have gone on record stating that it's likely that sun exposure, thirst, hunger, bleeding, internal injuries, and even suicide killed far more people than the sharks did; with sharks getting a disproportionate share of the blame due to a combination of post-traumatic stress and people mistaking scavenging for predation. To back up these claims, historians and marine biologists have pointed out that Oceanic Whitetips, the species the lion's share of shark deaths in the incident have been attributed to, are now believed to be primarily scavengers. A 2017 investigation hosted by ''Shark Week'' determined that the number of fatalities caused by sharks was most likely in the low dozens.
** Similarly to the claims that sharks killed most of the ''Indianapolis'' survivors, the Battle of Ramree Island has long been said to have seen the worst animal attack in recorded history, where a Japanese battalion trapped in the island's mangrove swamps by British and Indian forces was nearly wiped out by [[NeverSmileAtACrocodile saltwater crocodiles]]; of the 1,000 Japanese soldiers in the wetlands, only 20 survived, with the vast majority of the deaths being attributed to crocodile attacks. It even won a Guinness World Record for the single worst animal attack on humans in recorded history. This is no longer considered credible by most serious historians: while it's certainly not implausible that at least a few of the Japanese were killed by crocs, it's unlikely that the number needed to kill so many people would have willingly gathered in such a small area. What's more likely is that the majority of the Japanese troops died from drowning and/or being shot, with many if not most of the deaths attributed to crocodiles actually being the crocs scavenging on Japanese who were already dead.
** The Bombing of Dresden's death toll was a subject of debate for a long time, but the idea that up to 500,000 people were killed was considered at the very least credible... until it was discovered that the document these higher estimates were based on, the supposed ''Tagesbefehl 47'', was actually a forgery promulgated by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
*** An inflated figure of over 100,000 appears in ''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive'' along with references to David Irving’s then-recent account of the bombing. Irving has since been widely discredited for his pro-Nazi sympathies and Holocaust denial, and Irving himself appears to have retracted the claim and admitted it was based on fabricated evidence.
** ''Werwolf'' was traditionally thought to be intended as a guerrilla force that would harass Allied occupiers after the defeat of Germany. This was in fact a misconception created by the Nazi propaganda station Radio Werwolf, which broadcasted claims that the Germans would continue the fight even if all of Germany was captured; despite its name, it had no actual connection with the ''Werwolf'' unit. Rather than a clandestine organization of irregulars and partisans who would carry out an insurgency, ''Werwolf'' was made up of uniformed commandos who would clandestinely operate behind Allied lines in parallel with the troops fighting in front of the lines. Some within ''Werwolf'' may have continued to operate for a few months after the end of the war, but whether actions frequently credited to them can actually be attributed to any member of the group is questionable and most serious historians agree that ''Werwolf'' ceased to be a threat by Autumn 1945.
** Since Nazi Party Chancellery chief Martin Bormann seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth in the last days of the war in Europe, it was long speculated that he might've escaped. He was even tried ''in absentia'' at the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to death for his complicity in German war crimes. That changed in 1973 when a skeleton discovered by construction workers in Berlin the previous year was determined to be Bormann's. Any reasonable doubt was dispelled in 1998 when genetic testing was done on fragments of the skull conclusively proved that Bormann did indeed die in 1945, either committing suicide or being killed in a firefight shortly after leaving the Fuhrerbunker. Before this, however, many works of fiction would imply or outright state that he was still alive somewhere out there; for example, ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' (released in 1971) had a "Paraguayan gambler" with a suspicious resemblance to Bormann fraudulently claim to have won a Golden Ticket.
** Once, it was believed that Francoist Spain saved vast numbers of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis, but it's now understood that previous claims were exaggerated and Spain's actual efforts were more half-hearted and inconsistent. While it's true that the Spanish government allowed 25,000-30,000 Jews to leave Continental Europe through Spain, it failed to repatriate or otherwise protect the vast majority of Sephardi Jews living under Axis occupation, and it severely limited visas granted to Jews from 1943 onwards. Some actions previously credited to the Spanish government were later found to have been carried out by individual Spaniards acting on their own initiative. Not only that but documents uncovered in 2010 show that in 1941, Franco's government collected a list of all Jews living in Spain at the time; the fact that Franco was negotiating a potential alliance with the Axis at the time strongly indicates that he was willing to sacrifice them if he thought it would benefit him to do so.
** UsefulNotes/PopePiusXII was long criticized for his supposed inactivity in allowing the Jews and others to be slaughtered by the Nazis and their allies, with a number of possible reasons being suggested for his allegedly doing so. It is now known, however, that behind the public façade of stubborn neutrality, Pius was busily working to save countless souls from the Nazis and established links with the German Resistance. He allowed officials within the Catholic Church to do whatever they could to protect those targeted for death in the Holocaust and may have actively encouraged and masterminded such activity. Contrary to his nickname of "Hitler's Pope", it is now known that Hitler (who was at least somewhat aware of what Pius was doing but couldn't openly act against him as long as he kept up his public face of neutrality) referred to Pius as "Nazism's greatest enemy".
*** This is not to say that the Catholic Church did not occasionally brush with Nazism. Many German Catholics (Catholicism being the branch of Christianity Hitler aligned himself with publicly) engaged in aid to the Nazis, rather it be through celebrating Hitler's birthday, breaking the seal of confessionals, or turning over birth records to the Nazis. In the same regard, one of the most famous Nazi sympathizers in the United States was Charles Coughlin, a Catholic Priest. Mussolini and Franco (the second of which the Church was friendly with, although that could more be seen more as the the result of fighting against radical anti-Catholics during the Spanish Civil War) were also publicly Catholic. However, it is important to remember that no religious belief can be judged by its worse members. Furthermore, although it is not unfair to say the Church has gone along with fascist leaders and thinkers in the past, to say they were somehow fine with The Holocaust just has no historical basis.
** Many otherwise-well-done books about the war suffer badly from the fact that they were written when all mention of [[ReadingTheEnemysMail the Allies' extensive code-breaking operations]] were still highly classified. For example, the British codebreaking operation codenamed ULTRA was pivotal in winning the Battle of the Atlantic, but no book published prior to 1974 will even mention it.
** The American understanding of the Battle of Midway had to be heavily revised when American historians discovered that the book that American authors had previously used as a primary reference for the Japanese side of the battle (''MIDWAY: The Battle That Doomed Japan'' by Nagumo's senior pilot Fuchida Mitsuo) contained some major lies about the battle -- not just mistakes, but outright and intentional '''lies'''. Somewhat ironically, this had long been known in Japan, and ''Senshi Sōsho'', the Japanese military's official history of the war published in the 1970s, gave a more accurate version of events on the Japanese side. But ''Senshi Sōsho'' had never been translated into English, so the American version remained wrong until the publication of ''Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway'' in 2004.
** The notion of Adolf Eichmann as nothing more than an average desk worker who had no interest in doing any of the terrible actions he engaged in, one that was popularized by the 1963 book ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil'', has been more or less dismissed by modern historians. Bettina Stangneth's 2011 work ''Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer'' is considered to have debunked the idea, proving that Eichmann was motivated by antisemitism and allegiance to Nazi ideology and not, as was once thought, a man who was simply doing what he thought his job was.
* The ''Sonderweg'' theory of German historiography claims that Germany followed a course from aristocratic to democratic government unlike any other in Europe, one that made the rise of something like Nazism almost inevitable. Once accepted nearly universally, it has been the subject of serious criticism since the 1980s, with some historians pointing to the experiences of Britain and France in the 19th century as the exception rather than the norm, and others claiming that the liberal German middle class held more influence than previously thought. While the idea of the ''Sonderweg'' isn't exactly discredited and still has its adherents, it's no longer considered the gospel truth it once was.
* In the aftermath of World War II, it was alleged that an underground, clandestine organization known as ODESSA (from the German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) was set up by SS officers in either the war's last days or its immediate aftermath to help Nazis escape to [[ArgentinaIsNaziland South America]] or the Middle East. Today, however, it is generally believed no organization by that name actually existed.
* Dr. Charles R. Drew[[note]]An African American physician who pioneered new techniques of storing blood for transfusions, which is credited with saving the lives of countless soldiers during World War II[[/note]] dying after being denied admittance to a whites-only hospital because of his skin colour when he was injured in a car crash, and thus ([[DeathByIrony ironically]]) not receiving a blood transfusion. This gets a mention in an episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}''. He was actually admitted to the Alamance Greater Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina, and was pronounced dead half an hour after receiving medical attention. One of the passengers in Dr. Drew's car, John Ford, stated that his injuries were so severe -- mostly in his leg due to his foot being caught under the brake pedal when the car rolled three times -- that there was virtually nothing that could have saved him and a blood transfusion might have killed him sooner due to shock.
* Creator/EdWood is often called "the worst director of all time"; however, some film historians now dispute that. His movies were bad, there's still no doubt about it, but they were closer to ''averagely'' bad for BMovie standards of his time. Wood's reputation as one of the worst directors originally came from some critics of later eras who by chance saw some of his movies (most notably ''Film/Plan9FromOuterSpace'') and judged them based on the standards of their own time rather than those of when they were made, granting him the title. In reality, Wood's movies would be considered bad but by far not ''the'' worst of the time, specially compare with such stinkers as ''Film/RobotMonster'' or ''Film/MonsterAGoGo''. To put it in perspective, his movies would be for the time kind of Creator/TheAsylum or Film/SyFyChannelOriginalMovie levels of "bad", not Creator/VideoBrinquedo levels of bad.
** Due to this, his reputation has largely shifted from being the "worst director" to the "best worst director" in that his films were often able to at least entertain his audience--albeit through bizarre choices made by Wood (his work was fairly creative, especially given science fiction movies were a dime a dozen at the time) as opposed to because they were actually good films.
* For Western historians, the interpretation of the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_note Stalin Note]]" went through this twice before ending about where it began. The first view was that UsefulNotes/JosephStalin was not serious about wanting a united neutral Germany, and sent the note to sour relations between Germans and the West. But in the early '80s declassified documents indicated that the western powers had not always acted in good faith about the offer, leading to a shift towards viewing Stalin as more serious about it... which lasted until the end of the Cold War, when declassified ''Soviet'' documents indicated that the Soviet goal had been to sour German-Western Allied relations.
* The debate over whether [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg Julius and Ethel Rosenberg]] really were guilty of providing top secret information (most famously nuclear weapon designs) to the Soviet Union raged for decades, and they had many defenders who believed their conviction was a MiscarriageOfJustice. Some even accused the case against them of being based in antisemitism, comparing it to the infamous Dreyfus affair. However, when many documents decoded by the Venona project were declassified, it became clear that Julius definitely spied for the USSR, and it seems likely that Ethel was at the very least complicit in her husband's crimes.
* For many years it was taken as obvious that Israel was heavily outnumbered and outgunned in the 1948 [[UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict Arab-Israeli War]]. However, after a generation of "New Historians" working in the 1980s and 90s examined newly declassified documents, it became widely acknowledged that Israel enjoyed considerable military advantages over its Arab enemies, with more than twice the manpower and a steady stream of state-of-the-art weapons from abroad.
* When the Soviet space dog Laika died aboard Sputnik 2, it was initially reported that she was euthanized by poisoned food shortly before she ran out of oxygen. Then in 2002, Dimitri Malashenkov revealed that she actually died from overheating on the fourth circuit of the satellite's orbit.
* Quebec's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution Quiet Revolution]] was once characterized as a great upheaval in Quebecois society. However, re-examination of prior economic and political developments in Quebec has shown that the events of the revolution appear to have been foreshadowed by things like the expansion of Quebec's manufacturing sector that had already begun decades earlier and the previous popularity of Quebec Liberalism (particularly the 1940s reforms of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9lard_Godbout Adélard Godbout]]). Because of this, the Quiet Revolution is now seen not as a sudden u-turn in Quebec's Francophone society, but as a natural continuation of pre-existing trends.
* The claim regarding the murder of Kitty Genovese, based on a ''New York Times'' article that came out shortly after Genovese's death, saying that [[BystanderSyndrome 38 people watched her being killed in plain view and did nothing]]. This was, for years, the only narrative about what happened, even being referenced in Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' by Rorschach. However, later researchers found that the ''Times'' story lacked evidence: nobody saw the attack in its entirety, and those that did see it only saw parts of it. Some people heard her cries for help but assumed it was a lover's quarrel or just people leaving a bar. One man did open his window and yell "Leave that girl alone!", whereupon the killer left. He returned again to attack her a second time, but disguised himself, so people who might have seen him didn't realize it was the same guy. The second attack took place out of view of any witnesses. Two of Genovese's neighbours called the police and another, a 70-year-old woman, cradled her while she was dying. So while Genovese's murder was undoubtedly horrible, it was no more awful than most murders: the story that people "stood and watched" it happen right in front of them and didn't lift a finger is entirely without foundation and seems to have been made up by the original reporter, as the ''Times'' itself acknowledged in a [[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/nyregion/winston-moseley-81-killer-of-kitty-genovese-dies-in-prison.html 2016 article]].
* Dimitri Tsafendas, the assassin of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, was once seen as an apolitical schizophrenic who was motivated by an irrational belief that Verwoerd was to blame for his tapeworm infestation. This was disproven by a 2018 investigation which revealed that Tsafendas was mentally healthy and motivated by anger at [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]]. The prosecution at his trial set the false narrative in an attempt to prevent others from following in his footsteps, bribing a psychiatrist to falsely diagnose him as insane and deliberately withholding any evidence that would contradict the story they made up.
* Some widely-held ideas about the 1960s counterculture are now considered myths:
** The stereotypical protesters against the Vietnam War are generally hippies and other countercultural strains. However, the anti-war movement and the counterculture weren't as intertwined as often thought; indeed, new distinctions have been made between cultural movements and activist movements (though of course, there was overlap, and some movements were both). While some groups combined anti-war politics with the hippie lifestyle, hippies generally prioritized spiritual enlightenment and community building over conventional political organizing. In fact, many hippies were indifferent towards or even opposed to political activism and instead hoped to change America by effectively abandoning established institutions and mainstream society to build what they thought would be better alternatives.
** No, American hippies didn't just live in rural {{commune}}s and large coastal cities. They could be found all over the United States, even in small Southern and Midwestern cities.
* UsefulNotes/AntonLaVey once claimed to have ritualistically shaved his head "in the tradition of ancient executioners". It's now known that he shaved his head because he lost a bet with his wife and made up the "ancient executioners" story to add to his mystique.
* There are now known to be no confirmed reports of second-wave feminists burning bras. The myth probably stems from a protest organized by New York Radical Women at the Miss America 1969 contest, where protestors threw feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the Atlantic City boardwalk. While they did initially plan to burn them, the police advised them not to (since doing so on a boardwalk posed a fire hazard), and evidence suggests that they probably acquiesced. Some local news stories claimed these items were burned at least briefly, but these claims are heavily disputed. Nevertheless, the idea caught on among both supporters and opponents of second-wave feminism, probably due to parallels with men burning their draft cards to protest UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar.
* While it was once widely believed that [[GangBangers the Crips]] were an offshoot of the Black Panther Party, it's now generally accepted that the group got its start from a merger of pre-existing street gangs. Nor did it start out with any political or community agenda; co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams went on record refuting this idea, writing in his memoir that it was just a fighting alliance.
* Even though the Lin Biao incident remains shrouded in mystery to this day and the Chinese government's official account is viewed with considerable skepticism abroad (in large part due to the lack of corroborating evidence aside from testimony that may have been coerced), some once-popular foreign theories about what happened have since been discredited by examination of evidence. For example, it was once widely suspected that Lin wasn't actually aboard the plane that crashed and that he was actually secretly murdered in Beijing. However, unknown to most people at the time, a Soviet medical team had secretly dug up and examined the bodies found at the crash site, confirming in a classified report to UsefulNotes/LeonidBrezhnev and UsefulNotes/YuriAndropov that one of the corpses was Lin's. The report was only made public in the early 1990s. Similarly, theories that the plane had actually been shot down were contradicted by accounts from eyewitnesses in Mongolia, which made no mention of any shoot-down.
* Chilean President Salvador Allende died of gunshot wounds during a 1973 MilitaryCoup against him. It was suspected for decades that he had been assassinated, but a 2011 autopsy conclusively proved that Allende [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled killed himself]], putting those theories to bed.
* The identity of Deep Throat, the principal informant of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who helped unravel the [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Watergate scandal]], was a mystery for thirty years. In ''Film/AllThePresidentsMen'' (1976), he's portrayed as an anonymous figure in a trenchcoat, with some speculating that [[CompositeCharacter he was actually a combination of different people from Nixon's inner circle]]; in ''Film/{{Dick}}'' (1999), "he" is actually two teenage girls. In 2005, Deep Throat was revealed as former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, whose motives were likely revenge against Nixon for not promoting him to replace J. Edgar Hoover. In retrospect, it was never that much of a mystery; Nixon's tapes show that the administration figured it out almost immediately and it killed his career.
* The sectarian aspects of the Lebanese Civil War are now believed by most historians to have not been as prominent as once thought. While many of the people and factions involved used religious rhetoric, it's currently understood that the secular reasons underlying the conflict were more important than previously believed and many of the participants weren't particularly motivated by religion. Indeed, there were conflicts between factions that were largely the same religion, such as Sunni Muslims (the Palestine Liberation Organization vs. the Syrian Army), Shia Muslims (Amal vs. Hezbollah), and Maronite Christians (Forces Libanaises vs. the Marada Movement).
* It was once generally assumed that the Soviet Union had a hand in the Saur Revolution, a 1978 [[TheCoup coup]] which saw the overthrow and murder of Afghanistan's president Mohammed Daoud Khan and the establishment of a communist dictatorship. However, examination of archives following the fall of the Soviet Union revealed that [[NotMeThisTime the Soviets were just as surprised by the Saur Revolution as everyone else]].
* UsefulNotes/JimmyHoffa was long thought to be buried under the west end zone of Giants Stadium. This was seemingly put to rest when the stadium was demolished in 2010 and no human remains were found.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal Carlos the Jackal]] is the BigBad of ''Literature/TheBourneSeries'', written while he was at large, which presents him as a DiabolicalMastermind and attributes a number of assassinations to him, including that of [[WhoShotJFK JFK]]. The actual Carlos was captured in 1994 and is now viewed as more of a bumbling SmugSnake whose past reputation was highly exaggerated. This also accounts for most of the differences between the books and the movies (he had been caught by that time).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:21st century]]
* ''Film/United93'' was produced before the cockpit voice recorder tape or accurate transcripts were released to the public. As a result, the words and actions of Jarrah and Ghamdi while in the cockpit are now known to have been slightly different in reality, and it is possible that the pilots Dahl and Homer were wounded but alive up to the crash instead of killed immediately. There is also no evidence whatsoever that [[AcceptableTargets German]] passenger Christian Adams panicked or promoted collaboration with the terrorists. That was a complete invention for the film.
* When Palestinian militant Abu Nidal died of a gunshot wound in his Baghdad apartment in 2002, many (especially Palestinians) rejected the official verdict of suicide and insisted he was murdered on the orders of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein out of fear that he might collaborate with invaders. However, in 2008, journalist Robert Fisk obtained a report by Iraq's Special Intelligence Unit M4 indicating that Abu Nidal likely really did shoot himself.
[[/folder]]

!! Antiquity

* The AncientAstronauts hypothesis popularized by Erich von Däniken's ''Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved mysteries of the past'' has been thoroughly disproven. The idea was that early civilizations were too primitive--and for "primitive" read "stupid"--to build anything sophisticated. However, evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt to all but the most dedicated conspiracy theorists and [=UFOlogists=] that ancient monuments were built by human hands with the technology of their time. In the case of the Ancient Egyptian pyramids, for example, blueprints have been found, along with graffiti on the stones indicating that the builders treated their work as a team sport. Additionally, pyramids are not really ''that'' complex to build, being effectively just a big pile of stone, with most of the weight in the bottom half. As long as you have a central authority to direct the masses, pyramids are not at all beyond the means of any society capable of quarrying and cutting stone, and that's why they were not just built in Egypt but also Mesopotamia or the Yucatan (and not because aliens talked them into it or did it for them).
** Though this trope goes [[OlderThanTheyThink as far back]] as the first extraterrestrial invasion story, ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' by Creator/HGWells (where it is said that the Sphinx and Pyramids were built by the Martians), critics have pointed that it is pretty much the older "theory" of ancient civilizations being influenced by advanced white "Aryans" (for example from Atlantis, like in the ''Kull'' and ''Conan'' stories), [[RecycledScript recycled]] for the post-World War II era when such discourse is only popular with neonazis. It is at least suspicious that non-white monuments dating just a few hundred years old like Easter Island's moais and Inca fortresses get this treatment, while in Europe only prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge get it, and suggesting that aliens helped build the Colosseum or Medieval cathedrals would be considered ridiculous.
* It's generally believed that the sizes of ancient military forces were frequently exaggerated. For example, ''Literature/TheHistories'' say that the Second Persian invasion of Greece had more than 2.5 million troops, but modern estimates say they numbered a fifth of that at most. Similarly, the ''Literature/CommentariesOnTheGallicWar'' say that the Gallic relief force at the Battle of Alesia numbered a quarter million, but estimates of 50,000 to 100,000 are considered more reasonable.
** Literature/TheBible appears to vastly exaggerate the population of Israel -- it has been noted that the census of the tribes of Israel add up to a far greater number than the region could reasonably have sustained at the time and, for a small nation surrounded by regional superpowers of the day who also kept records, is suspiciously high compared to what we know about the populations of Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon. Israel is also assigned a total of battle-chariots far in excess of that held by Egypt at the same time. When evidence from all sources is gathered in, the Biblical estimates should be scaled back by a factor of ten.
* The notion that Greco-Roman civilization was more "advanced and rational" than the "backward and superstitious" medieval Europe [[TropeCodifier codified]] by ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is now considered a gross oversimplification. For example, the Greeks and Romans both prosecuted people for witchcraft, while the medieval Catholic Church taught that the practice was not real and professed that claims of belief in it were a mark of either ignorance or malice. See the Middle Ages for more on this.
* All those marble pillars and facades in Greek and Roman ruins were once thought to have been as clean, white, and free of ornamentation when they were new as they are now. Tests on Roman ruins (and discovery of buried ruins at Pompeii, Palmyra, and Antioch) revealed that the Greeks and Romans painted almost all of their white marble in loud, garish colors using vegetable-based paints that decomposed and bleached out as the buildings fell to ruins. This trope affected not just fictional representations of the old days like ''Film/BenHur1959'', ''Film/{{Spartacus}}'', ''Film/TheFallOfTheRomanEmpire'', or ''Series/IClaudius'', but also architecture (notice how gleaming white UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC is?) and interior design. The evidence is more mixed when it comes to statues: some were fully painted, others only partially painted (or gilded), and others left white. The Greeks in particular favored Bronze statues over marble (which would not have been painted) but many were lost in later centuries as they were looted and melted for other purposes.
** Same mistake was made with other civilizations. ''Film/TheEgyptian'', ''Land of the Pharaohs'', ''[[Film/TheTenCommandments1956 The Ten Commandments]]'', ''Film/{{Cleopatra}}'' all were proudly shot on Ancient Egyptian locations or sets based on their presently ruined, sandy-colored condition instead of showing the brightly colored paintings they were covered in. For example, the Sphynx would have been mostly painted red.
** The bare gray and black stone appearance of Mesoamerican buildings was also taken at face value, until it was discovered that they were originally covered in plaster and painted bright colors like red and white. Thus the {{Mayincatec}} building set of ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresII'', released in 2000 and based on Palenque, is fully made of bare stone and even has some vines growing on it despite representing inhabited and functional buildings. For the ''Definitive Edition'' remake in 2019, the makers kept the original appearance, but [[DevelopmentGag acknowledged the mistake]] by giving faded painted colors to the Aztec and Mayan Wonders and the new Fortified Towers. The Aztecs in ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresIII'' (2006), on the other hand, received a brightly colored set based on Aztec codices from the beginning.
* There was a similar notion about all Greeks and Romans wearing "noble" white clothes. While ''some'' people actually dressed in white (e.g., Romans conducting in the forum), most people preferred garish, bright colors. This is equivalent to assuming that the three-piece business suit or the full tuxedo is everyday casual wear for today. Romans actually hated the toga (they were hot in the Italian summers, cumbersome, and you can't use your left arm while wearing one), so much that there had to be a law stating that togas must be worn to enter a forum in part to discourage anyone from trying anything funny while there. Romans would normally wear the tunic, a linen clothing that could be worn with anything else necessary, such as underwear, trousers, or knee-breaches. Roman women normally wore the stola. Per WordOfGod, ''Film/TheEagle2011'' showed its Roman characters using the toga only in official meetings and putting on more comfortable native clothes when not in them, but after test audiences had trouble telling the Roman and Britonnic characters apart, they reshot several scenes with the Romans wearing togas.
* Another clothing misconception is the depiction of Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc. wearing leather or metal wristbands. This arose in UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance when artists misunderstood Roman representations of segmented arm armor (''manica'') as wrist bands and put them in what seems like every depiction of Antiquity they made. Like in the above, the makers of ''Film/{{Gladiator}}'' knew that the wristbands were inaccurate but included them because they thought it would meet audience expectations. Villagers in ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresI'' (1997) wear a golden wristband, but not in the ''Definitive Edition'' remake from 2018.

[[folder:Carthage and Phoenicia]]
* References to Punic [[WouldHarmAChild Child]] [[HumanSacrifice Sacrifice]] in Literature/TheBible and Greco-Roman sources were considered propaganda until archaeologists unearthed extensive remains of young children and animals in ''tophets'' all around the Mediterranean, making the case that, if the animals were sacrificed, so must have been the children. The vast majority authors still reject it, however, defending that they might be stillbirths or children who died of natural causes, an hypothesis which has some merit due to 1) the architectural configuration of the tophet being more reminiscent of a necropolis rather than a sacrificial area and 2) these places were dedicated the the goddess Tanit, whose domains were fertility, births and growth, which would imply stillborn babies were offered to the goddess as a means of compensation and a way to cope with the loss for the parents.
* Mainstream scholars once held that the Berbers adopted the trappings of civilization from Phoenician colonists, but later archaeological evidence indicates that at least some Berbers were civilized long before the Phoenicians existed as a distinct people. In fact, it's believed that the Phoenicians themselves adopted customs from the Berbers, including eating pork, which was previously taboo for the Phoenicians.
* In ''Literature/TheHistories'', Herodotus expresses his skepticism about a Phoenician expedition said to have been commissioned by Pharaoh Necho to sail around Africa, because the Phoenicians claimed that "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right". Today this detail is the strongest evidence for the story being real, as this is indeed what would happen if they were in the Southern Hemisphere.
* Hanno the Navigator's description of a tribe of "hairy savages" called ''Gorillai'' somewhere down the African coast was assumed to be a misunderstanding or xenophobic tall tale. After Europeans learned of the largest African apes in 1847, they named them gorillas from Hanno's account, and identified a large mountain mentioned by him with Mount Cameroon. However, the behavior described doesn't match that of gorillas, and the account would have very little descriptions of the Guinea Gulf coast compared to northwest Africa if Hanno really made it there. It is possible that Hanno met chimpanzees instead (which live as far west as Senegal, unlike gorillas).
* Carthage was not salted after the Third Punic War, as its fertile lands were something the Roman elite were eager to get, and neither was Milan by Frederick Barbarossa over a thousand years later. The idea appears to come from confusion over a Medieval order calling for the city of Palestrina to be ploughed over "like Carthage", and ''also'' salted. Carthage itself was certainly ploughed over, but the idea of it being salted doesn't turn up until the 19th century.
** Historians and novelists have misunderstood what was meant by salting and ploughing a city. Ploughing and salting were merely symbolic gestures similar to running defeated soldiers under the yoke. There wasn't enough salt in the Republic to render barren the land underneath Carthage, nor enough manpower to completely flatten the city. Not to mention that salt was far too expensive to squander tons by dumping it on the ground. The Romans needed the infrastructure of Carthage intact and the land fertile, as Roman soldiers would be sent to live and farm there after they were demobilized.
** The legend may be partly based on the Biblical story of the salting of Shechem. Being near the Dead Sea, this was actually practical.

[[folder:Celtic Europe]]
* In the 19th century, historians called megaliths "druidic stones" and attributed their erection to Celtic peoples. This belief persisted into The20thCentury, explaining why, in ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'' (created in 1959), Obélix is a menhir carver and delivery man. Later it was established that European megaliths were older, dating from the Bronze Age, Neolithic, or even earlier in a few cases.
* Traditionally, it was believed that the Celts invaded the British Isles, conquering and displacing the previous inhabitants. However, DNA evidence indicates that the British Celts have lived on the British Isles for roughly 3,000 years. The current theory is that the Celts of Continental Europe traded with the British Isles, and the natives were so impressed by these rich traders and their goods that they adopted Celtic culture.
** In Victorian Britain, a sub-theory of the aforementioned was that TheFairFolk had been inspired from tales of pre-Celtic people and their conquest/genocide, as Faeries are said to be shorter and darker than humans, [[HiddenElfVillage live hidden in remote places]], and fear ColdIron. Common folk even referred to prehistoric flint arrowheads as "elfshot". This idea is the inspiration of the Little Dark People in Creator/RosemarySutcliff's books (made explicit in ''Literature/SwordAtSunset''), and the Children of the Forest in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''.
* British Celts were said to paint or tattoo themselves with a blue pigment (as mentioned in ThisMeansWarpaint) which led to the naming of the Picts (from Latin ''Pictus'', "painted one"). {{UsefulNotes/Julius Caesar}}'s ''Commentaries on the Gallic War'' refers to this paint as ''vitrum'', which meant "glass" in Latin but was also a common term for the woad plant, leading to assumptions that the Celts used woad to paint or tattoo themselves. However, attempts to apply the plant for tattooing in 2004-2005 found that it is painfully caustic, causes scarring, and doesn't keep its color well; attempts to use it for body paint find that it dries up and flakes off too easily. This means that unless the Celts had a [[LostTechnology lost recipe]] for effective woad tattooing or body paint, woad was not used for their blue tattoos. Additionally, Caesar was writing about the southern Britons, not the Picts, who were a Northern British people and whose name is first attested about 350 years after his ''Commentaries''. Direct references to woad as the pigment include ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'', where the Celtic unique unit is a fast infantry called "Woad Raider", and ''Film/KingArthur'', where the Briton rebels are called "Woads" by the Romans.
* It was once assumed that ancient and early medieval Irish farming concentrated almost entirely on livestock, especially cattle. While it's true that cattle were greatly prized (to the point where cattle raiding constituted a large part of Irish warfare at the time), pollen studies and other evidence show that grain farming was increasingly important from about 200 CE onward.

[[folder:China]]
* The theory that Chinese civilization began at the Yellow River and radiated outwards from there was once prevalent. Modern Sinology generally considers it just one of three main centers of civilization (albeit the most important one), with the other two being the Yangtze and Liao rivers.
* Traditional Chinese historiography had the Xia dynasty as the first one, who were overthrown by the Shang dynasty. However, since there are no contemporaneous records of the Xia dynasty, its historicity is in doubt; one theory is that the Xia were an invention of the Zhou dynasty, who overthrew the Shang, in order to fabricate a precedent for their actions.
* While it was once a popular theory (mainly among Western historians, but some Chinese also adopted it) that the Shang dynasty was semi-legendary at best, the discovery and decipherment of oracle bones resulted in the development of a king list closely matching accounts of the dynasty collected in the ''Shiji'', leading to modern acceptance of Shang historicity.
* Sun Tzu's ''[[Literature/TheArtOfWarSunTzu The Art of War]]'' is considered ''the'' BigBookOfWar, but while the popular image is that its value was recognized from the start, evidence suggests it was just one of several military manuals and actually looked down upon as being for peasants [[note]]generals generally came from noble families and were expected to know how to lead and fight without any outside aid[[/note]]. Its popularity began during [[UsefulNotes/ThreeKingdomsShuWeiWu the waning days of the Han Dynasty]], when the warlord Cao Cao (a noted admirer of Sun Tzu) made it required reading for his generals and even provided annotated versions that included examples from his many campaigns. Some scholars suggest that the modern version of ''The Art of War'' is actually based on Cao Cao's simplified and annotated version.
* UsefulNotes/QinShihuangdi, the founder of the Qin dynasty, was undoubtedly a ruthless man who made some terrible mistakes. However, the traditional view of him as a corrupt, monstrous, tyrannical madman and the Qin dynasty as a crypto-totalitarian dystopia is now believed to have been the product of later exaggerations. Archaeological findings, such as the rediscovery of legal codes, show that the Qin were significantly more "mainstream" than previously thought.
* ''Series/KingsWar'': While Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian did indicate that Ziying was Fusu's son, modern historians have disputed this, arguing that if Ziying discussed with his sons the plan to assassinate Zhao Gao, him being Fusu's son would have made him too young for this scenario. Similarly, there is no consensus on whether Zhao Gao was truly a eunuch.
* Cao Cao, thanks to the cultural impact of the ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'', was generally just accepted as a DirtyCoward OpportunisticBastard. It wouldn't be until UsefulNotes/MaoZedong (an admirer of Cao Cao) began ordering more positive depictions of Cao that there was a real attempt to study the historical Cao. However, even now there is pushback due to how ingrained the idea of "Cao Cao the villain" is in popular culture. For example, the 2012 drama ''Cao Cao, the hero'' wasn't released in China until 2015 (and even then renamed to simply ''Cao Cao'') due to people refusing to see him as anything but a villainous figure. This is very notable because the series was explicitly based on historical records, rather than the ''Romance'' like most works.

[[folder:Egypt]]
* It was once assumed that the Ancient Egyptians must have learned writing from the Sumerians. However, the earliest Egyptian writing is so different from Sumerian cuneiform in structure and style that it was most likely developed independently; while it's possible that there was some stimulus diffusion from Mesopotamia, it's unlikely that it went further than the transmission of an idea.
* Since [[Literature/TheHistories Herodotus]], historians generally assumed that the pyramids were built by slaves, because they couldn't imagine so many people working such a massive, back-breaking job voluntarily. This was exploded when archaeologists discovered contracts and other evidence showing that the pyramid builders were almost all free men. The pyramids were not just tombs but also public works projects intended to give underemployed farmers something to do in the off season, when the Nile fields were underwater. Virtually every fiction showing AncientEgypt (or a sci-fi {{expy}}, like ''Film/{{Stargate}}'' and ''[[Recap/FuturamaS3E17APharaohToRemember Futurama]]'') gets this wrong.
** This was partly backed up by the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt referenced in Literature/TheBible, although it doesn't say that said slaves built the Pyramids. There's little to no credible evidence of the entire population of Hebrews being enslaved in Egypt (or acting as corvee labor, or indentured, or otherwise doing work they didn't want to do, since chattel slavery really wasn't a thing in ancient Egypt). Later attempts to integrate this with the Literature/BookOfExodus involved smaller groups either as hostages or mercenaries, or groups of commoners escaping [[TheFamine famine]] conditions. One current theory is that the whole story is political grandstanding; the earliest written accounts of the Exodus were found in the northern kingdom of Israel. While the southern kingdom of Judah was an Egyptian client state, Israel instead allied itself with Egypt's Mesopotamian rivals.
* Historical wisdom had it that UsefulNotes/{{Hatshepsut}} was a wicked stepmother who [[RegentForLife stole the Egyptian throne]] from Thutmose III, the legitimate heir (and [[EvilUncle her nephew]], [[ObnoxiousInLaws son-in-law]], and [[WickedStepmother stepson]]), and had herself crowned [[SheIsTheKing King]] of Egypt. She supposedly allowed Thutmose to control the army but otherwise ruled the country with an iron fist until her death despite Thutmose being a competent adult for most of her reign. The proof? After Hatshepsut's death, Thutmose walled up all her inscriptions, tore down her statues, and obliterated her name from the histories -- clearly, a sign of someone who had finally had enough of a meddling mother-in-law. Putting aside for the moment how unlikely it would be for a woman to stage a successful palace coup in 1400s BC when her opponent had complete control of the military, it was discovered in the 1990s that Thutmose didn't even begin to obliterate Hatshepsut from the historical record until twenty years after she died. Historians now think that Hatshepsut and Thutmose were allies who ruled as co-monarchs, and that the elderly Thutmose or his son Amenhotep II walled up her inscriptions because even decades after her death the people saw her as a more legitimate ruler than Thutmose. This has also put a few thorns into the common belief that Thutmose was Egypt's most successful and best-loved ruler. The trope is the basis of Creator/PaulineGedge's novel ''Child of the Morning''.
** The supposed conflict even had some historians theorizing that Thutmose had arranged Hatshepsut's murder. Tests on her mummy show that she likely died of cancer that either formed in the liver or spread there. There was also a flask of skin lotion found with her whose contents included benzopyrene, a potent carcinogen sometimes found in traditional eczema preparations.
* {{Paintings}} from the reign of UsefulNotes/{{Akhenaten}} (Amenhotep IV) show the "[[TheHeretic heretic]] king" with a large, flabby belly, unusually wide hips, and other features not often seen on healthy adult men. Until 2007, it was assumed that these paintings portrayed Akhenaten accurately and that his unusual body shape was likely a result of either an intersex condition or birth defects caused by generations of RoyalInbreeding. CT scans of his mummy, though, reveal that he was neither intersex nor deformed in any way. Historians now think that the body differences shown on the paintings were totemic -- in other words, that Akhenaten was portrayed that way for religious purposes.
** Likewise, his disestablishment of the state religion and proclamation of Aten as the one and only true God has been portrayed as a New Age revelation just short of CrystalSpiresAndTogas, a beneficent proto-Christianity, the inspiration for monotheistic Judaism (as UsefulNotes/SigmundFreud famously believed), a megalomaniac's delusions, or even something his mom put him up to for political reasons. The most popular theory among historians was that it was due more to a feeling that the traditional gods had deserted Egypt (not only had the country endured a massive earthquake and tsunami but also several epidemics) coupled with Akhenaten's desire to wrest power from the priests of Amun.
* X-ray evidence showing splinters of bone inside UsefulNotes/{{Tutankhamun}}'s skull once led historians to believe that the pharaoh was [[EvilChancellor murdered by his vizier]], Ay, as part of a palace coup. Scans of the mummy using modern diagnostic imaging devices proved that the skull was [[ObfuscatingPostmortemWounds splintered from the inside after death]], probably as part of the mummification process, and that Tutankhamun likely died from a massive infection arising from a fractured leg (this does not disprove that Ay killed him, but it makes it less likely--broken bones were not necessarily fatal even then). This mistake is a plot point in ''Literature/TheEgyptian'', the ''ComicBook/{{Papyrus}}'' comic "Tutankhamun, the Assassinated Pharaoh", and ''WesternAnimation/MummiesAlive''
** It was also assumed that Tutankhamun's reign couldn't possibly have been of any real significance, simply because he died at such a young age. That was before it was verified that he was Akhenaten's son, and thus took the throne during one of the most tumultuous periods of Egyptian history. The fact that his reign was the one in which worship of Amun was restored means, even if he personally did very little, his reign really had an impact.
* ''ComicBook/BlakeAndMortimer'': "The Mystery of the Great Pyramid" mentions future pharaoh Horemheb as being sympathetic to the cult of Aten. Modern historians believe that it was Horemheb who had Akhenaten's monuments destroyed and his name erased from the records.
* In 1994, UsefulNotes/RamsesII was discovered to be a redhead and in 2016, he was discovered to be fair-skinned. Portrayals of him where he is black haired (when not shaved bald and given a wig) and brown skinned like ''Film/TheTenCommandments1956'' and ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt'' are thus dated. Since there have always been Egyptians of all skin and hair colors (some of Ramses' own hieroglyphic murals depict his subjects running the full gamut of skin colors), this shouldn't come across as surprising though.
** Archaeology has also solidly settled the matter of Ancient Egyptians' "red" race as 'more or less the same as modern day Egyptians, with free but not game-changing influx of neighboring peoples like Nubians, Berbers, Semites, Greeks, etc'. No evidence that the Egyptians were once Nordic, West African, Native American, Atlantean, or genocided and replaced by Arabs in the Middle Ages (even though there is a difference between Muslim and Coptic Christian Egyptians, the former having more Arabic genetic traces than the latter) as different AuthorAppeal flavors of Pseudohistory have pretended. Our post-18th century notions of race were alien to Ancient Egypt, in any case.
* The Great Library of Alexandria attracts a number of myths:
** For one, the Library was not destroyed by Christians or Muslims. The idea that the Muslims destroyed it (referenced in ''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose'') was probably a garbling of their destroying the Great Library of Ctesiphon. The most reliable accounts point to the library being caught up in collateral damage when Julius Caesar burned Alexandria's harbor in 48 B.C., and most scholars now believe that the damage was limited to warehouses and annexes storing part of the library's collection rather than total destruction. In any case, the Great Library itself continued to operate in some capacity for at least another three centuries after the event.
** The idea first sprang by Edward Gibbon and furthered by Creator/CarlSagan that if it weren't for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, human civilization could have progressed much further than where we are today and the intervention of religion is what stopped the advancement, as all of the knowledge in the Library of Alexandria could've been used to achieve these scientific accomplishments. While many vocal atheists cling to this notion, historians see nothing but a fallacy conjuncture.
** The Library of Alexandria wasn't all that different from other libraries of the time. Not every book that was stored in the Library focused on science. There was also knowledge about philosophy, history, poetry, etc.; and teachers who taught at Alexandria mostly focused on these fields and paid less attention to science.
** Books were written in papyrus, a material that decays quickly over time. Even if one managed to save the books, they would need to be rewritten several times. Papyrus does not last long in Southern Europe's climate, but more so in Egypt's, and parchment was very expensive in the Middle Ages.
** Christianity did not stop technological and scientific advancements in the Middle Ages (see examples and further explanations in the Middle Ages folder). Even if it had, Christianity and the destruction of the Library of Alexandria would not have stopped scientific and technological advances worldwide, [[InsaneTrollLogic as this idea excludes those in the Muslim World, China, India, and the Americas]].
** Archaeological evidence suggests that the Great Library's death blow wasn't even caused by a fire, but rather a combination of institutional decline and its collection simply being moved elsewhere. Its general decline might have started by a political disagreement in 145 BC resulting in several notable thinkers leaving the Museum (the often-forgotten proto-university that the Great Library was a part of). An earthquake that happened shortly after probably didn't help. Alexandria's importance as a center of commerce and scholarship suffered a gradual general decline after the Roman conquest of Egypt, and the Museum and the Great Library undoubtedly struggled along with the rest of the city. The library may have simply faded in importance until someone sold off its remaining contents.
* UsefulNotes/CleopatraVII has had a lot of discredited ideas surrounding her.
** She was once seen as a scheming, amoral FemmeFatale whose sins led to her death and to the destruction of Egypt as an independent nation. Evidence from Alexandria and a reappraisal of historical records led many historians to believe that Cleopatra saw seducing Caesar and Antony as a legitimate way of convincing them to help restore order in a country quickly approaching lawlessness while at the same time preventing Rome from invading and enslaving the populace. The discredited trope informs everything from Creator/WilliamShakespeare's ''Antony and Cleopatra'' and ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar'' to the paintings of Creator/AlexandreCabanel and Guido Cagnacci.
** Historians were also divided over whether Cleopatra was [[WorldsMostBeautifulWoman the most beautiful woman to ever live]] or an outright {{gonk}}. There was no middle ground. Recently, they decided to look at the very coins Cleopatra minted, and concluded she was an average-looking young woman -- no great beauty, but nothing to be embarrassed about either. Contemporary accounts said she had a bewitching voice and a strong, forceful personality, though. In any case, nobody is sure what classical standards of beauty were, so there's no reason to say that she wasn't beautiful.[[note]]"She certainly never scared anybody when she was fixed up a bit." - Will Cuppy, ''The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody''[[/note]]
** For the longest time, people assumed that Cleopatra had numerous slaves bitten by the asp she'd later kill herself with to make sure that its venom was potent. She didn't need to: the Egyptians had used snakes to kill upper-class prisoners for thousands of years, and they knew what breed to use and how. They were also aware that an asp that's already bitten numerous slaves isn't going to have enough venom left to kill a fly. Some now believe that the asp story is a cover-up, and that Cleopatra was killed on the orders of [[UsefulNotes/{{Augustus}} Octavian]].
** It has also been generally assumed that Cleopatra and Caesar were a political alliance and Cleopatra and Antony a genuine love affair. This theory has come into question. Caesar knew that the Roman people would never accept Cleopatra and that while he could bring her to Rome he couldn't marry her without losing the love of the common people, nor could he name their son his legal heir in Rome.[[note]]They could, and intended to, make said son the next pharaoh of Egypt, tying Rome's most important [[PuppetState client kingdom]] firmly to Caesar's family.[[/note]] Antony, who was nowhere near as wise to the game, seemed to believe that the opposite was true and that allying himself with Cleopatra would benefit him in Roman politics. Basically it appears that she had a [[MayDecemberRomance love affair]] with Caesar and a political alliance with Antony. Or, [[TakeAThirdOption she actually did have genuine romantic relationships with both... or neither]].
* According to Creator/{{Voltaire}}, ''Series/{{Cosmos}}'', and ''Film/{{Agora}}'', Hypatia of Alexandria was a martyr of philosophy, a woman who was killed because of her Neoplatonic beliefs, being interested in science, or daring to be a free woman. It's now generally understood that her murder was not due to religion, philosophy or science; but the result of her involvement in a political dispute. She was an advisor to Orestes, the prefect of Alexandria, who was feuding with Cyril, the bishop; some accused her of preventing a reconciliation between the two, which led to her murder at the hands of an angry mob. That she was a Pagan and a woman didn't help endear her to the particular Christian faction that opposed her, but it wasn't the primary reason for her violent death.

[[folder:Greece]]
* The BBC docudrama ''Atlantis: End of a World, Birth of a Legend'' identifies the Thera eruption and the end of the Minoan civilization with the myth of the destruction of Atlantis, following an earlier theory that volcanic ash from the eruption choked off plant life in Crete, starving the local population and bringing down the old social order. However, later examinations revealed that no more than 5 millimeters of ash fell anywhere on the island, making it unlikely to have caused a famine. The idea that the eruption was what started the Minoan collapse has also been questioned, as there is some evidence that the civilization was already starting to exceed its environmental carrying capacity before then.
* Since Dionysus didn't initially seem to have a Mycenaean counterpart, it was thought by 19th century academics that he was a foreign deity who only started being worshipped in Greece at a relatively late date, an idea thought to be backed up by how many of his myths involve the theme of him traveling abroad and having difficulty being accepted back in Greece. This was disproven when inscriptions bearing his name in Linear B were discovered. It's now generally thought that worship of him went underground for a time. The rise and fall of this theory is touched upon by Red of ''WebAnimation/OverlySarcasticProductions'' in the Miscellaneous Myths episode on Dionysus.
* UsefulNotes/TheTrojanWar. Up to the Renaissance, ''Literature/TheTrojanCycle'' was treated as historical truth (excluding the machinations of the gods, of course). But as scientific archaeology was established, Troy was relegated to myth. Today, archaeologists agree that a Bronze Age city once existed at the site where Troy should have been based on clues in Creator/{{Homer}}, and that some sort of battle did occur there. It's safe to assume that Homer employed a generous helping of ArtisticLicense, however.
** As early as the first century, [[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Dio_Chrysostom/Discourses/11*.html a man claimed]] that the battle did occur... but the Trojans won. There is indeed a theory that ''Literature/TheIliad'' and ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' are in fact AlternateHistory, in which the real retreat after years of battle gets a twist ending tacked on. The FridgeBrilliance in this is that most of the interactions with gods and mythical creatures center on Odysseus, the man that also came up with the TwistEnding horse trick. It's like someone added the character for storytelling purposes. However, while the possibilities the Trojans won are interesting, they're still hypotheses. We know there was a Troy, a.k.a. Ilios, Wilusa in Hittite documents. Wilusa was a vassal state of the Hittite Empire, that before the dates given for the Trojan War was ruled by Mycenaean Greeks.
** The heroes of the Iliad might have not been kings at all. In Linear B, they seemed to be names of shepherds and other working-class people (e.g. Achilles was mentioned as a shepherd). Some names, though, do appear in Hittite documents as kings; for example, Agamemnon is mentioned as ''Akagamunaš''. His father Atreus might have been mentioned as ''Attarsiya''. That said, we don't know if these names refer to the legendary kings.
** Paris was Greek. Or maybe he was [[CompositeCharacter a mix of two people]]? In the Iliad, he was also called Alexandros and someone named ''Alaksandu'' ruled Wilusa. ''Pariya'' might have been his Luwian name. Whether he merged with another figure, or he took a Luwian name out of respect, we don't know.
** There were problems between Ahhiyawans (Achaeans, a.k.a Mycenaean Greeks) and Hittites over Wilusa, according to Tawagalawan letter, where it's mentioned that they ''went to war for it''. However, the Hittites were clearly the aggressors, not the Mycenaeans. Tawagalawa is the Hittite form of Ancient Greek name Eteocles, or rather a more archaic form ''*Etewoklewes'' with 'w' falling from use over time ('ϝ' or ''digamma'' is the Ancient Greek letter for W). In the same way, Wilusa became Ilios. Tawagalawa was the brother of the King of the Achaeans, whose name did not survive.
** A renegade named Piyamaradu (''piyama'' means "gift" in Luwian, "Radu" was one of their gods) was the main subject of the Tawagalawa letter. For 35 years he attacked Hittite vassal states (including Troy) causing trouble to not one but three kings, before just disappearing. It's generally agreed he was an ally and commander of Mycenaean Greeks, because whenever he was almost caught by Hittites, he would flee to his base in Millawanda (Miletus), which was controlled by the Greeks. What makes his story interesting is that it falls within the Trojan War chronology. It seems Achaeans were using a Hittite intern as a commander for their armies. It has been hypothesized that he claimed inheritance over Wilusa, which is why he might have been interested in siding with the Greeks, but it's still dubious. He is the most important person mentioned that has to do with the possible real Trojan War and we have no idea who he corresponds with in the Illiad. Priam has been mentioned as a possibility. Yes, Priam, the Trojan King.
** The Hittites destroyed Miletus as revenge for Piyamaradu's raids, which prompted the Greeks to officially rise against the Hittites. Their objective was Wilusa, one of the most important cities. While the details aren't certain, the Greeks won, so the Hittite King had to send an apology letter for what he did to Miletus, where he asked for Piyamaradu, their biggest ally. We don't know what happened to him. The few details that remain mention a battle in Scamander.
** Archaeology shows that there were a series of ''nine'' ancient cities built on the site of Troy, often separated by periods of devastation, and that the Troy of Homer was one (either the sixth or the seventh) or a combination of two: one which archaeologists call Troy [=VIh=], when the city was rich and splendid and which was destroyed by an earthquake, not war, and another, Troy [=VIi=] (formerly [=VIIa=]), which was exactly like Homer described (the architecture, geology etc.) but wasn't rich, and was still suffering from the earthquake. That city was destroyed by war. Scholars have described it as a city under siege.
** There is a hypothesis that the Trojan Horse is actually allegory for a timely earthquake. In the Epic Cycle, Odysseus' ruse is helped by Poseidon, who kills Laocoon before he can warn the Trojans. In Myth/GreekMythology, Poseidon was the god of both horses and the depths (of sea and land), and earthquakes were one of his tricks. A Troy damaged by a big earthquake could have fallen easily to invading Mycenaeans who would not have a prayer of taking the city in its prime.
** Troy continued to be lived on for some centuries after the supposed war. Not according to the Iliad.
** The Hittites mention the Greeks were taking women and children and killing men in their western territories. This Greek habit only occurs in a war. The word they used to refer to the prisoners is the same Homer used. They were attacking three Hittite islands around Troy.
** It's generally agreed Helen of Troy's myth was added later. Helen used to be revered as a full goddess, not a demi-goddess. The story of her being kidnapped in her youth by Theseus, and her brothers going to save her is what appears to be the original myth. We know this because Helen's story has other Indo-European parallels. Also, her Eidolon was a far more important part of her story, and Homer barely scraped this in the Iliad.
** The appearance of warriors in the Trojan War is also subject to this. Ever since the Archaic period, they've been shown armed in either whatever was the current fashion of the day, or in an archaic manner usually harkening to Classical Greece. Since the 19th century, though, we've found that their styles of weapons and armor were completely different from anything that had yet been pictured. This shouldn't have been surprising if you consider that the Iliad contains a detailed description of a very real Mycenaean helmet made from the tusks of boars. Even within recent times, the depictions have evolved. A few decades ago it might have been claimed that warriors throughout the Late Helladic period carried tall tower or figure-8 shields. However, the Trojan War is purported to have occurred toward the end of the period, and it's now thought that tall shields were out of fashion by then, while round shields like Homer describes really were the most common style at the time.
* Starting in the Renaissance, it was believed that the writings of Greek poet Creator/{{Sappho}} were suppressed by church authorities who disapproved of their [[UsefulNotes/{{Sapphism}} homoerotic content]]. However, it's now believed that her poetry began fading from popularity centuries before UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} was even born, due to the Koine dialect of Greek becoming mainstream following the conquests of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat; Koine speakers generally had a hard time understanding the Aeolic dialect Sappho wrote in, so her work wasn't widely reprinted or translated enough to carry it forward into the Medieval era. This shift in consensus was covered by Blue of ''WebAnimation/OverlySarcasticProductions'' in his History Makers video on Sappho.
* Macedonia's history has been subject to a number of re-examinations over the years.
** N. G. L. Hammond's once popular theory that a distinct Macedonian ''ethnos'' had existed since the Greek Bronze Age is now seen as lacking in supporting evidence and widely criticized as a conjectural reconstruction based on sources written long after the events they describe. Starting in the early 2010s, an alternative model of Macedonian history that put the founding of the kingdom in the 6th century BC gained traction.
** Similarly, the traditional accounts that Macedonia expanded by expelling and exterminating other peoples has been called into question due to the general continuity of material culture and settlement sites in the area. More likely, Macedonia grew early on the same way its neighbors (Epirus, Illyria, Thrace and Thessaly) did: by incorporating various tribes and settlements into a kind of political confederacy that was consolidated into something more solid and permanent over time. While fighting between various communities was hardly unheard of, the archaeological record contradicts ancient accounts of entire peoples being driven out and put to the sword.
* The so-called "Spartan Mirage." Historians for a long time held Sparta as an unstoppable military juggernaut, due to its core army of ProudWarriorRaceGuys and badass warrior kings, ceasing warlike activities only to deliver dry witty phrases to philosophers for posterity's sake. Problem is, most historical sources can be divided into two categories: a) Athenian oligarchs such as Plato or Xenophon, who praised what little they knew of Sparta's system in order to address their own criticisms of Athenian democracy, and b) Roman sources such as Plutarch, writing long after the fact and trying to link Sparta's "martial spirit" to Rome's own (with Plutarch openly ''dismissing'' older sources in favor of personal sympathies). Sparta was something of the North Korea of its day, complete with secret police; contact with the outside was highly discouraged, and visitors to Sparta such as Xenophon were essentially treated to a Spartan Disneyland of all the things they wished to glorify about themselves. More modern assessments of Sparta, working from primary sources, generally show a more prosaic portrayal of their military might: Sparta was a regional power that essentially cannibalized all the non-military functions of its own state in order to continue a bitter war with the city-state of Argos, and was able to use the ensuing victory to bully its allies into fighting for them. At the time of Thermopylae, this victory had been within a generation, and the city-state was better known for the beauty of its women than its military prowess; the mythology of its heroic defeat is thought to have cast a long shadow and heavily influenced the city's culture. Spartan military supremacy lasted less than a hundred years, its hegemony over Greece only ten, the "invincible" Spartan army lost more battles than it won (and that's not counting the ones where the commanders were simply bribed away), and its central warrior caste was decimated by the city's own leaders to profit from their "inalienable" land holdings.
** This even pertains to TheSpartanWay. We have no sources that indicate Spartans, children or adults, performed any sort of combat training. Although Spartan children of both sexes were given a heavy emphasis on physical education including wrestling, and boys were taught to master hunger and extremes of temperature, there was no indication of weapons drills or formation training; the Spartans did perform basic formation drills, making them a first among Greek city-states, but this training was only done when the army marched to war, and included their allies. Greek warfare of the Classical period was that of committed amateurs, and it was felt that courage was more important than skill with weapons - which is actually more reasonable that it sounds, as a group of poorly trained soldiers who nonetheless hold up basic formations is infinitely more useful than a cadre of excellent warrios who then run away terrified at the first sight of the enemy. In addition, the agoge evolved over time, and was not considerably different than the training of leisure-class children in other city states.
** In Sparta, BTW, it is stated that there was no military training for actual skill, because a warrior is supposed to win through strength and courage, not tricks. The result was that while they definitely had good ''warriors'', whenever they encountered actual ''tactics'', the results were jarring.
* Hoplites probably weren't a slow-moving formation of bronze armor, interlocked shields and bristling spears presented at the enemy for the vast majority of classical Greek history. Men that could afford only a spear and shield were accepted as hoplites, and since poorer fellows tend to outnumber richer ones, they were commonly represented in hoplites' ranks. Hoplites stood too far apart for even the second rank of men to be able to effectively stab at the first rank of enemies and the average Greek hoplite was poorly-disciplined, so they certainly fought as individuals and any time hoplites would have had their shields packed next to each other would also have rendered them entirely immobile. The aforementioned poor discipline likely led to their generally-used deep formation as a way to ensure units would stay in a coherent order without lines falling apart in movement (moving together in formation over a stretch of time is actually ''very'' difficult) and attacking hoplites charging in. The first appearances of true pike weapons in Greece is about the real point in time Greek troops armed with pole weapons fought in a close-order formation. Spartan hoplites' distinctions from other hoplites from Greece probably were being a tad closer to this popular image of a hoplite, though of course at this point there's a much lower bar to hurdle.
* Unfortunately for writers, historians seem to change their minds about UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat almost as often as the seasons change. Was he bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, asexual or [[ExtremeOmnisexual omnisexual]], and does it matter that he wouldn't have recognized the terms? Roxana: passionately desired wife or all-but-ignored political pawn? Bagoas: manipulative poisoner, victim of child molestation, or adult lover? Hephaestion: lover, colleague, rival, or all three? Alexander's death: poison, alcoholism, typhoid, meningitis secondary to scoliosis (the 2009 belief), West Nile disease (the 2010 belief), waterborne parasites (the 2012 belief), or accident? Did he really will his empire "to the strongest" on his deathbed, or to a specific person, or was he too sick to even speak at the time (the latter is the currently prevailing view)? Was he TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth or a MagnificentBastard? Given the historical revolving door, it would be hard to fault a writer for making up his own mind about any of it.

[[folder:India]]
* It was widely held that the Indo-Aryans were more advanced than the natives of India. When archaeological excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization proved there was already a sophisticated culture in Northern India when the Indo-Aryans migrated there, a new theory was adopted of a hostile invasion of nomads into an advanced urban civilization. The idea of an "Aryan invasion" was itself discredited, however, when no evidence was found of a conflict. The current model is that fairly small numbers of Aryans migrated into Sapta Sindhu region at a time when the Indus Valley Civilization was already in steep decline from internal factors.
* Tradition holds that the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka was a spectacularly cruel man before his redeeming conversion to Buddhism, a man who did things like build a torture chamber disguised as a beautiful palace where he inflicted torments inspired by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Hinduism) Naraka]]. Modern scholars believe that, while Ashoka was a significantly more merciless and ruthless man before he had an epiphany that may or may not have been related to him becoming a Buddhist (there are hints that he was already a Buddhist and simply started taking it much more seriously), his misdeeds were most likely exaggerated to give him a reputation for bloodlust and sadism, thereby making his transformation even more remarkable.

[[folder:Near East]]
* Scholars once generally believed that all writing originated in Sumer and spread across the world via a process of cultural diffusion. Today, the most popular theory is that writing was independently developed at least four times in the form of Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese characters and the earliest script of lowland Mesoamerica.
* Ancient Elam was first known from references by their Sumerian rivals (when not from ancient historians after they were gone, like Strabo), and assumed to have occupied a similar sized territory around the city of Susa in modern Khuzestan Province. The discovery of Anshan showed that they actually extended all the way to southern Iran, and that Mesopotamian-like urbanization existed along the Persian Gulf earlier than previously thought.
* It was believed that the Gutians (a people who overran Sumer and Elam as the Akkadian Empire went into decline) were Indo-Europeans, due to tablets seemingly describing them as having light skin and hair and the names of their kings having apparent links to Indo-European languages. Both are now believed to be the result of flawed translations, and it's generally accepted that there is no evidence linking Gutians to any modern group.
* The late 19th century saw the emergence of a popular historical school of thought called Panbabylonism. Adherents considered the various cultures and religions of the Middle East to be derived from Babylonian myths, which were in turn based on Babylonian astronomy. After World War I, however, the school's claims were discredited by the astronomical and chronological studies of a Jesuit priest named Franz Xaver Kugler.
* Some 19th-century archaeologists promoted a theory that the Amorites were Indo-Europeans who dominated the Israelites, and that the House of David (and therefore Jesus) were actually Amorites. It was proven in the 20th century that the Amorites were a Semitic people, but the idea was and is popular among some racialists even after its debunking in the mainstream.
* Most historians no longer take seriously the idea that the Late Bronze Age Collapse in the eastern Mediterranean was caused by a single factor. The prevailing theory is that it was the result of a "perfect storm" or "domino effect" of many different things: earthquakes, droughts, famine, disease, invasions (especially ones involving the mysterious "Sea Peoples"), and all the general instability each of them cause.
** For a long time, it was accepted that the Bronze Age was brought to an end by the discovery of iron smelting by the Hittites in Asia Minor, who promptly [[{{VideoGame/Civilization}} sent their 4/3 Legions to curbstomp everybody else's 1/2 Phalanxes]]. ''Film/TheEgyptian'' has the titular people shocked by the new metal used by the Hittites and its strength, depicting an iron sword as being capable of breaking a parring bronze in two strikes. But later archaeological evidence led to a different narrative: iron metallurgy was actually developed concurrently with bronze in some places (including Egypt), and ended replacing bronze because it was cheaper to make, not better. Some copper ores also contain iron, and a furnace capable of melting copper is also at a temperature capable of reducing iron ore to metallic iron in the presence of carbon monoxide. Iron tools from bogs in Northern Europe have been dated to the middle Bronze Age, and bronze swords have been found with iron inlays in the handle. Bronze may have been preferred in the beginning because it's [[BlingOfWar prettier]], doesn't rust (which would have been a liability of early iron in non-arid regions), and doesn't require forging to produce good blades. However, bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, which are almost never found in the same areas, and its metallurgy depended upon a healthy trade network. Iron was the most abundant element that people could get and use. Early iron actually made softer, inferior tools and weapons compared to bronze; better bloomeries, higher smelting temperatures, and the ability to carburize wrought iron into steel would be discovered later and change the equation.
** In a particular contrast to the usual TechnologyLevels, sub-Saharan Africa had no "Bronze Age", yet civilizations progressed directly from stone tools to iron, due to the lack of local copper and tin ores. This was long overlooked by European historians because of racist attitudes presuming black Africans to automatically be primitive and their history not even worth studying.
** Similarly, UsefulNotes/{{Japan}} had a "metal age" fairly late in the form of the Yayoi Period (roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE, with some controversial takes putting it as early as 1000 BCE) where the Iron and Bronze Age effectively overlapped.
* Assyrian claims that they perpetrated acts of brutality against noncombatants are no longer taken at face value by archaeologists and historians. Nowadays, they're generally viewed as propaganda pieces designed to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies and discourage revolts, not true accounts.
* The existence of the Median Empire mentioned in ''Literature/TheHistories'' was called into question in the late 20th century, when it was pointed that its historiography had almost entirely relied on Greek authors like Herodotus, Middle Eastern sources make no mention of it, and its alleged imperial system of government would have been unique in its neighborhood.
* David and Goliath were rejected as myth, but scholars now see the armor Goliath wore as ''plausible'' for the Mycenaean civilization. His Greek name was probably ''Kalliades''. His story might have a Greek origin, and certain hard-to-translate phrases from Literature/TheBible seem to be loan translations from Ancient Greek. The current scholarly consensus is that the Philistines, who Goliath is said to have been the champion of, were descended from Greeks.
** The Bible mentions once that Goliath's killer was Elhanan son of Jair, not David. The Targum Jonathan solved this CanonDiscontinuity by claiming that Elhanan was another name of David, and the King James Version saying that Elhanan killed Goliath's brother while David killed Goliath. Modern scholars presume that Elhanan was the killer in an older version of the story and that the deed was attributed to David when he became more popular and Elhanan was forgotten. So if Goliath was real, he probably didn't live in the time of David.
** At least some historians now doubt that Judah and Israel were ever a single united kingdom under the House of David (or Saul, or a confederation under the loose rule of the Judges).
* The final redaction date for the Torah has continually moved forward, from earlier than 1000 B.C. (the alleged time of Moses, and the rise of the Kohanim priests), to the Deuteronomical revival of king Josiah of Judah circa 600 B.C.. Some historians even believe that the Torah didn't reach its final form until the Babylonian captivity (beginning some 20 years after Josiah's death, and lasting about 50-60 years). Similarly, the prominence of Jerusalem[[note]]Nearly a thousand years ago, some renowned Jewish scholar already speculated that Moria mountain -- the place where the Temple was eventually built -- being used by Abraham in his attempt to sacrifice Isaac is a later addition or mistake; the distances and the need to bring wood don't quite match. It is speculated that it was added as a TakeThat to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans Samaritans]] to reduce the importance of ''their'' temple.[[/note]] and the preeminence of monotheism over henotheism[[note]]In which many gods exist, but only one is worshiped.[[/note]] have been moved to later and later points in history to square them with archaeological and documentary evidence.
* Reports of the demise of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes Ten Lost Tribes]] are now believed to have been greatly exaggerated. According to The Bible, the Neo-Assyrian Empire forced these tribes into exile after their conquest of the Samarian Kingdom of Israel, with Jewish historian Josephus writing centuries after the fact that "there are but two tribes in Asia and Europe subject to the Romans, while the ten tribes are beyond Euphrates till now, and are an immense multitude, and not to be estimated by numbers". Countless different ethnic groups have claimed or been speculated to be descended from one or more of these tribes, even non-Jewish ones like the Pashtuns of South Asia and the Lemba people of Southern Africa. However, while DNA evidence has a backed up some of these claims (proving that some of these groups have a certain amount of Semitic origin), it's now believed that the deportations of the Jews weren't as significant as the Biblical narrative claims, and the majority of those who survived the Assyrian invasion probably remained in the area. Research indicates that the Samaritans are probably descended from some of those Jews who stayed, which contradicts Talmudic claims that they originated from the city of Kutha in what is now Iraq. Most of the Jews who ''were'' deported, meanwhile, were probably assimilated into the local population rather than maintaining a distinct identity.
* The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, supposedly built by Nebuchadnezzar II [[GrandRomanticGesture as a gift for his wife Amytis of Media]] (said to have missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland), were long considered one of the UsefulNotes/SevenWondersOfTheWorld. However, their historicity is considered dubious due to a lack of archaeological evidence or references in contemporary records (along with Amytis herself), and many historians think that they were either purely mythical or a garbled account of a garden built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Nineveh.
* Historians thought that King Belshazzar from the Literature/BookOfDaniel was made up, until research unearthed that he was King Nabonidus' son and co-regent in Babylon. While his father went out to face Cyrus' army, Belshazzar stayed behind to fortify the city. Cue the writing on the wall.
* The Persian emperor from the Literature/BookOfEsther is usually identified as Xerxes I. There is no historical record or other evidence of a "beauty contest" held during his reign to find a replacement queen after he divorced his primary queen for disobeying him. He had a RoyalHarem full of wives and concubines, but he acquired them in the same way most kings did: AltarDiplomacy. And his primary queen wasn't named Vashti. Her name was Amestris, and she was never divorced by Xerxes I or deposed from her position as primary queen.
* The Nabataeans were initially thought to be an Aramaic people. Modern scholars reject this idea due to historical, linguistic, and religious evidence pointing to them being a Bedouin tribe from pre-Islamic Arabia, though they did adopt some Aramaic cultural features.
* It was once universally accepted that all of ancient Armenian king Tigranes the Great's children were mothered by Cleopatra of Pontus, the daughter of Pontic king Mithridates VI Eupator. Gagik Sargsyan cast doubt on this, however, suggesting that she was only mother to two of his children, and that he had a previous marriage before becoming king. His reasoning was that if Tigranes the Younger was able to lead a campaign in 82 BCE, he and his elder siblings would've been too old to be Cleopatra's children. Sargsyan also pointed out that since his daughter Ariazate was probably the mother of Parthian emperor Orodes I (whose reign began in 80 BCE), she couldn't have been the daughter of Cleopatra, who only married him in 94 BCE.
* The census leading to Joseph's journey to Bethlehem (and the birth of Jesus in that city) has no documentation in Roman records. Nor does it make sense by Roman standards (requiring Jews to travel to the city of a distant ancestor would have involved separating them from every quantifiable source of income, making such a census useless for tax purposes; the Roman censuses we know involved census takers traveling from city to city instead of the reverse, just like today). The earliest known Gospel, the Book of Mark (Matthew's Gospel was once considered older, but that is itself dated history), begins with Jesus' baptism and ministry and completely ignores his life before that. In the modern day, the Nativity story is often thought of as a literary device to ensure Jesus' birth in Bethlehem (the city of David, ancient king of Israel and presumed ancestor of the Jewish Messiah) despite his lifelong association with the city of Nazareth in Galilee, fulfilling a prophecy which said the Messiah would be born there.
** Archaeology casts doubt on whether Bethlehem even existed at the time of Jesus' birth, leading some to argue that he might have been born in Bethlehem of Galilee, which would have made slightly more sense since that village is closer to Nazareth than Bethlehem of Judea.
* Jesus is only ever described as a ''tekton'' -- a Greek word meaning "worker". The idea that he was a carpenter arose largely because Joseph was a woodworker and people assumed he taught Jesus his trade. "Our Savior the Carpenter" also sounds more noble than "Our Savior the Itinerant Worker", which is what many believe the historical Jesus was. Other theologians argue that considering Jesus never made any references to carpentry in his teachings but did talk quite a bit about stones, he may have been a stonemason instead.
* There is almost no non-religious based historical consensus on the Crucifixion besides the fact that it happened:
** Though common, crucifixion was not standardized. The Latin word ''Crux'' and the Greek ''Staurós'' could be applied to any vertical wooden structure where someone was nailed to, like a stake, wall, frame, even a tree. In other words, our very notion of 'cross-shaped' is inspired by religious representations of the Crucifixion, rather than the other way around. Those were likely based on the text saying Jesus was nailed with his arms extended and the legend "Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews" fixed above his head.
** Even accepting the common definition of cross, some historians have questioned that Jesus would have been forced to carry the whole cross to Golgotha as impractical, proposing that the condemned were forced to carry the horizontal section only while the post remained in place to be reused. Others favor that the real cross was T-shaped rather than a conventional Latin cross, as that would have been easier to assemble.
** [[DeadlyEuphemism Practical experiments]] (including by [[ThoseWackyNazis the Nazis]] at Dachau concentration camp) showed that if a man was nailed through his palms as Jesus is usually represented, the [[BodyHorror hands would rip completely]] under his weight. Because of this, it's been proposed that the condemned's arms were also tied to the cross, or that the nails were inserted through the wrists, or even the forearms.
** Even then, Jesus' own weight would have likely suffocated him long before he's said to have succumbed. Some have suggested that the cross' post had some kind of footrest to '[[CruelMercy help]]' the condemned resist for longer and prolong his agony.
** The number of nails involved is unknown, with some churches claiming up to 14 nails. The commonly depicted three nails (one through each palm and another through both feet) were codified in the Renaissance; four nails (one per hand and foot) was the preferred version in the European Middle Ages. In TheSeventies, Israeli archaeologists found the tomb of Jehohanan, a 1st century crucified, and claimed that his injuries supported a crucifixion with three nails, one through each forearm and the third through the heels, with the feet placed laterally on the post. However, a review questioned most of their findings and only admitted evidence of one nail through one heel, adding that such a nail wasn't long enough to perforate both.[[note]]A later find of the remains of a crucified man, in England, has added weight to the idea that nails were indeed used -- in this case some of the largest possible carpentry nails, those used by the Roman Army to hold fortifications together. It was pointed that these are large valuable items and would have been continually retrieved for reuse -- the only reason why they were still in the body was because they were embedded so successfully in the bone that they could not be removed again.[[/note]]
** ''Film/TheLastTemptationOfChrist'' references nearly all of these points in some way. He is shown carrying only the horizontal beam, where he is nailed (by his wrists) and also tied. His cross is brand new, but the thieves are nailed to dead trees, and Golgotha is full of other older, 'occupied' crosses. His cross would have looked like a T, but the INRI sign at the top is wooden and makes it look like a Latin cross. The third nail is not through the heels and crosses both feet, but still allows him to turn his legs to the side (and acts as SceneryCensor, since unlike in most other depictions, [[FanDisservice Jesus is naked here]]).
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_problem Synoptic Problem]], as briefly mentioned above. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the "synoptic" gospels, meaning "same eye"), all agree on the basic structure of Jesus' life, and contain much material (the Triple Tradition, almost all of which is the "biographical" portion of the three Gospels) that is the same word-for-word. In addition, there is a considerable amount of other material that is shared between Matthew and Luke, but not Mark (the "Double Tradition"; this is mostly "sayings", among them the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes). The problem is attempting to determine which Gospel came first, and whether the other two knew of each other. In the 5th century, St. Augustine of Hippo proposed that Matthew was the first written, Mark was an edited version, and Luke copied from both. This the official position of the Catholic Church (due to the tradition of the Book of Matthew being written by one of the Apostles), and the ordering of the Gospels in The Bible comes from this hypothesis. Many scholars later rejected this theory citing Mark's overall shortness, relatively crude Greek, and the fact that Matthew and Luke don't really seem to agree on anything outside of the common material, and often interpret the common material in different ways. Several other theories about the order have been proposed, with the majority behind the "two source" hypothesis: the ''book of Mark'' came first, and Matthew and Luke copied independently from Mark and a hypothetical "sayings" source, often referred to as "Q."[[note]] The Q is GratuitousGerman as it comes from the German word "Quelle" for "source" -- Germans were among the leading scholars in that field during the time this theory was developed and the name stuck even outside the German language.[[/note]]
* The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library in the late 1940s shook up the world's image of the early history of Christianity, as they contained the scriptures of a long-extinct sect of Christianity called the Gnostics, who had a radically different view of God and Jesus. These sources also contained several Apocryphal texts--gospels that failed to make the final cut and weren't included in The Bible. Gnostic views were known long before, but references came from second-hand sources like Orthodox writers bashing Gnosticism.
** Conversely, the notion of "Pauline" Christianity coming into prominence very late after Jesus' death and squashing differing accounts is also considered apocryphal by most historians. While Gnosticism, Nestorianism, Arianism, and other alternative approaches to Christianity existed, they only gained prominence outside of the Roman Empire, and were swallowed up by orthodox movements (or later, Islam). In a similar vein, the Gospel of John (and the linked Epistles I, II, and III John) was often thought to have supported a dualist Gnostic worldview; discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls - which, contrary to CommonKnowledge, contain no New Testament works, only the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible - had been codified early and hadn't been substantially altered by the rise of Christianity) suggests that John was instead using rhetorical devices similar to those used by the Essenes.
* The once prevailing theory that "adoptionist" or "low" Christology (which claims that Jesus was born only human and became divine after being "adopted" by God) predated the "incarnationist" or "high" Christology (which claims that the Son was a divine being who became human) and was the mainstream view until replaced by the other. Scholarly work since TheSeventies is that high Christology was developed very early on and coexisted with low Christology, eventually winning out and relegating low Christology to heresy (some modern churches teach adoptionism, including certain Unitarian and Mormon sects).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Rome]]
* Some Ancient Greek historians were fond of the idea that the Etruscans migrated to Italy from overseas. Herodotus thought they were originally from Lydia in Anatolia, others that they were Pelasgians from Thessaly. Archaeological evidence favors an indigenous Italian origin.
* Like Troy, Pompeii faded into obscurity to the point of being considered a myth by the time of its rediscovery in the 18th century. This despite the fact that it disappeared in a much more recent time, with extensive written records including those of first-hand witnesses, and one of the most read Roman scientists and authors of all time, Pliny the Elder, had died when attempting to rescue two friends from the eruption (Pliny was the local naval commander).
** The account of the eruption by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, was still considered bogus well into the 19th century, when other volcanoes erupted in the exact same way as he described the Vesuvius in AD 79. Because of it, this kind of eruption (pyroclastic explosions with a tall column of ash and pumice but little liquid lava) is commonly known to vulcanologists as a Vesuvian or Plinian eruption.
** Changes in sensibilities have allowed the publication of explicit images that were on display on the city, which changed popular perception of the Romans from a genteel, prim, proper, and moral people to a debauched, hedonistic people. Archaeologists and historians believe that Roman sexual taboos existed, but were completely different in nature from most today.
** Archaeological opinion about Pompeii's nature has gone back and forth as well, as it's alternately been regarded as a red-light pleasure resort (thanks to all the whorehouses) or just a typical city from an era that wasn't prudish about such things.[[note]]It definitely was a resort, or in a resort area--the Roman aristocracy had been retreating to Campania for centuries, because it's very pretty and has nicer weather than Rome and most of Latium.[[/note]] The part under debate is the "red-light" thing: Was it like [[UsefulNotes/NewJersey Atlantic City, or Long Beach Island]]?)
* In the 18th and 19th centuries, as religion further faded in academia and it became clearer that much "contemporary" writing about early Christians was Medieval interpolation, many historians, including Edward Gibbon, came to believe that ''all'' references to the persecution of Christians were fabricated, and the Romans paragons of religious tolerance. Ultimately, due to archaeological findings and textual analysis, this belief has only a very few holdouts.
* It's a trope of Medieval-to-modern Christian historical fiction that the Romans persecuted Christians because they didn't understand Christianity and misinterpreted acts performed by Christians, or because they were a religion that catered to the poor and were seen as dangerous to the aristocratic establishment. Later historians, both secular and Christian, have nuanced this.
** The Roman persecution of Judaism and Christianity had to do with its laws: they would tolerate a faith only if it accepted the Emperor and was inclusive. If Jews and Christians accepted those who also believed in, prayed to, and accepted other gods, then it was A-OK. However, to be Christian or Jewish was to accept one belief and reject all others. Romans, on the other hand, enjoyed erecting temples to all kinds of distant gods (like the Egyptian Isis and the Persian Mithras) while still praying to Jupiter and participating in Saturnalia, so they didn't see why people couldn't do that and still stop at a church or synagogue from time to time. This was a policy of enforced [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism syncretism]], and faiths which tended to assert their own independence in doctrine and membership aroused the suspicion of the government, the same way the Eleusinian and Dionysian Mysteries did in earlier eras in the Republic and in UsefulNotes/AncientGreece. The very term MysteryCult signifies the state's suspicion that these faiths were underground movements that could agitate against them.[[note]]Some scholars have postulated that some of these mystery cults actually [[HijackedByJesus influenced early Christianity]], though it's hardly a settled topic.[[/note]]
** Roman persecution of Christians was in part due to their refusal to worship the Emperor. Later Romans, after dialogue with Christians, simply imposed a requirement to pray ''for'' rulers, which is repeated many times in Christian scripture and is still maintained today. Likewise, for those seeing Christianity as revolutionary in origin, there is no historical evidence of any anti-state revolt led by Christians. Historians note that peasant-led Christian revolts happened in TheMiddleAges (against [[CorruptChurch corrupt church officials]] and oppressive secular elites). But in the Roman era, the dangerous revolts like Spartacus, UsefulNotes/{{Boudica}}, Zenobia, and the UsefulNotes/JewishRevolts were all non-Christian. It is true that Christianity attracted followers among women and the lower classes, but they did not promote revolution against the state, at most calling for economic and social reform. Christians also tolerated slavery in the Roman era, though they [[FairForItsDay advocated for better treatment of slaves and included them in gatherings]]. However, UsefulNotes/{{Stoicism}} and UsefulNotes/{{Epicureanism}} took the same position. So the opening narration of ''Film/{{Spartacus}}'', which claims that slaves were freed only with the rise of Christianity and the end of pagan tyranny, is a little too generous to the former and not entirely fair to the latter.
** The notion of [[GodEmperor living emperors being worshipped as gods]] is more or less a modern invention. While some of the more unbalanced emperors, like UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}}, may have claimed divinity, and many claimed [[SemiDivine descent from one god or another]], there's little evidence that the average Roman citizen played along. The ''genius'', or spirit, of deceased emperors was often given divine honors, but this itself was an extension of contemporary Roman religious practice; the ''pater familias'' of a Roman family was given the same honors by his ''gens'', and the Emperor was considered to be a "father" to the entire city. The only two rulers who were officially deified were Romulus and UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar, and both were only deified posthumously.
** Another reason the Romans saw Christianity as destabilizing was because rival Christian sects often fought each other violently, and because Christians persecuted pagans and deliberately won over converts by subverting other cults. Julian the Philosopher, the last pagan emperor, complained in his missives about how Christians were anti-syncretic while at the same time blatantly [[TheMoralSubstitute co-opting]] pagan motifs, [[{{Hypocrite}} getting jobs teaching Homeric classics]], and using their classical training to better sell their faith. Julian, as an ex-Christian, was clearly biased, but historians think he had a point. Furthermore, once Christians [[https://newrepublic.com/article/110204/how-christianity-spread-the-1-and-the-99-in-ancient-rome found active patronage under Constantine]] and UsefulNotes/TheodosiusI, the Church drifted away [[SellOut from the flock that had]] supported and built it (women, slaves, the poor) and became [[SocialClimber subsidized and catered by Rome's aristocratic elite]]. The Christian aristocracy of Late Antiquity Rome also created the system of serfdom, by which peasants who formerly had rights and freedom of movement were tied to the land -- something the Church did not lift a finger to hinder.
* The Christian shrine in the Roman Colosseum has tripped up many writers and readers. The ruins of the Colosseum were consecrated in 1749 by Pope Benedict XIV, supposedly in memory of the many early Christians martyred in that location. But there's no evidence that Christians were ever martyred at the Colosseum; even the editors of the ''Catholic Encyclopedia'' found none, with most records saying that martyrdoms took place at other locations in Rome like the Circus Maximus. There's a possibility that Nero's massacre of Christians after the Great Fire took place on the land on which the Colosseum was later built, but it's more likely that Benedict XIV invented the story to justify protecting the building from property developers looking to turn it into a wool factory.
* There's also a popular conception portraying Roman paganism and Christianity as the main rivalry, with the assumption that the latter was the most popular religion in the Roman Empire. This ignores that Christianity was just another sect along with hundreds of other religions (ex. Cult of Iris, UsefulNotes/{{Gnosticism}}, the Imperial Cult, Bacchic Rites, Dionysus Mysteries, UsefulNotes/{{Manichaeism}}, etc). Likewise, the persecution and treatment of Christians also extended to other religious groups that were rarely mentioned in history like the Celtic {{druid}}s and the Bacchaes.
* It's now generally dismissed that Christianity was the primary cause of the fall of Rome, and no serious historian entertains the idea that it did so by making people too stupid to run an empire. Rather, the Roman Empire had a number of problems before the spread of Christianity, and its rise happened in a big part because of the gradually failing social order. It's also accepted that there is no single cause of the breakup of the Roman Empire.
** The idea that Rome collapsed because of its own decadence and luxury (popular in the 19th century) is not well-supported either. For one thing, we see Roman records complaining about how hedonistic and lacking in virtue their society was getting... pretty much every single generation. It's really no different than your parents complaining about TheNewRockAndRoll corrupting the kids these days, [[ParentalHypocrisy as though]] kids of their generation weren't up to all kinds of mischief.
* For centuries people believed that orgies in AncientRome were nothing more than sex parties. Modern research has debunked this. In reality, ''orgia'' were secret rites. Decadent activities could be a part of them, but it was all in the style of a ceremony, perhaps closer to the Wiccan "Great Rite". Accusations of sexual orgies were lodged by Christians later on, but pagans had also accused the Christians of engaging in sex parties, and such slanders have been made against virtually every religious group where it's unpopular. Similarly, the supposed rite at such events of stuffing yourself with food until you want to throw up, going to a special room to do so, and then returning to continue eating is also an example of this trope. The myth is based on a misunderstanding of the word "vomitorium", which refers to the exit of an amphitheater and has nothing to do with actual vomit (they share a etymology meaning "to spew forth"). If you have ever been to an event at a major arena and walked through a corridor to get to the seats, you have been in a vomitorium.
** It was a common belief from the Victorian era that Ancient Rome was sexually decadent, hedonistic, and open-minded to sex compared to other periods. This is both true and not. This belief started when Pompeii was discovered and made open to the public. The people were shocked by the discovery of Roman sexual imagery and activities exposed (as before then, Rome had for a long time been perceived as a cultivation of glorious culture and art, with Greco-Roman {{sculptures}} and copies of Roman texts being their only sources on what Rome was like). It's easy to see the Romans as licentious when compared to the prudish Victorians; however, the Romans also had strict gender roles and expectations on sexual roles. For example, a man was expected to [[LieBackAndThinkOfEngland perform missionary on his wife]] and [[MadonnaWhoreComplex treat her as a "woman of higher status" only and not a "woman of pleasure"]]. It was taboo to have her on top, as it was a sign that he was "[[MenActWomenAre effeminate]]". Many Roman poets loved to satirize things that were taboo, like women's sexuality and anal sex: Hence anecdotes like Tiberius owning a sex circus, UsefulNotes/{{Caligula}} committing incest, Messalina having a sex marathon behind her husband's back, and Elagabalus prostituting himself before men and women, which were likely slander, or at the very least exaggerations by later writers.
* The common view of Roman history, since at least the Enlightenment, is that of the "idle plebs", in which the Roman citizenry was freed from most physical labor by the large number of slaves, and spent their time eating free grain and watching state-sponsored gladiator games. In reality, while the grain dole was real, it was seldom if ever distributed to the very needy, and in any case never provided enough for a family to survive on. Urban slaves and freedmen dominated the skilled trades, leaving most of the city's free population to eke out a meager living as semi-itinerant day laborers, and malnutrition and disease were rife. Even in rural areas, while large farms had a core labor force of slaves, the labor-intensive nature of planting and harvesting meant that these would require large numbers of free laborers as well. The construction of Roman monuments and mining was also presumed to have relied entirely on slave labor, but historical accounts and archaeological evidence (like remains of luxury meats found in the working area of gypsum mines) show that at least some jobs employed free workers with a high salary.
* Negative views of Domitian prevailed for a long time, with the standard view being that he was a cruel and paranoid tyrant, as portrayed in ''Literature/MarcusDidiusFalco''. Starting in the 1890s, a revisionist characterization as a ruthless but efficient autocrat who laid the foundations for the glory days of the Five Good Emperors began to take greater prominence and eventually became the mainstream opinion. While he was no saint and his rule had some negative aspects (like curtailing of civil liberties and prosecuting people on false charges for political reasons), his harshness was limited to a VocalMinority and his policies generally supported during his reign.
** Though it was once believed that Domitian was willing to leave Dacia after negotiating peace with Decebalus and had no plans for further wars, the discovery that he ordered more troops brought to Upper Moesia from Pannonia and Syria suggests that he was actually gearing up for a rematch (from his own end or the Dacians') when he was assassinated.
* ''Literature/TheEagleOfTheNinth'' has two main inspirations: the lack of historical references on the Legio IX Hispana after AD 117, when it was stationed on the Caledonian border, and speculation that it had been wiped out during an invasion of what is now Scotland; and a Roman eagle that was found buried under a British house in the 19th century (and is attributed to [[BeenThereShapedHistory the main characters]] at the end of the book). Later historians found evidence that the Legion had been moved to the German border, and later, to Asia. This caused speculation that it was destroyed in AD 161 during a battle in Armenia, though latest thinking has veered back to some kind of disaster north of Hadrian's Wall; the [=IXth=] does disappear from the records and a new Legion was imported to Britain at about the same time. The Romans knew perfectly well what had happened to the [=IXth=], but the information didn't survive to our time. As for the buried eagle, it turned to have been decoration from a temple to Jupiter, not a military standard as initially assumed.
** ''Literature/CodexAlera'': WordOfGod is that the LostRomanLegion that the Alerans are descended from is the Legio IX Hispana - though perhaps after they disappeared the second time.
** ''Film/{{Centurion}}'', which begins with the destruction of the [=IXth=] in 117, ends with the [[AuthorsSavingThrow hilarious disclaimer]], "This movie is based on a Roman UrbanLegend".
* ''Film/TheFallOfTheRomanEmpire'' takes as its thesis that Marcus Aurelius was the last great emperor and that the Empire after his passing was a long decay. While this was a popular opinion for a long period of time, historians have since corrected and modified this.
** As seen in the [[SpiritualSuccessor unofficial remake]] ''Film/{{Gladiator}}'', it was once accepted that Commodus left the Danubian front immediately after becoming sole emperor, but now it's largely believed that he stayed for months and only left after negotiating peace with the Danubian tribes. The "he left right after his father died" story is a suspected exaggeration based on his irresponsible and hedonistic behavior later on.
* ''Literature/FrontierWolf'' (1980) is set at the Cramond Roman Fort in Edinburgh, but makes no mention of its most notable artifact, the Cramond Lioness, as it was not discovered until 1997.
* During the Middle Ages, the papacy supported and justified its claims to political authority with the Donation of Constantine, a supposed decree authored by Constantine the Great that transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to [[UsefulNotes/ThePope Pope Sylvester I]] and his successors. While the degree's authenticity was generally regarded as valid during the Medieval period, investigations in the mid-15th century revealed that it could not possibly be genuine, due to various [[AnachronismStew anachronisms]] and the use of [[LanguageDrift later forms of Latin]]. It's now known that the Donation was a forgery written long after Constantine's death, probably in the 8th century.
* Many post-Nicene historians claimed that Helena Augusta, Constantine the Great's mother, discovered the True Cross and other relics of Jesus while visiting Jerusalem. Modern scholars view these stories with skepticism, since the earliest sources on the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, including Eusebius' ''Life of Constantine'', make no mention of this.
* Sir Charles Oman's claim that the Battle of Adrianople represented a turning point in military history, with Gothic and Alan heavy cavalry triumphing over Roman infantry and ushering in the era of knights and cataphracts dominating battlefields in Europe and the Middle East, was repeated by many 20th century writers. The idea was overturned by T. S. Burns in 1973, when he pointed out that the Romans actually had more cavalry than the Goths, the battle was mainly fought by infantry on both sides, the increasing importance of cavalry in the Late Roman Army had already begun before the battle, and the rise of the medieval knight was still centuries away.
* ''Literature/{{Outcast}}'': The only quasi-historical event in the novel, the supposed Roman founding of the Rhee Wall of Romney Marsh in south-east England, is no longer credited but rather placed on the 13th century.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* The theory of the Bantu expansion as a singular migration is no longer considered credible. Now it is thought that it took place in at least two distinct waves.
* While virtually everyone agrees that the Land of Punt existed and was somewhere near the Horn of Africa, the exact location and how much territory it controlled is constantly changing. Was it in Somalia, Somaliland, Eritrea, Djibouti, northeast Ethiopia, northeast Sudan? Did it control only part of the Horn of Africa or all of it? Did it have a foothold on the Arabian peninsula or not? How far did its influence extend into the Indian Ocean?
* Nilotic peoples are now considered to have entered Kenya earlier than previously thought. Once thought to have only arrived in around 1000 AD, new archaeological evidence suggests they may have reached western Kenya as early as 1000 ''BC''.
* The Habesha peoples of the Horn of Africa were once thought to descend from South Arabian tribes who migrated across the Red Sea, partly because the Geʽez language appeared to descend from Sabaean or another Old South Arabian language. It was later discovered that Geʽez evolved from earlier Ethiopian Semitic languages.
* Starting in the Meiji era, Japanese scholars promoted the idea that the Ryukyuans were a sub-group of the Yamato people, partly to justify the Japanese annexation of the Ryukyu Islands. 21st century genetic studies proved that the Ryukuans were more closely related to southern Jōmon hunter-gatherers.
* While it was once believed that the Austronesian peoples had their roots in Malaysia, the current prevailing theory is that their origins lie in Taiwan.
* A once popular theory had it that the Cimmerians related to the Thracians somehow, or possibly even a Thracian tribe. However, this was just unjustified extrapolation from Strabo's mention of a Thracian-Cimmerian alliance. The dominant theory today is that Cimmerians were an Iranian people who originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and conquered part of the people that made up the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacomb_culture Catacomb culture]].
* In the early 20th century, it was suggested that the Illyrians of the western Balkans were TheRemnant of a very large area that reached into Central Europe, and that they migrated south during the transition between the Bronze and Iron ages. The evidence was alleged Illyrian toponymy in parts of Europe outside their known territory. However, archaeological evidence in the 1950s pointed to an unbroken continuity of culture in the area during that time, and the onomastic once dubbed "Illyrian" is now believed to be Old European.
* With archaeology in its infancy, 19th-century reconstructions of ancient Germanic tribes tended to confiscate their trousers and tunic sleeves, arm them with weapons from the wrong time period, and attach [[HornyVikings horns]] or wings to their helmets regardless of era and culture. The Migration Period wasn't the only thus affected; the ancient Near East often wound up looking like a jumble of Assyro-Babylonian and then-modern Ottoman influences.
* The Romans recorded the Huns as appearing suddenly to the east of the Goths' territory in Ukraine. In the 18th century, Joseph de Guignes proposed that the Huns and the Xiongnu, a steppe people that invaded China between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD, were one and the same -- hence why WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'s enemies are Huns. However this theory rested on linguistics only, and was rejected by Otto Maenchen-Helfen in the early 20th century after archaeological findings -- which were themselves challenged later, as well. The origin of the Huns, along with their relation to the Xiongnu, Xionites, Hephtalites, and Huna peoples that invaded Persia and India in the same broad time, continue to be contested.
* One popular theory of early Korean history was that Korean pottery gradually becoming more standard before turning essentially uniform by the end of the 4th century CE reflected either more minor cultures being assimilated out of existence or the creation of a unifed Korean culture through fusion. However it is now believed that the standardization of pottery was reflective of an economic change, not cultural. The prevailing theory is that the production of pottery became increasingly centralized and standardized.
[[/folder]]

!!Middle Ages

[[folder:General]]
* Most HollywoodHistory of the Medieval period (''Literature/AConnecticutYankeeInKingArthursCourt'' is probably the UrExample) is patently untrue, as it is heavily based on the accounts of Protestant, Enlightenment, or Republican writers who would fabricate information and present hearsay as fact to advance their point of view. The actual Middle Ages were a colorful epoch, with significant advancements in science, cultural crosstalk (Gothic architecture, almost synonymous with the Middle Ages, was inspired by Indian and Muslim building styles), and not as much [[TheDungAges dirt]] as later accounts would have you believe. The problem started with Renaissance writers considering the entire epoch between Antiquity and them to be just like recent history -- and recent history was the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War. But the Middle Ages lasted over a thousand years and MedievalStasis did not apply in reality. The High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries) could be called a time of prosperity, and some retaking of Roman heritage (the deed the Renaissance authors were so proud of) already happened. But then the Black Death arrived, and with it a whole host of new wars and troubles, which ended that boom.
* The whole Middle Ages are often referred to as "Dark Ages" because of widespread illiteracy and lack of civilization. A common conspiracy theory is that the Catholic Church intentionally inhibited people from learning to read in order to keep the monopoly of thought. The actual reason for illiteracy was that '''there simply was no accessible writing media''' in Medieval Europe. Learning to read and write requires a medium upon which to scribe. Papyrus decomposes quickly in the cold and humid European climate, and parchment and vellum are atrociously expensive. Papermaking from linen was either introduced or invented independently in the 12th century, and once paper became ubiquitous in the 14th century, literacy spread like wildfire, especially in cities and towns. Learning the Roman alphabet and phonemes is very easy, and literacy can be assumed in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile literacy was commonplace in Russia and Scandinavia already in the High Middle Ages, as they used birch bark as writing media. Birches are rare in Central Europe, but ubiquitous in the North.
** The use of the term "Dark Ages" actually began as a cleverism when Creator/{{Petrarch}} said his era was "surrounded by darkness and dense gloom," in the 1330's. The phrasing was supposed to be {{irony}} because Medieval people thought they lived in a "bright age" compared to the "dark age" of Rome before Christianity.
* Added to the above is the myth that Catholic churches chained up Bibles and Gospel books to keep laypeople from reading them. As mentioned above, the majority of laypeople in Western Europe were illiterate. The actual reason the books were chained up was because they were valuable--the Gospels, in particular, could easily have gold covers, studded with jewels, which made them tempting targets for thieves. Even without such embellishment, books in the time before the printing press were expensive, time-consuming to make, and hard to obtain themselves. Secular libraries such as those at universities also chained their books up.
* Renaissance and especially Enlightenment scholars put in a lot of work to prove how few books had been written in the Middle Ages: by throwing away anything written in that time-period. Later researchers bought into the propaganda and genuinely believed nothing of note was written during Medieval times. The books that weren't destroyed ended up in the hands of private collectors and only became accessible to scholars in the late 20th century with the Internet. They also introduced the idea of Medieval people being obsessed with religion. Not an entirely wrong idea, given the importance of pilgrimages and piety to most commoners (as well as uglier forms, such as anti-Semitic riots), but the ordinary people weren't falling at the knees of the sinister church-men. On the contrary, the Latin Church was frequently criticized for its priests failing to live up to their presumed holy standards, to the point laymen acted as preachers just so somebody would get it right. Rulers weren't shy about arguing over political matters with Popes, making war on them and even deposing them, without considering themselves less Catholic for it (the papal infallibility dogma only dates back to 1870), and Crusades tended to disintegrate into WeAREStrugglingTogether on national grounds. People, especially those in power, were happy to "pick and choose" or ignore parts of Christianity if it suited them or if they could make money (a bit like how there's technically a speed limit on highways but it's not uncommon for people to drive faster). Rather than a laicist movement, the Renaissance was also a time when many turned to Christianity and wanted to purify and reinvigorate it; differences in ''how'' and ''what'' this meant led to the various Protestant and Catholic reformations.
* The medieval Catholic Church never [[BurnTheWitch burnt anyone at the stake for practicing witchcraft]]. Its official position was that witchcraft was superstition, and belief in it was against Church dogma. The Church considered those who made accusations of witchcraft to either be superstitious fools, or to be making malicious false accusations against others; this could get ''the accusers'' into serious trouble, and there are records of ecclesiastical courts holding people accountable for making accusations of witchcraft. Of course people were killed as witches (not always by burning), but it was uneducated and superstitious authorities who did it, very often secular. The Church, as an institution, fought against this.
** ''Series/RobinOfSherwood'' includes the once popular theory that trials for witchcraft and heresy were partly attempts to stamp out a pre-Christian pagan religion that persisted well into the Medieval period. This is now considered pseudohistorical and based on a very selective reading of primary sources.
** The ''Literature/MalleusMaleficarum'', or "Hammer of the Witches", was not held up as a guide and example by the Church, even if many individual Catholics did. It was later banned, though too late by then.
** Witch hunts actually peaked after the Reformation, particularly in areas where [[ApocalypseAnarchy central authority was lost due to war]], like in the UsefulNotes/FrenchWarsOfReligion, the UsefulNotes/EnglishCivilWar, the Low Countries during UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar, Germany during the UsefulNotes/ThirtyYearsWar, Scandinavia after the Kalmar War, and Hungary around the Great Turkish War. Italy and Spain, with its ill-reputed [[UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition Inquisition]], were internally stable and the witch craze there was negligible. This did not stop later Protestant and secular authors from citing the witch trials to prove how dumb and evil Catholics are.
* [[TrialByOrdeal Trials by Ordeal]] were not the illogical or comic farces they are seen as today where the only logical result was guilt or death. In societies where religious belief was strong the guilty would be inclined to confess (often to a reduced punishment) while the innocent would request the ordeal. [[https://aeon.co/ideas/why-the-trial-by-ordeal-was-actually-an-effective-test-of-guilt Modern research]] shows that judges had ample opportunities to determine the results of the ordeal, with two-thirds typically being found innocent. Trials by Ordeal vanished during the Enlightenment as society-wide belief in religion weakened, but had been largely replaced already by legal reforms that even the Catholic Church instituted, like forbidding priests to participate in them in 1215.
** As dumb as the "Trial by Cold Water" sounds (a person is dunked in water: if it sinks, it's innocent; if floats, guilty), witnesses were actually supposed to retrieve the "innocent" [[ObviousRulePatch before they drowned]], using the same rope and pulley used to lower them into the water. ''Film/PopeJoan'' and the ''WesternAnimation/BackToTheFuture'' cartoon forget this part.
* "Feudalism", once considered the defining characteristic of Medieval government and society, is now considered an invention of historians. The notion of a pyramid of obligations linking king to lord to knight to commoner goes against many primary sources; kings held (or were expected to hold) the allegiance of all their subjects, not just the most prominent ones, and the gifts and homages of the ruling class were an unkempt web of reciprocal obligations. Having said that, poor communications meant that while kings held the allegiance of all their subjects, they (like present-day governments in large countries) relied on local representatives for day-to-day governance. And again like many present-day governments, poor supervision by the higher-ups often led to local representatives accumulating more power/wealth than they were supposed to.
** ''DroitDuSeigneur'', the supposed right of feudal lords to take the virginity of their serfs' daughters (more recently re-popularized by ''Film/{{Braveheart}}''), [[https://medium.com/the-history-inquiry/the-myth-of-prima-nocta-d47a5145acbc is considered a myth]]. No evidence has surfaced that it was ever codified in the laws of any country, though saying that your enemies did it was a good way to motivate your troops in times of war. 16th century rulers would also claim that some illustrious ancestor of theirs had banned the practice, and fiction authors liked to include such scenes for [[RuleOfDrama obvious]] [[HotterAndSexier reasons]]. Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli pointed out that [[StupidEvil engaging in such practices]] would have offended religious authorities and outraged one's own subjects.
* While it was once believed that the marriage of prepubescent girls to grown men was common practice in Medieval and early Modern Europe, the marriage registries of the period show that most people waited until at least their late teens to get married. Marrying young girls was reserved almost exclusively to the nobility, who did it for political reasons, and even then the marriage was rarely consummated before the girl was old enough to get pregnant without complications. The Byzantine emperor Andronikos I was criticized in his time for consummating his marriage with the twelve-year-old Agnes of France.
* Medieval arms and armor have long been depicted as heavy and cumbersome. ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' again, with its easily dogged knights weighed down by armor and swords, popularized this and may have as well created this subtrope for ArmorIsUseless, still played unironically in the Bronn vs Ser Vardys TrialByCombat of ''Series/GameOfThrones''. Only relatively recently has this prejudice begun to be overturned in popular culture:
** Swords were believed to be little more than heavy iron clubs, [[KatanasAreJustBetter inferior to Eastern swords]], and it was thought that knights simply bashed away without finesse. However Medieval and Early Modern swordplay treatises reveal a highly-developed, formalized school of martial arts. Furthermore, most samples that led to the popular depiction were ceremonial and display pieces that were never intended for combat. Surviving battlefield weapons (which are rare, as they were to be used, not preserved) reveal light, well-balanced, often sharp blades of higher-quality steel than their Eastern counterparts. An actual longsword would range between 2-4 pounds, with the median range being much more common. Compare this to 6lb longswords in early editions of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''.
** The idea that plate armor was so heavy that knights couldn't even get on the saddle themselves (the films ''A Connecticut Yankee'' (1931) and ''[[Film/HenryV1944 Henry V]]'' (1944) both have knights humoristically hoisted onto horses with cranes) also owes much to display pieces, particularly heavy tournament armor. None were intended for practical use and the latter was the period's equivalent of football pads, overengineered to protect the wearer. Armor made for battle weighed no more than the kit of a modern soldier and was better distributed; plate was even lighter than the mail used in earlier periods, and offered very little restriction to motion. Contemporary accounts even describe knights testing out new suits by doing cartwheels in them. A short film by Daniel Jaquet on Website/YouTube shows an obstacle course run by a firefighter, a modern soldier in full gear, and a man in plate; the latter comes in between the soldier and firefighter, outrunning the soldier by 14 seconds. Another video shows a reenactor in full plate getting on the saddle in one jump, among other athletic feats.
** It is also understood that knights in plate generally did not carry shields, as these barely improved on a fully armored body for the weight they added. In turn, the shield's absence allowed knights to fight with two-handed weapons (longsword, polehammer, halberd) that were better at breaching plate. The exception is, again, tournament armor, which did have a shield -- because jousting knights were deliberately aiming at them! In the ''Game of Thrones'' example above, the lightly armored fighter turns down a shield, while his fully armored opponent uses a massive kite shield (historically used before plate was invented).
* Katanas themselves have been the victim of a lot of myths regarding their effectiveness. While the KatanasAreJustBetter trope has been very widespread, the pushback against this depiction has caused the modern misconceptions to swing completely in the other direction. To list just a few:
** A very popular misconception is that Japanese iron sources were extremely poor and very sparce. However a broader examination of the various iron sources of the time reveal that they actually did have quite pure sources of iron known as "Mochi Tetsu" which could have a purity rating as high as 60%, comparable even to the famously pure iron of Sweden. The famous iron sand was used because it came with large quantities of carbon already in it, though even that could manage a level of iron purity as high as 58% depending on the region. These were hardly found in low quantities either, as accounts as late as the 17th century attested to the quantity of their iron being plentiful.
** As a pushback to the notion that they were more durable than European blades, it's now become quite common for people to claim they were actually quite brittle and bent easily. While it's true that the Japanese didn't use spring tempers for their swords (a heat treating process used to make steel very flexible and spring back into shape), they did temper their blades using a process called differential hardening, which still allowed for some degree of flexibility as well as a harder edge. Coupled with the overall blade geometry this means that while the blade wouldn't spring back quite as readily and could end up bent, a blade of reasonable quality wouldn't be much more likely to break than a European sword if at all, and was much harder to bend than the myths would have you believe. In fact, it was extremely common for swordsmiths to do very abusive testing on their blades in a practice known as "aratameshi", where a new sword would be used on things like bamboo, deer antlers and even iron tools and armor to see how it held up.
* The idea that everyone in the Middle Ages believed that bathing was unhealthy is pervasive in modern times. In reality there were public bathhouses and saunas throughout the Middle Ages (inherited from the Romans), despite nudity taboos and opposition by liturgical factions. Bathing did not start to decline until after the Renaissance when, on the one hand, there was a shift from wool to the much easier to clean linen, allowing people who had not regularly bathed to maintain a clean and well-groomed appearance (that the decline in bathing saw a significant increase in the importance of laundry and perfume should also be noted); on the other, diseases like the Black Plague and syphilis spread like wildfire in bathhouses. In the second case this was helped by the fact that bathhouses also were often places of illicit sex and prostitution; it is only natural that the Reformation and Counter-Reformation's tightened sexual mores both fed from this and put the final nail on public bathhouses. But even without bathhouses people would wash themselves otherwise, and outside large polluting cities it was typical to bathe in rivers and lakes. The origin of this trope lies in part in anecdotes like UsefulNotes/LouisXIV (who lived centuries after the Middle Ages) only bathing twice in his life, and [[UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs Queen Isabella]] vowing to not change shirts until Granada fell (a baseless myth).
** This is perhaps more popular in Mexico and some other Latin American countries, where "clean, well-groomed natives" are contrasted with "dirty, smelly conquistadors", and there is nationalist pride in the belief that Latin Americans today shower daily and Europeans don't. Thus while promoting the Mexican period series ''Series/{{Hernan}}'', Spanish actress Aura Garrido made the rare criticism that the hairdressers were always tousling her hair.
* The idea that alcoholic beverages like beer and wine were used as replacements for water due to concerns about potability is, by and large, hogwash. In reality neither is antiseptic despite containing alcohol; the fermentation process that creates both is made by microorganisms in the first place. Like today, alcoholic drinks were consumed for their intoxicating effects and for variety in the diet. The origins of this trope are [[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ykchzh/what_is_the_origin_of_the_medieval_people_drank/ unclear]], but could be a mix of pre-UsefulNotes/WorldWarI [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history Whig History]] and its belief in the inherent progress of human society, backdating the 19th century cholera epidemics to the more remote past, and the Middle Ages being a plain acceptable target. It is also a much more popular idea in countries with a Protestant tradition, just like many Medieval tropes listed here.
** In a misguided attempt to subvert readers' expectations, ''Literature/HouseholdGods'' gives this trope to the Roman Empire, which HollywoodHistory usually has as YeGoodeOldeDays of indoor plumbing and aqueducts before TheDungAges.
* Another that gets tossed around is that the average human life expectancy in the Middle Ages was 35 years old (the same is true for any pre-Industrial time, but it is a mocked subject like the Middle Ages and more rarely Prehistory, as shown by ''VideoGame/FarCryPrimal'', which mostly get hit by this), which is morphed into claiming that people at 35 would be considered elderly in their time and [[YoungerThanTheyLook appear elderly to us]]. This is a wild misinterpretation that ignores the meaning of the word ''average'': the reason it was so low is because up to 30% of all people born died before they were five, and the vast majority of those died before reaching one. If a person didn't fall to untreatable disease, they could realistically expect to live into their 70s. It goes without saying, however, that the fact that life expectancy was lower did play a role in the perception of elders, as an individual approaching their 80s would have been treated with the same reverence we would show today to people in their 90s or to centenarians.
* The notion of Europeans importing spices to disguise the flavor of rotten meat is more nonsense. Meat preservation techniques like salting, drying, or smoking were effective, plus spices were extremely expensive (much more than the best meat) and wouldn't have magically made spoiled meat safe to eat anyway. If anything, Medieval people would have been more averse to eat suspicious food than us, since they couldn't count on artificial conservatives or medicine to treat food poisoning.
* The Old Prussian religion was once generally accepted to be polydoxic -- to be more specific, a faith defined by a belief in the sacredness of all natural forces and phenomena (not personified but possessed of their own magic), as well as a belief that the world is inhabited by a limitless number of spirits and demons. But in the 21st century, a competing theory emerged, with some historians arguing for a well-developed, sophisticated polytheism with a clearly defined pantheon of gods.
%%* For UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus in particular, see Late Middle Ages:
%%* Pre-Columbian American contact theories:
%%** Claims that Columbus wasn't the first to reach the Americas by sea [[OlderThanTheyThink actually go back to the late 1490s]] when it became obvious that he had found a new continent, rich and easy to conquer, and that Spain had unknowingly [[AbsurdlyHighStakesGame pledged to give it to him, a foreigner, and his descendants]] for just piloting a ship there. The most popular rumor was the ''prenauta'': an unnamed but conveniently Castilian pilot was blown off course, saw an inhabited land west, and made his way to Madeira, where he told Columbus [[ImDyingPleaseTakeMyMacGuffin before he died]], making his feat and deal null. The ''prenauta'' was mentioned in the court case against Columbus, though the Crown didn't believe he was real, nor did the notable early colonial chronists Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Nevertheless, he was included in Columbus's biography by his son Ferdinand, along with a similar story of him finding a canoe and two Native American bodies after a storm. Both are almost guaranteed to appear as real in media -- if sympathetic to Columbus, like ''[[WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois Once upon a time... the Americas]]'', he will be presented as the only one clever enough to realize the implications and act on them; if not, he will be a hack whose claim to fame was stolen from other people.
%%** The common retort that 'Columbus didn't discover America, there were people already living there' (used in ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS18E17MargeGamer The Simpsons]]'' and ''Series/MonstersWeMet'', among others) implies that this was defended by colonizers, or that Natives [[{{Dehumanization}} didn't qualify as people]] in their eyes. Quite the contrary: with South America charted first, and Europeans ignorant of how close North America was to Asia until the mid-18th century, Spanish theologians were in fact troubled by the possibility of an inhabited landmass so far away from every other and the implications -- was this a second creation? Did Natives not descend from [[AdamAndEvePlot Adam]], so they had no original sin and didn't have to be converted to be saved? Did Jesus's command to proselytize not include them if they couldn't be reached by technology in Jesus's time? Did they have souls? Soon, missionaries and conquistadors interpreted native myths and art as evidence of past visits to the American continent by (failed) Christian preachers or the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, which influenced Literature/TheBookOfMormon and are still referenced in pseudohistory. And in 1552, Francisco López de Gómara became [[OlderThanTheyThink the first of many authors]] to relate Native Americans with {{Atlantis}}, pointing that the [[UsefulNotes/PrecolumbianCivilizations Nahuatl]] word for "water" is ''atl''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Migration Period (5th-8th centuries)]]
* The very concept of the Fall of Rome as a singular event in 476 AD, a big part of the premise in the original ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'', is discredited and really came about because Renaissance and Enlightenment historians in Western Europe wanted to make a clear line between the glory of Rome and themselves. This meant dismissing or outright ignoring the UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire, which remained the dominant superpower in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa until the 7th century (and may well have remained so, if [[OutsideContextProblem the rise of Islam]] had not coincided with the end of over 20 years of total war with Persia that left the Empire exhausted), held Rome until the mid 8th century, and large portions of Italy well into the 11th century. After that, it remained a regional power until the 4th Crusade of 1204 (and even then, it stuck around in diminished form until finally being conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453). It also remained a magnet for scholars, traders, and adventurers, being at the Western end of the Silk Road and the Varangian trade route from the Baltic. It wasn't even called Byzantine until the 16th century, when it was dubbed as such to separate it from Rome, in a long tradition that previously had referred to it as 'the Empire of the Greeks', among other things. The so-called Byzantines very much considered themselves to be 'Romaioi', and were called that by their eastern neighbors -- the Ottomans even kept the title of Roman Emperor as 'Kayser-i-Rum', dubbing their Christian subjects 'Romans', into the 20th century. When discussed, it was at best dismissed as the effeminate and corrupt remnant of the noble and macho Roman Empire, save for honorable mention of 6th century titans like Justinian and Belisarius. Some historians have directly blamed Edward Gibbon's disinterest for the Byzantine Empire in his ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', despite including it all the way to 1453, for the lack of attention given to it by Western researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries.
** The roots of this are complicated, but have to do with the Iconoclasm controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries. The idea was that the very iconoclastic Muslims were God's punishment on the Byzantines for violating the commandment on worshiping graven images, leading to about a century and half of wrangling over the status of icons (eventually the pro-icon party won out). At one point in the late 8th century, the Empress Irene took the throne, and the Pope -- who opposed her and had been trying to wrangle more independence for Rome -- took it as an excuse to declare the position of Roman Emperor vacant and crown UsefulNotes/{{Charlemagne}}. He didn't take it overly seriously, but later successors did. The Byzantines, meanwhile, didn't have too much problem with the idea of a foreigner being considered Emperor of their own people (i.e. the Franks), but had a big problem with someone calling themselves Roman Emperor, as it implied a claim to Constantinople itself. Add in geopolitical squabbling over Italy, some of the more ambitious Sicilian Normans trying to conquer the Empire, and a growing rivalry with Venice and you have a recipe for trouble. The Crusades absolutely did not help, with plenty of pre-existing xenophobia on both sides, culminating with the sack and occupation of Constantinople in 1204, until TheRemnant Empire of Nicaea took it back in 1261. However, at the same time, the West and East maintained active diplomatic relationships, traded royal brides, and the Pope was horrified by the sack of Constantinople, excommunicating the entire Crusade on the spot -- though the sheer amount of cash later won him over.
** Even a common "excuse" for using the term "Dark Ages" nowadays (i.e. that it is wrong for the whole Middle Ages, but somewhat accurate for the first centuries after the Fall of Rome, when political disruption affected record-keeping negatively, and there is a dearth of this period's historical knowledge as a result (thus the name "Dark Ages" is not about diminished quality of life, but current knowledge) ...is really [[CreatorsCultureCarryover only valid]] for the British Isles, which were thrown into chaos after the legions left in 410. In Gaul, Spain, Italy, Tunisia, not to mention the Byzantine Empire, Roman institutions survived (just with Germanic kings replacing Roman governors in the first four), and we have a generally solid idea of what was going on there in this time. We lose the picture in more faraway areas outside of Roman civilization like northwest Africa and central, northern, and eastern Europe, but this is because we only had second-hand Roman narratives about them in the first place.
** Despite common Western interpretations later on, the division of the Roman Empire wasn't seen as the division of a ''state'' when it happened, but the division of its ''government'', and the deposition of Romulus Augustus by Odoacer wasn't considered a cataclysm, or a notable event at all (unlike how it's shown in ''Literature/TheLastLegion''). Romulus had himself usurped the previous emperor, Julius Nepos, the year before. Odoacer named himself King of Italy but also claimed Nepos as his superior (who was still ruling TheRemnant in Dalmatia), and after Nepos's murder he pledged himself to the emperor Zeno in Constantinople, thus reuniting the Roman government under him (if only on paper). The common people of the West continued to call themselves Roman and follow Roman law, which was different from the laws of the Germanic kings and peoples. These different law codes were unified and the ethnic lines blurred as the kings asserted independence from Constantinople over the 6th century.
* The supposed fall of Western culture was once thought in part to have been caused by a series of massive tribal migrations collectively known as the "Völkerwanderung". Specific examples included the migrations of the Saxons, Angles and Jutes to England; the Lombards into Italy; the Vandals and Visigoths into Spain; and the Franks into northern France. The belief was that these tribal migrations displaced the original inhabitants of these areas, sending them into less hospitable areas (such as the "Celtic fringe" of the British Isles) and disrupting cultural progress. But DNA comparisons of ancient and modern peoples show very little evidence that the Völkerwanderung ever occurred; modern Englishmen, for instance, are far more closely related to ancient Britons (and to modern Scots, Irish, and Welshmen) than they are to modern Saxons. This DNA evidence is so new that historians are still grappling with the implications, but one possibility is that the Völkerwanderung only displaced the elite -- about 0.5% of the population in most areas -- leaving the bulk of the population unaffected except by cultural changes.
** England is the unusual case in this. Genetics vary a lot based on region; Midlanders cluster closest to Northwestern Europeans (being about equidistant with them and Insular Celts), while people in western and northern England are virtually identical to their Celtic neighbors. Modern consensus is that there was a significant migration of Anglo-Saxons to Britain, but still not to the extent once believed: a minority of 10-25% of the total population assimilated the native Britons, rather than the old theory that they massacred and drove out all of the natives. ''Film/KingArthur'' references the debunked theory in its portrayal of Cerdic as ANaziByAnyOtherName that doesn't want Saxon and Briton blood to mix.
** Some of those erroneous assumptions are due to upper-class historians of previous eras [[WriteWhatYouKnow preferring to write about elites]], often treated as identical to the peoples they led. Also, there seems to be a difficulty distinguishing between armies and peoples during the 5th and 6th century. Also also sometimes the linguistic evidence leads one astray -- while the Spanish language has little to no Germanic influence (indicating a quickly assimilated small elite) French has much more "Frankish" loanwords, and the decidedly Germanic Old English all but replaced the previous Celtic (and Romance-British) languages -- so absent genetic evidence and with chroniclers talking of "utter defeats" and "cataclysms", it is understandable they thought Anglo-Saxons all but replaced the prior Celtic population.
* The idea that the Slavs descended from Scythian and Sarmatian peoples is now generally considered pseudohistory. There is some evidence of cultural cross-pollination, but they probably weren't directly related. It is generally believed that Scythians were to various degrees displaced and/or assimilated by Turkic migrations during the Late antiquity. This remains a highly controversial topic however, as both Russian and Turkic nationalists have an interest in hijacking Scythian historiography to claim them as ancestors.
* One idea that gained significant traction in the 19th century is the notion that there was a "Celtic Church" in the early medieval British Isles separate from the "Latin Church" of Continental Europe. Nowadays, the notion that Celtic Christianity was inherently distinct from the Catholic Church has been rejected by mainstream scholars due to lack of evidence; while Christians in the Celtic world developed unique traditions and practices not seen in Christendom as a whole, they respected the authority of Rome and the Papacy as much as any other region. In any case, the histories of the Irish, Welsh, Scots, Breton, Cornish, and Manx Churches diverge significantly after the 8th century, so even if they did reject the Holy See's authority, there wouldn't have been a unified Celtic Church.
* In ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'', [[UsefulNotes/{{Islam}} Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali]] are shown in the Eighth circle of Hell for promoting Schism. This is a reference to the then new belief that Islam was not a Pagan religion (as previously assumed and shown in the ''Literature/ChansonDeRoland'', for instance) but a heretical offshoot of Christianity that began when a monk variously named Simon Magus, Nicholas, or Sergius led Muhammad astray. Today we know that Muhammad never was a Christian. Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Agent of Byzantium'' series make an AllohistoricalAllusion to the legend in having Muhammad become a Christian (and eventually, the Saint who christianized Arabia) as the point of departure with our timeline.
* The survival of Greco-Roman works in the Muslim World while they were lost in Christian Europe was though to have been because of conscious preservation by the Muslims (and/or direct persecution by the Christians), but that is seen now as a myth. For climatic reasons, papyrus documents survived better in the countries the Muslims conquered. There were also Christians and Jews in those areas who preserved ancient works, but the Muslims rulers got the credit. Most lost books and plays weren't destroyed deliberately, they just weren't copied, and rotted away.
* Before the late 20th century, it was unchallenged that Rodrigo (Roderic) was the last king of the Visigoths in Spain, that he was legitimately [[ElectiveMonarchy elected]] in 710 after the natural death of the previous king, Witiza, and that "Witiza's children" were sore losers who had invited the Muslims to invade in 711 and [[LesCollaborateurs collaborated]] out of spite or naivety. However...
** Sources closer to Roderic's time were uncovered, claiming that he had been "elected by the Senate", but "in a revolt", and that he had "conquered the Palace" after a period in exile (location unknown, but could very well have been Ceuta, where some Andalusian stories after the conquest, long considered legendary, had placed him).
** Revised chronologies also showed that Cixilo, the presumed mother of Witiza, had only married his father Egica some 25-30 years before Witiza's death. So either Witiza was born from an undocumented first marriage of Egica, or he was a young man when he died, not old as assumed. If the latter, Witiza's children (had he any), would have been literal children in 711, and young ones; several "sons of Witiza" recorded as collaborators might have been other relatives of his, or just his partidaries. Sure, it is still possible that Witiza died of natural causes since sources don't say either way, and that Roderic just took advantage of it to seize power, but a simpler explanation is that Roderic murdered Witiza.
** Finally, archaeology revealed that while Roderic was minting coins in the capital, some Achila II was doing his own in the northeastern part of the kingdom. Was Achila one of Witiza's children? A third claimant to the crown, also swept aside by the Muslim invasion? Either way, it shows Roderic wasn't even in control of the whole kingdom when he went down fighting the Muslims. A 12th century list of Visigothic kings was also found in France, which does not include Roderic (unlike lists made in Spain) but has Achila II reigning in 710-713, followed by a last one called Ardo in 713-720. The end of Ardo's reign coincides with the Muslims conquering the last Visigothic province (Septimania, in what is now southern France) nine years after Roderic's death at Guadalete.
* [[UsefulNotes/{{Spain}} Spaniards]] (everybody forgets the [[UsefulNotes/{{Portugal}} Portuguese]]) have long been assumed to have considerable non-European ancestry as a result of the Muslim conquest. Martin Luther thought this made them [[InTheBlood naturally wicked]], UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler was [[OutOfCharacterMoment surprisingly cool with it]], Creator/JorgeLuisBorges derided antisemitism as [[BoomerangBigot self-hating]], and so on. In fiction, it is used to justify instances of LatinoIsBrown and BlackVikings (Sir Bryant in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfPrinceValiant'', Tariq in ''Film/GeorgeAndTheDragon'', Lina and Oviedo in ''Series/TheSpanishPrincess'', General Alaman in ''Series/TheMusketeers''), or portraying historical characters as [[PhenotypeStereotype much darker]] than we know they were, even when they had recent non-Iberian ancestry (Isabella Clara Eugenia in ''Literature/RuledBritannia'', Queen Isabella in ''The Spanish Princess''). Fans have used it to defend casting Creator/AntonioBanderas as Ahmad ibn Fadlan in ''Film/TheThirteenthWarrior''. Yet, studies have shown repeatedly that Iberian genetics are typical of westernmost Europe and largely unchanged since the Paleolithic, with "Middle Eastern" genes being less common than in Italy or the Balkans. "North African" genes are more common (though still negligible), but they cluster to the west of the Peninsula, not south, and may indicate that Medieval diffusion from North Africa was a drop compared to Atlantic coastal movement going back to Megalitism and continued through the Punic and Roman periods. This makes sense because there was no mass die-off and policy of settlement after the Muslim conquest like there was in the Americas (and if anything, there ''was'' a policy from the Late Middle Ages to displace the Muslims for Christian colonists, sometimes from beyond the Pyrenees). Most "Moors" were descendants of local converts and the ones who came from abroad were few and overhelmingly male, dilluting themselves in the majority.
* The Battle of Talas, where the Tang dynasty was defeated by the Abbasid Caliphate and the Tibetan Empire, was once said to have been a crucially important event that ended Chinese hegemony over Central Asia and ensured Islam became the dominant religion there. While the battle may have been significant in other ways (many sources claim it indirectly resulted in papermaking technology being introduced to the Islamic world), scholarship has disputed this particular claim. It's now believed that the diminished Tang influence afterwards had more to do with the collapse of the Western Turkic Khaganate and the devastation of the An Lushan rebellion than the battle itself. Moreover, some evidence suggests that Tang power in Central Asia reached its zenith by 755, four years after the battle and the year the rebellion broke out. While the Tang's Karluk allies did defect to the Abbasid-Tibetan forces, the Karluks as a whole didn't turn against the Chinese. Indeed, the Karluk Yabghu polity continued its alliance with China. Other religions continued to play major roles in Central Asia for some time after the battle: The Qara Khitai Empire, for example, had a population that largely followed the traditional Khitan religion, Buddhism, and Nestorian Christianity; even today, the Khitan people's modern day descendants, the Daur, are mostly Buddhist and Shamanist, with Muslims being only a minority.
* The traditional view of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, influenced by the ''Chanson de Roland'', of a joint Basque-Muslim ambush of Charlemagne's rearguard. A 2018 review of the area's geography and Carolingian sources suggested that the army's core was attacked instead (probably after being chased from Pamplona) and the Franks fought their way through 14 kilometers of pass with great losses, beginning at Errozabal plain (later morphed into Roncevaux; ''not'' the town of Roncevaux, founded later and named after the battle). Roland died, but also the Mayor of the Palace Eggihard, Royal Paladin Anselm, and many other paladins that the chronicler (Einhard) does not name because he considers their deaths common knowledge. This would only have happened if Charlemagne's own life was in danger and they died protecting him, which is consistent with Charlemagne covering 27 km in one day when the normal speed of his army was around 8.5. Finally, there is no mention of Muslims at the battle, which makes more sense for the area and the time; in fact, contemporary Muslims do not mention the battle at all. It seems the Franks hid Charlemagne's presence in the defeat and flight, and the ''Chanson'' later misrepresented the campaign as a Crusade and the battle as a Muslim attack on the rearguard, in order to include an ExternalRetcon ending where Charlemagne learns of Roland's death and returns to bury the fallen and conquer Spain.
** The official synopsis of ''Film/{{Irati}}'' says that an alliance of "Basques and Muslims" ambushes Charlemagne at Roncevaux, but in the film the Muslims are just ambassadors watching from afar and the Basques do all the fighting. The movie then continues by referencing the (historical) AltarDiplomacy between the Basque kings of Pamplona and the Muslim Banu Qasi of the Ebro valley, but this ends being so irrelevant to the plot that you will question why it was included at all (moreso because it's absent from the original comic).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Viking Age (9th-10th centuries)]]
* Real [[UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge Vikings]] did not have [[HornyVikings horned helmets]]. The idea that they did results from early archaeologists mixing together scattered evidence from several time periods, when not mistaking drinking horns for helmet ornaments. Actual examples of horned helmets are much older and appear to be ceremonial. Vikings were professional raiders, and their actual gear was BoringButPractical: they'd know not to wear something so cumbersome as a horned helmet into battle; once an opponent got past the intimidation factor, those horns would be little more than handles to grab onto. The novel ''Film/PopeJoan'' included horned helmets in its first edition; after receiving reader complaints, Donna Woolfolk Cross listed the evidence in the Author's Note before concluding that the complainers were most likely right, and wrote the horns out of later editions (though not without lamenting the loss of the [[RuleOfCool cool imagery]]).
* Reports of the Classic Maya collapse between the 8th and 9th centuries are now known to have been exaggerated. Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse in any meaningful way; rather, it shifted from the Southern Lowlands to the Northern Yucatán, though admittedly with very different artistic and architectural styles. Because of this, a number of scholars have gone on record opposing the use of the word "collapse" to describe this event.
* In the 19th century, a theory emerged that most Ashkenazi Jews descended from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars Khazars]], a [[UsefulNotes/TurkicPeoples Turkic people]] that inhabited the Pontic-Caspian steppe and apparently converted to Judaism in the 8th or 9th century. According to this, they abandoned their homeland during the Mongol invasions and fled to Central and Eastern Europe, becoming the Ashkenazim [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial except]] for the Jews of Germany, who were a minority of actual Israelite stock. It also postulated that the Yiddish language evolved from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Gothic Crimean Gothic]] rather than German. Most scholars today view this with skepticism, due to the lack of any evident link between Khazars and Ashkenazim:
** For one, the conversion of Khazars to Judaism itself is poorly understood, and it's impossible from the current body of evidence to determine if it was a mass conversion or only the elite took part in it (which is more plausible).
** Yiddish's characteristics, grammar and vocabulary are undoubtedly of High German origin, making any attempts at connecting it to other Germanic languages [[OccamsRazor just complicating things]]. Some suggest that Khazar Jews learned Yiddish from German Jews, but again, it's just complicating things.
** Genetic studies failed to show connections between modern Ashkenazi Jews and steppe Turkic populations. Ashkenazim form a genetic cluster with Southern Italians and Greeks, suggesting that they intermixed with Southern European populations before migrating to Germany, then Eastern Europe. [[CaptainObvious It makes sense when you look at a map and see what's between Central Europe and the Near East]].
** Descendants of the Khazars are believed to be Turkic peoples still inhabiting the North Caucasus, such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumyks Kumyks]], who are Muslim. There are also Turkic-speaking Jews in Crimea, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymchaks Krymchaks]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Karaites Crimean Karaites]], but consensus suggests not even they originated from converted Khazars (though there could have been intermixing with them).
** Annoyingly, this theory has been hijacked by fringe anti-Semites and [[ConspiracyTheorist conspiracy theorists]] who believe Khazars converted to Judaism to infiltrate and destroy European peoples, that Ashkenazi Jews are actually Khazars and "fake Jews" or "impostors" whose current claim in Palestine is illegitimate, that the "Khazarian Mafia" leads a worldwide conspiracy... [[Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion you get the rest]].
* Pope Joan was widely accepted as real in TheLateMiddleAges, but was exposed as a legend by historians in the 16th century already and denounced by the Catholic Church in 1601. Records indicate that she couldn't possibly have reigned in the mid-850s as claimed and no contemporary sources make any mention of [[SweetPollyOliver a Pope who turned out to be female]], not even ones from enemies of the Papacy like the Holy Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire. Photios I, who became Patriarch of Constantinople in 858 and was deposed by Pope Nicholas I in 863, vehemently asserted his own authority over Rome's and would have made the most of any scandal regarding the Papacy; yet he never once brings up the story in his voluminous writings, even saying at one point "Leo [IV] and Benedict [III], successively great priests of the Roman Church", without a hint of Joan ruling between them. The first written mentions of Joan are from the 13th century, and are basically Dominican priests' cautionary tales for women to StayInTheKitchen - a fierce contrast to the anti-clerical (e.g. Emmanuel Rhoides's ''The Papess Joanne'') or feminist spins (''Pope Joan'') that modern portrayals give to the story.
** In ''Pope Joan'', Cross attributes Joan's "[[{{unperson}} erasure from History]]" to the Vatican archivist Anastasius Bibliothecarius, who was her supposed contemporary and the author of the ''Liber Pontificalis'' ("Book of the Popes"). However, though Anastasius was attributed most biographies in the book for centuries, modern scholarship attributes him only two, both after Joan's supposed pontificate.
* The Magyars were once thought to be closely related to the Scythians or the Huns. Linguistic analysis in the 19th century disproved this (again, some cultural cross-pollination can't be ruled out given the dynamics of the Eurasian steppes), but the idea of a Hunnic connection has continued to exert influence on Hungarian nationalism.
* ''Literature/TheVinlandSagas'' claim that Erik the Red deliberately gave Greenland a [[NonIndicativeName misleading name]] to attract settlers from Norway and Iceland. This was accepted without much thought until the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period Medieval Warm Period]] was identified in the late 20th century, which made some wonder if this was a just-so story, and Greenland was green enough when Erik settled in 985 AD, some 300 years before the ''Sagas'' were written.[[note]]This doesn't mean that the whole of Greenland was iceless at any point in history, as sometimes misreported, but that the area near Erik's estate in Brattahlid was (in fact the Greenlandic ice sheet already started forming 18 million years ago). The same area turns green in the summer today and is home to Greenland's only forest and most of its farms. Historical accounts also speak of devastating winters and famine in Greenland even during the Medieval Warm Period, which was about one degree colder than the present global average, despite its name.[[/note]]
* The Sadlermiut (a now-extinct circumpolar people who lived on a few islands in Hudson Bay) were once thought to be the last remnants of the Dorset culture, due to their technology and culture being different from those of the mainland Inuit. Research published in 2015, however, proved that they were actually descended from the proto-Inuit Thule people. Now it's believed that their differences are a product of isolation, though in the absence of any evidence of genetic admixture, it remains a mystery how they acquired Dorset technological and cultural features.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries)]]
* It is now believed that there wasn't really a specific people known as the Kurds until the High Middle Ages, the first unambiguous evidence of Kurdish ethnic identity being from the 11th century. Prior usage of "Kurd" was more likely a social term to designate northwestern Iranian nomads, partially as a means of distinguishing them from the Persians.
* The "Thirisadai", a claimed massive battleship class of the southern Indian Chola dynasty, appears in the 2018 novel ''The Conqueror'' and is a unique ship of the Dravidian civilization in the 2022 ''Dynasties of India'' DLC of ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresII''. It was [[https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/ucxaey/the_thirisadai_an_ahistorical_age_of_empires_ii/ later exposed]] that both had been based on an extensively vandalized Website/{{Wikipedia}} article on the Chola Navy, with several madeup ship classes, fake sources, and even a photograph fraudulently identified as a Chola anchor, but that actually belonged to a ship sunk during the Mongol invasion of Japan. Most fake info was written in 2008 and was not challenged due to the obscurity of the subject. By the time it was exposed, the article's creator had not edited Wikipedia in several years.
* UsefulNotes/ElCidCampeador:
** Most things people may remember -- that he killed his future father-in-law in a tourney, witnessed Sancho II's murder, forced Alfonso VI to swear he was not involved in his brother's death at St. Gadea's church, [[ElCidPloy won a battle while dead]] -- are [[HistoricalHeroUpgrade just literary creation]], and have always been known to be. Still, historians were willing to believe that the rivalry between the Castilian El Cid and the old Leonese nobility in the ''Literature/CantarDelMioCid'' had a basis in El Cid being, or descending from, a SelfMadeMan who had [[RagsToRiches gained noblehood]] through military service. However, genealogical and documentary research in the 21st century showed that he descended from Leonese nobility on both sides of his family (his ancestors included the Flaínez, which were of Gothic origin and among the oldest lineages in the kingdom). He may have been born in Castile as per tradition, or not, and just accompanied Sancho there when he was given it by his father. The c. 1200 ''Cantar'' may have introduced or exaggerated a Castilian-Leonese conflict because it was written when Castile and Leon were separate kingdoms with border disputes and opposing views on their relations with the Almohads, while in El Cid's time (c. 1045-1099) there was almost no difference between the two.
** The name "El Cid" itself. Nowadays, and for centuries used exclusively for Rodrigo Díaz. Pop history will always note that it derives from the African Arabic word ''Sidi'' (a corruption of the Arabian ''Sayyid'', "Lord"), have him receiving it as a title from either his Muslim soldiers or employers (as in ''Film/ElCid'' and ''Age of Empires II''), and highlight how strange it is for a KnightInShiningArmor of the Crusader era. However, contemporary documents show that "cid" was just a common word for war leader in 11th-century Spain, used by Christians and Muslims alike, and that it continued to be used as a courtesy until the 14th. The historical Rodrigo was known and signed as ''El Campeador'' ("Master of the Field"), which was an actual accomplishment. He went from El cid (one of many), to El Cid Campeador (the one and only), to El Cid (the one, after the common meaning of "cid" was [[LostCommonKnowledge forgotten]]). Christians serving Muslim kings and leading Muslim troops as PrivateMilitaryContractors, even against other Christians, wasn't uncommon in the 11th century either. The Muslim south was richer but militarily weak after the fragmentation of the Caliphate of Cordoba (though there are examples from the time of the Caliphate as well), and outsourcing was [[LoopholeAbuse convenient]] to get around the taboo of fighting other Muslims. What made Rodrigo exceptional was that he was [[YouCantGoHomeAgain exiled beforehand]], [[TheStrategist won every battle he fought]], and wound up as [[MightyWhitey de-facto King of his own Muslim state]].
** ''Series/ElCid2020'' refrains from showing Rodrigo go by "El Cid" and instead has other characters use "El Campeador" to talk about him, which he is shown as gaining for his role in the Battle of Graus (1063). Ironically, this could also qualify as Dated History, as some historians believe he might have been too young to have fought in that battle, and general consensus is that he gained the title later on. The first season is also big on showing Rodrigo as a [[YoungFutureFamousPeople young nobody climbing his way up]], though the second season [[AuthorsSavingThrow mentions that he has noble ancestry.]]
** On the opposite end, the Siege of Alcocer from the ''Cantar'' was deemed an invention due to the implausibility of El Cid taking a detour from his ride between Burgos and Zaragoza to fight the king of Valencia in southern Guadalajara, an area that was ruled by Toledo at the time. In the 21st century it was discovered that there was another Alcocer just southwest of Zaragoza, and sure enough, the archaeological remains of the castle and El Cid's siege camp were found. Same almost happened to Sancho's murder at the siege of Zamora; surviving chronicles don't say how he died, and his death at the hands of Vellido Dolfos was considered legendary, along with Dolfos himself. However a document was found showing that a 'Vellit Adulfiz' was living in Zamora in 1057, which naturally makes people wonder.
* Though Crusader forces [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty resorting to cannibalism out of desperation]] during the Siege of Ma'arra is widely accepted, the idea that they tortured and murdered captive Muslims to eat them rather than sticking to eating people who were already dead is now in dispute. Examination of Muslim sources shows no mention of the Crusaders killing people to eat them, something the Muslims would have capitalized on to demonize their enemies.
* Despite [[GothicHorror modern associations with the word]], [[ThisIndexIsNotAnExample Gothic architecture actually wasn't all that dark]]; churches used to be painted bright colors, and there was plenty of light let in by typically Gothic pointed, tall, stained glass windows. After centuries, the paint faded away, everything was covered in grime and dust, and the colors were lost. Emulators in later centuries made buildings that looked like the old churches ended up looking, with all the gloominess and intimidation that entails, despite the fact that they didn't look like that originally. Modern tourists sometimes complain after a cathedral gets its windows washed because suddenly the interior is "[[TheCoconutEffect too bright]]".
** In terms of art history, the idea that the Renaissance was an improvement over Gothic art became this in the 19th century, when Medievalism and folklore became a topic of interest, and many sought to restore and preserve Europe's Medieval past. Art historian E. H. Gombrich argued that art as a profession flowered to a greater degree in the pre-Renaissance age when artists were part of guilds, patronized and subsidized by the Church than they were in the post-Renaissance age, where they had to struggle in the marketplace to sell their paintings for a living and barely struggled over the poverty line. While there were some who were able to avoid this through attracting wealthy patrons (like Michelangelo) or their own business savvy (like Albrecht Dürer), artists generally had less financial security in the Renaissance than they did in the Medieval era.
** The very name "Gothic" is a misnomer maintained out of [[GrandfatherClause force of habit]]. It is rooted on Renaissance writers deriding Late Medieval architecture as "the ways of the Goths" (''maniera dei Goti'') and proposing a return to Roman architecture, unaware (willingly or unwillingly) that the Goths were gone for centuries before "Gothic" architecture appeared, and that the actual period of Gothic rule in Italy was one of stability and continuation of Roman architecture (Justinian's wars, plague, and the Lombards should be the ones blamed for its end).
* Traditionally, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Swedish_Crusade First Swedish Crusade]] of the 1150s was seen as the first attempt by Sweden and the Catholic Church to convert pagan Finns to Christianity. However, not only is it now accepted that the Christianization of southwestern Finland began in the 10th century, whether this supposed crusade even ''happened'' is now a subject of debate.
* Matilda of Flanders, wife of [[UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfNormandy William the Conqueror]], was for a long time believed to have been incredibly short, around 4 feet, 2 inches tall. The first estimation was calculated in the early 19th century but her tomb had been ransacked centuries before leaving some of her bones missing. However a more modern scientific study was undertaken in the late 1950s that estimated her height around 5”0 which was average for a woman of her time. Modern scientists also don’t believe it would be plausible that a woman who was as short as she was originally thought to be could have given birth to at least ten children like Matilda did.
* Rosamund Clifford, a [[TheMistress mistress]] of [[UsefulNotes/HenryTheSecond Henry II]] of England, had some longstanding myths about her, such as that she was the mother of Henry's illegitimate son Geoffrey Plantagenet (it's now believed that he was born before Henry met Rosamund, and his mother was a woman named Ykenai), and that she was [[MurderTheHypotenuse murdered]] by Henry's jealous wife UsefulNotes/EleanorOfAquitaine (in reality, she probably died of an illness; Eleanor was under house arrest at the time Rosamund died).
* ''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose'' was titled after a quote from Bernard of Cluny, ''Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus'' ("Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names"), which is also the last line in the book. It was later discovered that this was a transcription error; Cluny's original read "Yesterday's ''[[LookOnMyWorksYeMightyAndDespair Rome]]'' endures in its name..."
* The view popularized by Sir Creator/WalterScott's ''Literature/{{Ivanhoe}}'' of plucky "Saxon" commoners still resisting their "Norman" overlords a century or two after the conquest has been shown to be hogwash -- but that doesn't stop it showing up in many subsequent Myth/RobinHood adaptations, where the Sheriff's soldiers are referred to as Normans to make it OK for Robin to kill them. In the Robin Hood story, the Merry Men also long for "[[UsefulNotes/RichardTheLionheart Good King Richard]]" to return and oust the evil Norman usurper, [[UsefulNotes/KingJohnOfEngland John]]. But Richard was John's brother, so a Norman, as well. Also it's often forgotten in the stories that although John ''did'' take control of England when Richard was held prisoner in Austria, he also succeeded him as king after his death (not without a rebellion, though it was put down).
** This idea either dates to the UsefulNotes/HundredYearsWar, when Henry V's propagandists started to play up an imaginary antagonism with France (despite Henry's whole claim in the war being based on him being technically a member of the French royal family), or to the Reformation, when it was even more useful to play up a nationalist narrative. Such was the strength of the legend that people were referencing the "Norman yoke" which had supposedly derailed English freedoms as justifications for rebellion in the 17th century. There was no sense of Norman and non-Norman by then, but it was a handy reason to demand more rights. Scott was clearly on a well-trodden path when he penned his work.
** The fact that the Norman/Saxon distinction eventually evaporated as they blended together doesn't mean that the "Norman yoke" of, say, William the Conqueror didn't exist or that he didn't persecute the Saxon aristocracy and their allies during the "Harrying of the North" in 1069-1070. But on the other hand, he and the Normans did introduce liberties and achievements, such as [[SlaveLiberation the end of Saxon slavery]] and a reduction of serfdom. Likewise, the Norman-Plantagenet King Henry II would introduce UsefulNotes/TheCommonLaw.
* Multiple beliefs about the history of civilization on Easter Island once taken for granted as true have been seriously challenged.
** The Rapa Nui people were once generally thought to have arrived on Easter Island around 300 CE. However, archaeological evidence has cast doubt that they were there that early, with some suggesting arrival dates as late as 1200 CE.
** Since at least the Victorian era, it was assumed that the Rapa Nui cut down the island's trees to use the timber as scaffolding and rollers for the transportation of Moai, which resulted in environmental and civilizational collapse. As the environmental movement gained steam, it became frequently cited as a cautionary tale, a warning of what might happen on a larger scale if humanity didn't use natural resources responsibly. This made its way into fiction: one story beat in ''Film/RapaNui1994'' is the island's last tree being cut down to move yet another moai, and works with [[GreenAesop environmentalist themes]] would frequently mention it. Starting in TheNewTens, however, this once-predominant theory now has multiple question marks hanging over it.
*** Though experiments in the 1950s seemingly proved that it was possible for the Rapa Nui to have used timber to move the Moai, it's been pointed out that these experiments used the wood of eucalyptus trees, which never grew on Easter Island. Later experiments with palm trees similar to the ones that actually grew on the island found them unsuitable for the task due to their soft and spongy interiors. While it's not impossible that Easter Island's trees had different properties that made them more suited to moving heavy loads, or that the Rapa Nui devised some way of working around their limitations, OccamsRazor suggests that the trees weren't used for moving the moai after all.
*** When the Rapa Nui were asked how the moai moved to their spots, they would consistently answer that they walked. This was long assumed to be mere myth, or possibly some kind of joke, and since the Rapa Nui had long stopped making moai by the time of first contact with the outside world, there was nothing to contradict this perception for a long time. However, there is some evidence to suggest that these stories hold more truth than previously thought. Archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo proved that it was possible to "walk" a moai to its destination by using ropes to rock it back and forth. Using this method, it would have been possible to move a moai weighing 20 metric tons as much as 100 meters per day. Since this method uses very little wood, then assuming it really is how the Rapa Nui transported the moai, it's extremely unlikely that it would have necessitated the clear-cutting of the island's forests.
*** So what did cause Easter Island's deforestation? A new, competing theory has emerged that the forests were destroyed by a combination of slash-and-burn agriculture and introduced Polynesian rats eating seeds before they could grow. This new scholarship puts the entire ecocide theory of the Rapa Nui civilization's collapse into question. While the debate is far from settled, the traditional narrative is no longer taken for granted as the only plausible explanation as to what happened.
* While it was long rumored that there was a secret agreement between the Republic of Venice and the Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt to redirect the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople, this is no longer considered credible by historians.
* ''Historia de la provincia de Ciudad Real en cómic'' depicts the church of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calatrava_la_Nueva Calatrava la Nueva]] with a frontal staircase. Archaeological excavations later uncovered that the staircase was built sideways to free space.
* Traditionally, it was thought that the Mongols ceased their push into Central Europe and withdrew east in 1242 because they learned that Ögedei Khan had died and his commanders were obligated to return to Mongolia and help choose his successor. Due to the timing and distances involved, as well as the fact that the Ilkhanate's official histories make no mention of this, this is now deemed unlikely. Other explanations have been given more weight recently, such as unfavorable weather, unexpectedly stiff resistance, a Cuman rebellion, or just disinterest in continuing the campaign.
* The Islamic Golden Age was traditionally said to have come to a sudden end with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) Sack of Baghdad]] by Ilkhanate forces and their allies in 1258. However, re-examination of evidence led to a theory that the Golden Age was already on its way out by that time and the Mongols just caused it to end sooner and more violently than it otherwise might have. For example, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni_Revival Sunni Revival]] of the 11th and 12th centuries led to a series of institutional changes that resulted in Islamic scientific output declining until the Ottoman Empire breathed new life into it.
* ''Literature/TheTravelsOfMarcoPolo'' says that TheHashshashin drug their recruits with hashish, making them "see" a paradisical garden, then tell them that only their leader has the means to get them there again. This is now generally considered a myth.
** Marco Polo did not introduce pasta to Italy after eating it in China. While it is true that the first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the 13th or 14th century (i.e. his era), Italians had been eating similar dough products for centuries by the time he made his famous Asian travels (see ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracta_(dough) laganon]]'').
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Late Middle Ages (14th-15th centuries)]]
* It was believed that the Igneri, the original inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles, were conquered and displaced by the Kalinago. However, linguistic and archaeological evidence does not agree with a mass emigration and conquest, but a kind of cultural fusion between the two peoples.
* There was once a widely-held theory that the Māori displaced a pre-Māori population of nomadic hunter-gatherers when they arrived in New Zealand, and that the supposedly Melanesian Moriori of the Chatham Islands were the last remnant of this people. Some folklorists speculated that beings appearing in in Māori legends (such as the savage [[FrazettaMan Maero]]) were based on corrupted accounts of the supposed earlier inhabitants. Starting in the 1920s, however, studies showed that the Māori were the first humans to arrive in New Zealand, and that the Moriori were actually a Māori offshoot. While there are still [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-M%C4%81ori_settlement_of_New_Zealand_theories fringe theories]] about pre-Māori settlement of New Zealand, these are generally considered pseudohistory and rarely taken seriously.
* The Romani people in Europe were once thought to have originally come from Egypt; indeed, the common term "gypsy" is derived from "Egyptian". This is why the leader of Paris' Romani population in ''Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'' is referred to as the Duke of Egypt. However, genetic and linguistic research points to them descending from inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent.
* The plague:
** For centuries it was assumed that Europe's first introduction to plague (TheBlackDeath) was in 1348-1350, when roughly one-third of the population died. Nobody knows exactly when plague arrived in Europe for the first time, but later scholarship suggests that plague was behind many ancient epidemics, including the Plague of Justinian, the Plague of Athens, and the epidemic that affected Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep III.
** The 1348 plague was not exclusive to Europe either: By the time it arrived, it had already ravaged the Middle East and Asia, killing an estimated 25 million people in China alone. In the 21st century historians, linguists, and geneticists also found evidence that the Black Death had ravaged [[https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/2125 Sub-Saharian Africa]] to the point of causing the abandonment of several cities; the reason this wasn't known before was because nobody had bothered to look it up. So much for AlternateHistory works like ''Literature/TheYearsOfRiceAndSalt'' and ''[[Literature/CrosstimeTraffic In High Places]]'', where a worse Black Death results in Europe becoming depopulated and [[PersecutionFlip colonized by Africans and Asians]].
** Plague can infect people in three ways: through the lymph system ("bubonic plague"), through the lungs ("pneumonic plague"), and through the bloodstream ("septicemic plague"). Most of the descriptions handed down to us by Medieval doctors describe bubonic plague, so it was once thought that it was the most common form; many people even today think that "bubonic plague" is the correct name for the disease. But the main reason doctors described bubonic plague so often was because bubonic plague victims lived long enough for the doctor to arrive, unlike victims of pneumonic and septicemic plague who generally died within hours of the first symptoms. Meanwhile, evidence from the 20th century plague pandemic supports the idea that pneumonic plague is actually slightly more common than bubonic.
* There was a famous story that claimed the Biscayan privateer Martín Ruiz de Avendaño took shelter on the UsefulNotes/{{Canary Island|s}} of Lanzarote in 1377 and slept with the Guanche queen Fayna, fathering a daughter named Ico who later gave birth to the future king Guadarfia. It's now believed that this story is apocryphal due to the ages involved: Guadarfia was a grown man when he met French explorer Jean de Béthencourt in 1403, so Ico would've had to have given birth to him at an impossibly young age if he was the grandson of an affair that had only happened 26 years prior.
* For most of the 20th century, it was believed that the initial expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century was accomplished by attracting recruits to fight in the name of Islamic holy war against non-believers, due to later Ottoman writers characterizing their ancestors as ghazis. Starting in the 1980s, this idea came under attack, with many pointing out that the Ottomans didn't act the way one would expect zealous religious warriors to: they tolerated many heterodox and syncretic beliefs and practices, willingly recruited Byzantines into their ranks, and fought wars against other Muslims. It's now believed that the idea of early Ottomans being "holy warriors" was an exaggeration or outright myth promoted by later generations because it suited their political interests.
* Serbian claims about the Battle of Kosovo (such as the betrayal by Lazar's son-in-law Vuk Branković and the assassination of Sultan Murad by Miloš Obilić) were extraordinarily influential in the South Slavic world and generally accepted as fact for centuries. Nowadays, however, most historians acknowledge that surprisingly little is reliably known about the battle, with many claims about it arising decades or even centuries after it happened. There is no evidence of a betrayal by Branković (many say the legends confused Vuk with his son Đurađ, who refused to join Hungary's regent John Hunyadi in battle), it's not clear how Murad died, and the battle may not even have been a Serbian defeat at all! Not only that, but the Battle of Kosovo was not as decisive as portrayed in the myth, since the final downfall of the medieval Serbian state only happened 70 years later.
* It has been claimed in Serbian historiography that Albanian national hero Skanderbeg's great-grandfather was a Serbian noble who was granted possession of Kaninë Castle by Stefan Dušan. This reading is now known to be based on a mistaken translation by German historian Karl Hopf, but the claim still appears in Serbian nationalist circles.
* UsefulNotes/JoanOfArc was lionized in the Third French Republic as a symbol of the nation and the French people. Consequently, they turned her into a rival and victim of those opposed to the Republic -- the monarchy, aristocracy, clergy -- and diminished their own role in the fight against the English. This view (with his own anti-Medieval biases tacked on) was imported to the United States by Creator/MarkTwain's ''Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc''. The real Jehanne Darc was not a poor peasant, but the daughter of the Dean of Domremy, and could ride a horse before she met the Dauphin; she never decided strategies or fought in battle, but served as a standard-bearer and rallying point while the nobles led the army (part of her defense at her trial would be that she never killed a person, in battle or otherwise); and Charles VII ''really'' tried to take Paris (several times, in fact) instead of withholding resources to engineer Joan's defeat out of jealousy. As for Joan's trial, it was the work of the Bishop of Beauvais who was an English ally, so it is not surprising that his verdict was undone by the French King and the Pope [[AcquittedTooLate as soon as they could]]. She was also not burned as a witch. Her 'crime' was relapsed heresy, having to do not with her voices but with her cross-dressing; she promised she would never again do so, then her captors stole her skirt and replaced it with pants. In any case, her real crime was opposing the English, and she was reviled as [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade a witch and a whore]] in England for centuries because of it, as seen in [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare]]'s ''Theatre/HenryVI''.
* After a long time surrounded in mystery, in 2021 Machu Picchu was established to have been built around 1450 through carbon dating. In 2022, however, dating of other remains pushed inhabitation back to 1420 at least. The difference is not as trivial as it might seem: due to Machu Picchu's remote location, it could indicate that Pachacutec reigned and began the expansion of the Inca Empire a generation before he's traditionally believed to have done so.
* Until the late 20th century, it was part of the Greek school curriculum that education in the Greek language had been banned after the Ottoman conquest of Greece, and that Greek culture had survived because of an underground system called ''Krifo Scholio'' ("Secret School") which taught the language at night (best shown in Nikolaos Gyzis's 1885 painting ''Greek school in the time of slavery'', popularly known as ''The secret school''). Already in the early 20th century, several Greek historians denounced that neither the ban nor ''Krifo Scholio'' had existed; rather there were Greek schools operating openly through the Ottoman period and their organization was left to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, as most matters pertaining Greeks under Turkish rule were. ''Krifo Scholio'' was a myth created during the Greek War of Independence, but it was so intertwined with Greek nationalism that people wouldn't let it die for a hundred years (and rumor has it that it is still taught as fact in some schools, extra-officially).
* Henry IV of Castile was said to have a broken nose by the contemporary chronicler Alonso de Palencia. Surprisingly, when their tombs were opened in the 20th century, Henry was found to have a normal nose, and his father, John II, the broken one. It is unknown if this was an honest mistake or a deliberate manipulation because Palencia was a supporter of UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs and an enemy of Henry.
* While there's still some debate over UsefulNotes/RichardIII's overall character and culpability for certain actions (specifically [[TheFateOfThePrincesInTheTower the disappearance of his nephews]]), this trope is in play for Richard's appearance. As part of the HistoricalVillainUpgrade he received from Tudor historians and playwrights, Richard was depicted as a deformed hunchback. Later historians concluded that this was anti-Richard propaganda, and is dismissed as such in the "Sweet King Richard III" song of ''Series/HorribleHistories''. However, it was proven when his remains were found under a parking deck in 2012 that he did have moderate to severe scoliosis. His portrayal in ''Theatre/RichardIII'' complete with hunchback, withered arm and limp was more than just an exaggeration of his appearance -- had he been as Shakespeare wrote, he wouldn't have been capable of mounting the horse he offered to trade his kingdom for -- but the kernel of reality within the myth was there. The team at the University of Leicester who researched his remains concluded that it wasn’t quite so severe that he would be considered physically disabled by modern understanding but also believed that it was severe enough that were he alive today, he’d probably elect to have corrective surgery to improve his quality of life.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Not yet sorted]]
* Regarding UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus' landfall on UsefulNotes/TheAmericas:
** First of all, [[OlderThanTheyThink Columbus was not the first European to make such a landfall]].
*** The Vikings [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland beat him there]] by some five hundred years.
*** Adding another layer, pop history writers sometimes accuse hidebound academics of having clung to a Columbus-first paradigm until the past few years. That hasn't been the case for decades; it's pop history that's clinging to an outdated image of what academics believe.
*** Recent genetic and linguistic testing, particularly genetic tests on sweet potatoes, has lent considerable weight to the theory that the Polynesians also reached as far as the east coast of the Americas.
** The complete lack of anybody other than Native Americans--no, not even Vikings--living in the Americas when Columbus arrived didn't stop posterior racists from declaring that no Native Americans could have built the Mesoamerican pyramids or the Mississippian mounds. No, it must have been a "lost race". Even attributing them to "[[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Giant Jewish Toltec Vikings]]"[[note]]Turns out the Toltecs themselves were Native American, too...[[/note]] was considered more plausible than admitting that Native Americans built them. Such racist notions were finally discredited by 20th-century scientific archaeology. Fringe theorists still sometimes revive them, though, or turn to AncientAstronauts as an "updated" answer.
* More about Columbus:
** The concept of a FlatWorld is a DeadUnicornTrope. In Medieval times, people not only knew Earth was round[[note]]Well, those who gave it any thought at all, that is. Most people at the time were farmers, not geographers.[[/note]], they knew (and had known since the Hellenistic era) roughly how big it was[[note]]Greek polymath [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes Eratosthenes]], who lived in the ''3rd century BC'', calculated the Earth's circumference around 252,000 stadia, corresponding to 39,375 km. That's a mere ''1.4%'' less than the current estimate of 40,075 km[[/note]]. Columbus, however, either got it wrong or shaved a third of the established value off to make it a better sell. He underestimated the size of the globe and overestimated the size of Asia, so that the distance that he predicted between Europe and Asia was much shorter than in reality[[note]]he calculated the distance from Canary Islands to Japan to be around 4,400 km, when in reality it's around 22,000[[/note]]. That's why all those monarchs before Isabella refused to fund him: they were right and he was wrong. He and his sailors would have died en route or been forced to turn back if not for his big stroke of luck: an entirely unknown land mass at just about the distance from Europe that he predicted. What makes it worse is that he really should have known he was wrong. The very method ships used to navigate are not just based on the fact the world is round, but they also give really good estimates of how big the world is. Although in his defense they work best for latitude, not longitude, so maybe to him the world was cigar-shaped?\\\
If he was genuinely wrong, his reason for believing that the distance between Asia and Europe was a lot smaller than it actually is wasn't entirely unreasonable ([[EntertaininglyWrong though it was still wrong, technically]]). His theory was based on driftwood reaching the Canaries from the west, with a frequency that was far too common to be from as far away as Asia actually is. So while he was wrong about the size of Earth, he was right that driftwood washed ashore in the Canary Islands far too frequently to have come as far away as Asia is. He knew ''something'' was close enough to reach on a sailing voyage, he was just wrong in assuming it was Asia.\\\
The "he fudged the distance" theory is used in Creator/OrsonScottCard's novel ''Literature/PastwatchTheRedemptionOfChristopherColumbus'' and Alejo Carpentier's novel ''El Arpa y la Sombra''. The former describes Columbus desperately looking at ancient records to try to find "proof" that his size of Earth was the correct one. He is pretty obviously shown to be [[ConfirmationBias disregarding any piece of evidence to the contrary]]. Interestingly, the novel shows that by the time he brought his case before the Spanish royal court, his case was solid enough to rival the established proof, leaving the tie-breaker up to the Queen, whom he convinced by his sheer piety. Also, according to the novel, Columbus thought he was looking for China, not India, because [[spoiler:a hologram sent from the future [[GodGuise pretending to be God]] told him to]]. The latter proposes that Columbus knew of the Vikings' travels, so he knew he'd find new lands, and he used the wrong size on purpose to get financing for the expedition and return a hero for the discovery.
** People who want to strip Columbus of his usual heroic portrayal risk falling for the opposite fallacy and labeling him an idiot. In these cases, pointing and laughing at the "fact" that he confused the Caribbean with India and its inhabitants with Indians is common. In reality, however, Columbus didn't sail in search of a route to India, but ''The Indies'', which is how East Asia (China and the Spice Islands, i.e. Indonesia) was called in Europe at the time (hence why after America was confirmed as a new continent Indonesia was called the East Indies and the Caribbean the West Indies, which is the appellation that survives today). In fact, when Columbus first made landfall in the Bahamas he assumed he was on an island close (but not even in) to what Europeans called "Cipango" -- ''Japan''. A very honest mistake to make given the current European knowledge of Asian geography, since the Bahamas ''are'' at the same latitude as Taiwan and they don't even look that different from the Okinawa archipelago.
* The media [[FollowTheLeader following]] ''Literature/KingSolomonsMines'' that feature lost and ''always foreign'' civilizations in the mists of DarkestAfrica:
** These myths have their roots in the plain racist interpretation of Great Zimbabwe after its discovery by European explorers in the late 19th century, who stated that the place was "too advanced" to have been built by the "obviously primitive" black Africans. This view was debunked by archaeologists as early as 1905. When the hardline white minority regime came to power in Rhodesia, they promoted the myth of Great Zimbabwe as having been built by a "lost" white or Asian civilization to the extent that archaeologists excavating there had their work interfered with by the government who were keen to suppress anything which contradicted the official story, which persisted until white minority rule in Rhodesia came to an end... in ''1979''.\\\
Also, Great Zimbabwe wasn't really discovered in the late 19th century so much as ''re''discovered. The place had been visited and documented plenty by the Portuguese in the 16th century, when it wasn't abandoned, and there was even an unfortunate Englishman named Jonas Wright who traveled there during a civil war, in 1632, and was killed. Making Great Zimbabwe any mystery required a big deal of self-delusion from the beginning. It wasn't the only time this happened in the history of European exploration in Africa: James Bruce's account of his "discovery" of the Blue Nile's source spends a few lines trying to convince the reader that two Iberian Jesuits who had been there more than a hundred years earlier, Pedro Páez and Jerónimo Lobo, totally weren't, when not plain insulting them. Unfortunately for Bruce, not even his nation's historians agree with him anymore.
** The Benin Bronzes were apparently also the subject of crackpot "lost civilization" nonsense by European racists who refused to believe that they had been created by Africans.
** Ethiopia's famous monolithic churches were widely speculated to have been built by Arab, Egyptian, and Iranian Christians exiled to the Horn of Africa, even though the Ethiopians maintained the tradition of carving them out and haven't stopped doing so in the 21st century, let alone the 19th.
* Similarly to the above, the Mound Builders and other advanced civilizations in the Americas were later denied by Europeans as being Native American, a view which thrived in the 19th century. They ignored even the accounts from Spanish and French explorers who'd met the people there, or those who knew them, in previous centuries, instead positing that they were actually Europeans, Chinese, Phoenicians, Indians (from India), or Jews (the ten lost tribes of Israel-this theory was used in Literature/TheBookOfMormon for instance). Tropes like {{Precursors}} and AncientAstronauts are often recycled versions of these, just replacing Old Worlders with aliens.
** Critical to this was the still persistent myth of the "empty America", a.k.a. the stereotype that North America was [[InjunCountry wholly inhabited]] by small bands of nomadic, [[NobleSavage egalitarian]] hunter-gatherers until the Europeans arrived. This naturally tied into ideas of European innate superiority and how colonists were morally entitled to drive the natives away because they were incapable of making anything productive out of the land. We know now that the Midwest and the Southern US were instead occupied by highly populated and stratified agricultural societies from about 800 to 1600 A.D., and that these presumably collapsed as a result of epidemics and increased warfare brought (ironically) by the introduction of European horses, iron, gunpowder -- and the early European colonies' own demand for pelts and slaves. Thus, the nomadic plains tribes later encountered by colonists as they crossed the Appalachians were actually the [[NewerThanTheyThink recent]] few, ''Film/MadMax''-esque survivors of their collapsed civilization, rather than an example of how things had ''always'' been.
** Archaeologists are just starting to find evidence that the same happened in the Amazon, and that UsefulNotes/FranciscoDeOrellana wasn't exaggerating when he claimed to have seen large settlements while sailing along the course of the river (as he's been assumed for centuries).
* Much like the "empty America" myth, the idea that Siberia was underpopulated until its colonization by Russia is now considered discredited and outdated. While it did have a sparse population for such a large territory, it wasn't as uninhabited as previously believed. Russian explorers, merchants, and missionaries (along with the [[UsefulNotes/{{Cossacks}} Cossack]] hunters and fighters often credited with colonizing Siberia) unintentionally introduced new diseases that devastated the indigenous Siberians; some populations may have declined as much as 80%.
* Lost continents such as {{Atlantis}} also stem from outdated ideas. It was originally thought that land masses such as this were needed to explain similar plants and animals on multiple continents, with the lost ones between acting as bridges. Cultural similarities were also claimed between Egyptian and Mayan people among others, having a common descent from the Atlanteans.[[note]]In particular, the fact that both cultures built large pyramids was claimed to be evidence of them being linked. Never mind that when building entirely with stone, pyramids are the ''only'' viable design that can be built as tall as the largest Egyptian and Mayan monuments.[[/note]] The former were debunked by the discovery of continental drift, with the latter going as well after more knowledge from these cultures was found, with no evidence to show they had a common origin along with distinct differences, or debunking most claimed similarities (with the ones that did exist now being seen as mere coincidence). However, by then it had been taken up by occult groups and is still thriving among fringe pseudo-history theorists.
[[/folder]]

!!Early Modern Age
[[folder:General]]
* UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition:
** Thanks to the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_(Spain) Black Legend]], the Spanish Inquisition is seen as one and the same with generic Medieval Church tropes above, to the point of assuming that inquisitions were unique or original to Spain (both ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'' and ''[[Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresIII III]]'' include "Inquisition" as a Spanish unique technology), guaranteeing that if an inquisitor shows up he will have a Spanish ([[SmallReferencePools Castilian]]) name even if he's not (''Series/{{Inquisitio}}''), or that the most SinisterMinister in a work with clerics from different countries will be Spanish even if it's set before the Spanish Inquisition existed (''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose''). In reality, the first inquisition was created in 1184 in France; it was established, but inactive in Aragon and Navarre in the 13th century and Portugal in the 14th, but Castile resisted Papal requests to follow until the Spanish Inquisition was created in 1480. Thus the Spanish Inquisition was [[NewerThanTheyThink largely a Modern Age phenomenon, not Medieval]], and unusual in that it was under control of the Spanish monarchy rather than the Papacy (contrary to ''Literature/{{Candide}}'''s portrayal as the real power behind the monarchy, based on old French travel literature and repeated on the ''Encyclopédie'' and ''Encyclopédie Méthodique''). Spanish inquisitors didn't even have to be ordained priests, though many were Dominicans. One [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#The_%22Enforcement_Across_Borders%22_hypothesis modern theory]] is that a prime motivation of the Inquisition was to keep the nobility and high clergy in check, be they from Castile, Aragon, Navarre, or other kingdoms (all having functioning borders and different courts otherwise until the 18th century, despite sharing monarch), as they were disproportionally subjected to investigation by the Inquisition compared to the common people, unlike what might appear from pop culture.
** In ''Series/TrueBlood'', the Spanish Inquisition are zealous [[TheWitchHunter witch hunters]] ([[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy and vampires]]), and their methods amount to [[BadHabits raping]], torturing, and burning [[MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial women]] to death ForTheEvulz. As previously said, the mass witch hunts of the Early Modern Period largely happened in central and northern Europe, while in Spain they can be counted with one hand; [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_witch_trials they were limited to the Pyreneean region]], clearly influenced by events in France, and the Grand Inquisitor intervened to stop the process in almost all cases (as the Inquisition's own position was that witchcraft was not real, as it would give Satan creation powers equal to God). Altogether, it is estimated that 59 alleged witches were executed by the Spanish Inquisition in 300 years of history, compared to thousands killed in Germany or France during the 17th century alone. The [[UsefulNotes/ZugarramurdiWitchTrials 1610 Logroño witch trials]] referenced in the series were the largest ever in Spain; yet of 7000 people investigated by the Inquisition, only eleven were burned as unrepentant heretics (not witches), five after they already died in prison. Eighteen more confessed to heresy and were pardoned. This would have been unusually merciful in England and France, where the witch hunters Matthew Hopkins and Pierre de Lancre were active around the same time, but in Spain, it was a scandal: the Supreme Council of the Spanish Inquisition launched an investigation into the previous process, concluded that the original inquisitors had overreached, and that witchcraft was for the most part [[SatanicPanic mass hysteria]] that appeared only after anti-witch preachers and literature showed up in an area (predating similar realizations in other countries by over a century). In 1614 they even ordered to remove the ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanbenito sanbenitos]]'' of the people burned in 1610 from public display so their descendants wouldn't be maligned as relatives of heretics.
** Were they not [[KnightTemplar stalwarts for Catholic dogma]], the Spanish Inquisition would be considered FairForItsDay: it was the first judicial body in Europe to have established rules of evidence, recognize an insanity plea, ban arbitrary punishments, and dismiss anonymous accusations. It was closer to modern jurisprudence than most secular courts of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, and might have been the most progressive and humane tribunal in its heyday, not the opposite. They even believed that the ''accuser'' held the burden of proof, whereas most secular governments at the time required the accused to prove their own innocence; accused persons were also allowed to have counsel, testify on their own behalf, and present evidence, something many secular courts also forbade. Many people died in prison before getting to trial, although this was not unique to the Inquisition - diseases spread like wildfire inside prisons at the time. Inquisitorial prisons actually had better conditions than their lay counterparts, to the point that arrested people would blaspheme so they could fall under religious jurisdiction and be moved there. It is also typical to attribute the Spanish Inquisition to all sorts of bizarre torture machines that likely never existed, like the IronMaiden, or that were used in other countries. ''Series/OneThousandWaysToDie'' [[RecycledInSpace adapted]] the story of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazen_bull Bull of Phalaris]] as a 15th century Spanish inquisitor inventing the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooden_horse_(device) Wooden Horse]], which was actually used in [[http://revisioneshistoricasopusincertum.blogspot.com/2023/02/el-burro-espanol-ni-medieval-ni-espanol.html France, Britain, and North America]] to [[SymbologyResearchFailure punish soldiers]] during [[AnachronismStew the 18th and 19th centuries]], but not in Spain. Yet one of its names in English is "Spanish Donkey", and the German ''Schandmantel'' (one of the possible inspirations of the Iron Maiden) is called the "Spanish Coat". The Inquisition used torture, which again was common at the time, but it had limits that lay and foreign courts didn't have: children under 14 and the elderly couldn't be tortured, torture could only be applied in 15-minute sessions, confessions during torture weren't valid (between sessions and under the threat of torture were), and the only three approved methods were the rack, [[WaterTorture waterboarding]], and strappado - because they didn't draw blood. Finally, the point of torture was to extract confessions, so it was applied sparingly and to people believed to be lying, not systematically to everyone, all the time.
** Its longevity notwithstanding, the Spanish Inquisition [[BrieferThanTheyThink also changed over time]]. High-profile cases moved from Crypto-Jews to Crypto-Muslims, Protestants and ''Alumbrados'' (religious mystics that the Inquisition considered the same as the former, but were much more common in Spain), Jansenists (who identified Catholic but thought [[ItsPersonal the Inquisition should be abolished]] among other things), Deists, Atheists, and UsefulNotes/{{Freemasons}}. In the 18th century, the Bourbon dynasty severely limited the powers of the Inquisition: they lost their censorship duties, prison conditions improved, common tropes like ''sanbenitos'', [[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edicto_de_fe Edicts]] and Autos-da-fé were abolished, and the vast majority of cases ended with the accused being released in a matter of weeks with no penalty. However, the fact that ''it existed at all'', and that it could be potentially weaponized against proponents of the Enlightenment made it a scandal in Spain and the rest of Europe; even after ([[TorchTheFranchiseAndRun or because]]) several pro-Enlightenment figures, [[HireTheCritic critics of the Inquisition]], and suspected Jansenists were appointed to the post of Grand Inquisitor themselves, and commissioned studies on the Inquisition's historical misdeeds. ''Film/GoyasGhosts'' is a stereotypical AnachronismStew, portraying the Inquisition as all-powerful in the 1790s, the King unwilling to oppose it, and accused Crypto-Jews still being arrested after an Edict of Faith, tortured and raped in prison for decades with no trial or charges ever being brought against them. The movie even ends with an auto-da-fé in 1814, with imagery taken from Creator/FranciscoDeGoya's ''Caprichos'' without realizing that these were based on the Logroño trials from two centuries before, not in Goya's own time.
** Most of the time the Inquisition was occupied with more mundane cases like uprooting peasant superstition (like belief in witchcraft), counterfeiting, censorship, blasphemy, and sexual misconduct including bigamy, induction to prostitution, bestiality, and sodomy (both sexes). In the 17th century, only 30% of cases investigated dealt with charges of religious ignorance, and roughly 3% with full charges of heresy, fewer of which were burnt. Most guilty cases ended in confession and light penance. In 1818 the former secretary of the Inquisition Juan Antonio Llorente published ''Histoire critique de l'Inquisition espagnole'', in which he claimed the Inquisition had punished 341,021 people and burned 31,912. This work had great repercussions but was denounced as grossly inflated by American historian Henry Charles Lea already in 1870 (despite Lea not being a fan of Catholicism himself). Notably for a period where Llorente claimed over 11,000 burnings in the Canary Islands alone, Lea found 11. Modern historians estimate that the Inquisition executed about 3000-6000 people total, half during its first twenty years under UsefulNotes/TomasDeTorquemada. Nevertheless, as late as 1998 the anti-Catholic work ''A Woman Rides the Beast'' cited Llorente to claim that the Spanish Inquisition had burned 300,000 (either taking all punished for burnt, or multiplying Llorente's number by 10) before throwing even that out and claiming that the true number must have been "millions".
** The legend of the Holy Child of La Guardia (a young boy said to have been crucified by Jews and later brought back to life, one of the basis of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's ''The Rose of Passion'') was thought to have been a complete myth due to the similarities of the story with antisemitic blood libels. However, in 1992 historians uncovered evidence that there had been a real Inquisition case in 1491, very reminiscent of the Salem witch trials, in which six men of Jewish descent and two Jews accused one another of crucifying a Christian child, and were burned at the stake for it. The case may even have played a role in the decision to make the Alhambra Decree. Historians believe that the child most likely [[AllForNothing never existed]]; ''Series/{{Isabel}}'' portrays a real child being reported missing, but the accused being completely unrelated to it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:16th century]]
* Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas claimed in his multi-volume ''History of the Indies'' that the pre-Columbian population of Hispaniola alone was over three million. Subsequent research has indicated that Las Casas' figures were greatly exaggerated, with 2020 genetic studies estimating the maximum population of the Caribbean islands' indigenous peoples to be in the mere tens of thousands.
* Norwegian historian Yngvar Nielsen concluded in an 1889 study that the Sámi of Norway lived no further south than Nord-Trøndelag county until they started moving south in around 1500. This hypothesis was accepted as the truth until the 21st century when several archaeological finds indicated a Sámi presence in southern Norway and Sweden in the Middle Ages.
* While Juan Ponce de León has long been said to have been [[ImmortalitySeeker searching]] for the FountainOfYouth, most historians now consider this claim apocryphal, since there are no mentions of it in any of his writings and the first known mention of him wanting to find it is in 1535, more than ten years after his death.
* Traditionally, the subject of Da Vinci's ''Mona Lisa'' was assumed to not be anyone in particular, with even one extravagant theory positing that it was a '[[AttractiveBentGender female self-portrait]]' of Leonardo. Nevertheless, many fictional works that included Da Vinci as HistoricalDomainCharacter would sometimes include a generic woman posing as a model. Turns out they were right: In 2005, it was discovered that Da Vinci was commissioned to paint a portrait of a Florentine noblewoman named Lisa del Giocondo ("Mona" is an Italian honorific, akin to "Miss" or "Madam"). Lisa’s husband was a silk merchant who was friends with Leonardo’s father and it’s believed the painting was commissioned to celebrate a pregnancy.
* The Borgias:
** Contemporaries viewed Lucrezia Borgia as a scheming, amoral poisoner who abetted her father and brother (UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI and Cesare Borgia, respectively) in their plans to dominate Europe. This belief became even more prevalent in Victorian times when her name became shorthand for "female serial killer" -- she's Creator/AgathaChristie's favorite murderer to namedrop, it seems. Scholarship casts doubt on this belief, as there is no historical proof that Lucrezia harmed a flea herself, let alone committed multiple murders. If anything, Lucrezia's life might have been easier if she ''had'' been a poisoner. It's thought now that Lucrezia was blamed by her contemporaries because she was a safe target compared to her relatives.
*** ''Radio/OldHarrysGame'' references this in one episode where Edith tells a man that there's no evidence Lucrezia Borgia ever murdered anybody. However, since the person she's talking to is {{Satan}}, he knows from personal experience that the rumours are true.
** The rumor that Lucrezia was incestuously involved with her brother and father was started by Lucrezia's first husband after being forced into an annulment that required him to sign papers declaring himself to be ''impotent'' (and thus unable to consummate the marriage). A child of unknown paternity (the ''Infans Romanus'', Giovanni Borgia) appeared around that time, allegedly the son of Lucrezia and either one of her relatives or a man named Pedro who was found dead in the river after delivering letters to her. It's almost certain that the child's parents were actually Rodrigo and [[AgeGapRomance his much younger mistress]] Giulia Farnese, (whose brother Alessandro got a cardinal's hat from Rodrigo and later became Pope Paul III).
** Then there is the Borgias' alleged poison, ''la cantarella'', a potent yet undetectable brew whose formula could be adjusted so that the victim could die at any time the poisoner wished. Too bad it's not actually possible for such a thing to exist. Rodrigo probably used plain old arsenic while Cesare and Juan strangled their enemies and threw them in the Tiber.
** Juan, Cesare's younger brother, was found dead in the Tiber in 1497. He had been stabbed 9 times. Cesare is often [[SiblingMurder blamed]] for the murder, but it was more likely committed by a member of the Orsini family, with whom the Borgias -- and Juan in particular -- had had several feuds. Both ''Series/{{Borgia}}'' and ''Series/TheBorgias'' give Cesare (and Lucrezia) [[AssholeVictim compelling reasons]] for wanting him gone, which work well in a TV series, but are likely pure fiction.
** Did we mention that the Borgias were probably no more murderous than any other prominent Italian family of the time? They most likely got the bad rep they did because they were {{social climber}}s and had non-Italian origins, not because they were particularly evil. Additionally, UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI's religious tolerance and philanthropy to Rome's Jewish population was seen by his [[ValuesDissonance anti-Semitic successors]] as NotHelpingYourCase.
** The biography ''The Borgias: The Hidden History'' by G.J. Meyer maintains that there's actually no evidence that Alexander VI had any children. Cesare, Lucrezia, and Juan were related to him ''somehow'', but the Borgia family tree is [[TangledFamilyTree tangled]] and records are uncertain. At a time when diplomats sent their masters every bit of gossip they could get their hands on, Meyer claims that there's no contemporary record of the pope having a mistress or children. [[TurbulentPriest Reformist preacher]] Girolamo Savonarola denounced the Borgias in general and Alexander in particular in the harshest possible terms and accused them of every kind of corruption imaginable, ''except'' sexual immorality. In any case, if they actually were his bastards, that still wouldn't make Alexander the only pope with known illegitimate children -- Innocent VII and Julius II had them as well. Meyer also claims that Giulia Farnese wasn't Rodrigo's mistress, simply Lucrezia's best friend -- certainly enough to get her brother a cardinal's hat.
* Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli, author of ''Literature/ThePrince'', was a staunch supporter of the concept of a free republic. So, why did he write ''The Prince'', which tells a leader how to rule with an iron fist? It was his only well-known piece for a long time. Some scholars think that he was most likely a satirist because that was his only pro-Medici screed, and after writing it, he went right back to writing pro-republic stories. He was also often portrayed as a cynical, somber, and shrewd politician. Contemporary data, including his letters and works, portray him rather as a very sociable satirist who also happened to be an observant historian and a good rhetor. On the other hand, we can look at the last chapter of ''The Prince'' and Machiavelli's praise of Cesare Borgia ("Il Valentino") throughout, taking the vindication of the Borgias into account (see above). In that last chapter of ''The Prince'', Machiavelli states clearly ''why'' he was giving this advice -- someone needed to conquer Italy and unify it in order to protect against invasions by France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and plenty of other forces who had invaded in the decades before. Cesare tried, with the backing of his father the Pope, and failed. The then Medici duke of Florence also had an uncle on the papal throne at the time (Leo X, Cesare's college classmate and likely friend). Machiavelli and Cesare weren't the first to dream of it -- Creator/{{Petrarch}} had, and Machiavelli quotes him directly. Creator/DanteAlighieri also did, in ''Monarchia'', and in his ''Paradiso'', he gives the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VII a special place in Heaven for trying to "save" Italy "before she was ready". This is the view taken up by ''Manga/CesareIlCreatoreCheHaDistrutto'', though that series has Cesare and Machiavelli meeting and working together much earlier than they did in real life (as does ''Series/TheBorgias'').
* Once, it was universally accepted that Juan Sebastián Elcano and the other survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition became the first people to circumnavigate the globe when they returned to Spain. But now there are many people who believe the first person to do so (albeit not in one trip) may have been expedition member [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_of_Malacca Enrique of Malacca]], who left the expedition to return home.
* While the Spanish Empire and Spanish Inquisition were viewed in a resoundingly negative light in other countries for a long time, it's now believed that the bad reputation Spain had was the result of the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend_(Spain) Spanish Black Legend]], demonization campaigns by Spain's rivals, which at the peak of the empire were basically all of the western world.
* The claim that UsefulNotes/HernanCortez was [[GodGuise mistaken for a god]] by the Aztecs (and possibly other Mesoamericans), once widely accepted, is now generally viewed in the historical community as false. Skeptics point to the fact that the story seems to originate from a much older Cortés' chaplain and secretary, López de Gómara, who had never even been to Mexico and whom Cortés' lieutenant and chronicling aficionado Creator/BernalDiazDelCastillo outright calls a liar. As proof, neither Díaz nor Cortés' own surviving writings mention anything about the Spanish being thought of as gods. They only recorded that natives initially thought the Spaniards were ''teules'', a word that does translate roughly as divine yet carries a lot of possible meanings. Applied to a human being, which the natives knew the Spaniards were because they had watched them eat, sleep, have sex, bleed, and die, its meaning became closer to a wizard or a Greek hero, that is, someone of flesh and blood who still could do incredible things (like having those strange four-legged monsters and boom sticks, for instance).
* It was believed that Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha from the Ottoman Empire was married to Hatice Sultan, the sister of UsefulNotes/SuleimanTheMagnificent, though this was based on conjecture and scanty evidence. In the late 2000s, research done by scholar Ebru Turan brought up a woman called Muhsine Hatun and discovered references to her in multiple Venetian and Ottoman texts, including a letter signed by her to Ibrahim. It is now generally accepted that Muhsine Hatun was his wife, and no marriage to the sultan's sister existed.
* The eventful and controversial reign of UsefulNotes/HenryVIII has engendered many myths:
** Whig history often depicted Henry as "Bluff King Hal", a jolly Falstaffian monarch whose general good cheer was interrupted only by the tragic necessity of sending his whoring wives to the Tower. In reality, Henry was a complex, mercurial hypochondriac with a horrific temper and a complete inability to accept criticism or see himself as he really was. It was ''his courtiers'' who were forced to display forced jolliness, lest Henry's temper be directed against them. Some of his later reputation may have been based on the fact that he was incapable of overt deceit. Even if true, this wouldn't make him bluff but sneaky.
** It was also said that Henry was unusual for monarchs of his era in that he had more wives than mistresses and was attentive to his wives -- at least before he divorced or beheaded them. Evidence from the Letters and Papers of Henry's reign tell a different story: payoffs to numerous women, more grants of land to his laundresses' bastard children than a baron would normally receive, etc.
** Yet the same historians who claimed Henry was a paragon of marital devotion also claimed that he suffered from syphilis, with the sore on his leg as evidence of the infection. The Letters and Papers again tell a different story. Syphilis was the HIV of the early 16th century; it beggars belief that Henry's team of experienced, educated physicians would have missed the most obvious diagnosis of their time. But Henry's apothecary bills show that he was never treated with any drug that was used to fight syphilis at the time. As for the sore on Henry's leg, there's some evidence that it was much worse than previously thought; instead of a single sore on one shin, both of Henry's lower legs were apparently covered in abscesses. Whether this was caused by a bone infection or by a combination of varicose veins and diabetes is anyone's guess.
** The belief that Henry went through six wives because he was a misogynist has also been called into question. Henry's father took the throne after [[UsefulNotes/WarsOfTheRoses a long series of devastating civil wars]]. These came about because the ruling king was deemed weak and unfit, and there was no clear next in line, setting the stage for various houses to vie for the crown. Henry VII had two sons but one died young of an illness (Henry VIII's older brother Arthur) which served as a reminder that one heir is not enough to declare the succession secure. Reportedly, on his deathbed, he told his surviving son that the most important job of a king was to secure the throne and produce heirs. Henry VIII was married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, for over two decades and did not seek to divorce her until the prospect of her bearing a son became nil. Anne Boleyn bore a daughter but miscarried a son and was then accused of adultery. Jane Seymour gave birth to a prince but died shortly after. He deemed Anne of Cleves too unattractive and said it would be impossible to get aroused by her and impossible to sire sons. Katherine Howard was believed to have been unfaithful and thus any sons she gave birth to [[MamasBabyPapasMaybe could be suggested not to be the king's]]. UsefulNotes/CatherineParr survived the monarch.
* UsefulNotes/AnneBoleyn gets the worst myths, being given a [[ExtraDigits sixth finger]], a projecting tooth, a facial defect, and a goitre in the late 16th century (and a ''[[{{multiboobage}} third breast]]'' in the 20th courtesy of the ''Book of Lists''). None is contemporary. Rather she was said to be attractive by even her enemies (if not the most conventionally beautiful of women). Had Anne suffered from any obvious defects she wouldn't have been sent to court in the first place.
** Historians long believed that Anne had been born in 1507, which sat well with Whigs who didn't think Henry would marry a woman much over 25 if he wanted to have children with her. But a letter from Anne to her father has been dated to 1513-1514. The content and penmanship imply that Anne was around 13 when she wrote it, pushing her birth back to c. 1501. It may be that the 1507 date came from a document where the "1" was misread as a "7".
* There is a myth that UsefulNotes/{{Jane Seymour|Royalty}} died after delivering the future Edward VI via Caesarian section. This sprung up very shortly after Edward's birth; there's even a [[Literature/ChildBallads Child Ballad]] about it. But there is no evidence either in the historical record; if Edward had been born via Caesarian, Jane wouldn't have survived the birth, let alone been seen by dozens the next day sitting up in bed healthy and hale. There would also be a surgeon's bill in the records, which there is not.
* Anne of Cleves's ugliness is a myth propagated by Henry himself, who was enraged that she didn't recognize him when he showed up in disguise at her lodgings. Courtiers who wrote home about the controversy said that Anne was perfectly pleasant-looking; one calls her Henry's most attractive queen to date. An X-ray of a painting of Anne shows that she may have had a longer nose than we in modern days would deem attractive, but in Tudor times a long, thin nose was considered a sign of royal blood and therefore widely seen as desirable. There is no contemporary evidence for Anne being ugly, pockmarked, or overweight. She may not have fit Henry's [[HasAType tastes]], but that doesn't mean she was unattractive.
* Catherine Howard was assumed to be older. Most historians had agreed that [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hans_Holbein_d._J._027.jpg this painting]] by Holbein was of Howard, and that the notation proved that she had reached the age of 21 by the time of her arrest. However, it was found that the painting was originally owned by the Cromwell family, who were unlikely to have commissioned a painting of the queen involved in their downfall.[[note]]The work is now considered to be of an unknown sitter officially, though many suspect that it's Elizabeth Seymour, Jane's sister and Thomas Cromwell's daughter-in-law.[[/note]] There's no consensus for Catherine's date of birth, though few historians believe she was over 20 at her execution, and many that she was as young as 16.
* Catherine Parr was often portrayed by Protestants as well-educated and fluent in Latin and Greek before she married Henry. Recent biographers haven't found evidence that she was particularly erudite, and it appears that she only spoke English when she arrived in court in 1543 and taught herself Latin and Greek so she could read The Bible in its 'original'.
* Due to his untimely demise, Edward VI is often said to have been a sickly child. But courtiers and ambassadors wrote that he mostly enjoyed good health until he caught measles in his teens. It was this infection that weakened his immune system and caused him to fall ill with a fatal chest infection in 1553.
** It was once thought that Edward's last days were prolonged by the Duke of Northumberland (Jane Grey's father-in-law) feeding the tuberculous Edward a concoction containing arsenic (keeping him alive but in agony) until he agreed to write a will disinheriting his sisters in favour of Jane. This is nonsense, from a medical standpoint as much as a historical one. For one, it's not certain that Edward had tuberculosis in the first place; for another, feeding a patient with terminal TB arsenic is immensely more likely to kill him faster than to extend his life. Most importantly, we have Edward's notes making it clear that the idea to disinherit Mary and Elizabeth and put the staunchly Protestant, undeniably legitimate Jane on the throne was his own idea, taken before his illness. His first intention was to limit the succession to Jane's sons, but he didn't survive long enough for Jane to have any.
* UsefulNotes/MaryTudor's most pervasive myth is about her false pregnancy. It was only in the early 20th century that the idea of a "phantom pregnancy" arose, but historians and fiction writers ran with it. Current thinking is that Mary had some kind of tumour that caused abdominal swelling.[[note]]"Phantom pregnancy" may also be a catch-all category for all kinds of pelvic conditions and diseases that have been labelled "neurotic" only because they occur in women.[[/note]] As for the "Bloody Mary" sobriquet, it stems from books published by her religious enemies after her death; her sister Elizabeth ordered about three times more executions than Mary did (but also ruled nine times longer).
* UsefulNotes/OdaNobunaga was well known for his use of volley fire, but the idea that he was the first in Japan to use the tactic is now considered questionable since some recently-discovered sources imply that the Ikkō-ikki were using it before him.
* The popular claim that UsefulNotes/UesugiKenshin was assassinated by a [[InstantAwesomeJustAddNinja ninja]] is now considered probably apocryphal, and he more likely died of cancer or cerebrovascular disease.
* Catherine de' Medici was one of the cruelest royals of the early [[UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance Renaissance]]. She followed the ([[StealthParody in retrospect, probably sarcastic]]) advice of Machiavelli, to ensure that her husband and three of her sons ruled France; hundreds of noble and wealthy Frenchmen died either directly at her hand or otherwise. She even arranged for her son Charles to be sexually abused by courtiers in an unsuccessful attempt to [[RapeAndSwitch turn him gay]] so that he would die childless and his younger brother Henry ([[ParentalFavoritism whom she adored]]) would eventually become king. Given her deservedly bad reputation, it's not surprising that contemporaries in England blamed her for instigating the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre]]. Screeds called her a "Catholic bigot" who washed her hands in the blood of Protestants. This is a tough one to be sure -- accounts are confusing and the Massacre seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment occurrence, which makes figuring out the responsible difficult. Modern historians believe that the massacre was actually instigated by the Guise family, who feared Catherine's alliance with the Protestant Navarre family. However, Catherine probably bears the brunt of the blame for making the Massacre an honest-to-God one. As for the Guises, contemporary accounts note that after (quite possibly accidentally) kicking it off by killing Admiral de Coligny, the Duke of Guise went around placing Huguenots under his personal protection -- furthermore, he was one of the only Catholic participants to apologize for the affair.
* It was once generally accepted in both the Western world and the Middle East that the death of Sultan UsefulNotes/SuleimanTheMagnificent caused the Ottoman Empire to enter a period of stagnation and decline from which it never recovered. However, starting in the late 1970s, the fundamental assumptions of the so-called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Decline_Thesis Ottoman Decline Thesis]] were re-examined, and studies over the course of the following two decades led to the rise of a new consensus in the 21st century: that the decline of the Ottoman Empire did not truly begin until significantly later than previously thought, and the period after Suleiman's death instead marked the beginning of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_of_the_Ottoman_Empire an era of transformation]] that lasted until around the year 1700.
* UsefulNotes/ElizabethI:
** There is no evidence of the "Virgin Queen" being accurate or not. Certainly no evidence that she had sex with Robert Dudley. There's also no evidence that she was incapable of bearing children: the old myth that she was born without a vagina (or that she was a man! which would have delighted her father Henry VIII) is disproved by the numerous examinations she underwent as part of marriage negotiations, often in the presence of foreign ambassadors who would have no reason to keep anything they saw secret.
** The "she was a man" myth is just sexism, a chauvinistic Victorian fantasy that no woman could have made Elizabeth I's accomplishments, so she must have been a man (compare the "[[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare]] didn't write his plays and poems" conspiracy theory, which was also made up by aristocrats who couldn't fathom a commoner writing their favorite works, around the same time). One version promoted by Creator/BramStoker in his 1910 book, ''Famous Imposters'', claims the real Elizabeth died of illness as a child and the members of her household forced a farm boy who was about her age to dress up as her to keep Henry VIII from blaming them. Forgetting for a minute that lots of people died young in those days (Henry himself lost a brother and a sister), concealing such a thing for the entirety of Elizabeth's life would have required such a massive conspiracy as to render it impractical, and raises the question of why a boy would be used in place of a girl anyway.
** It's known that while she was living with Catherine Parr and her husband Thomas Seymour after Henry's death, she was in some kind of intimate relationship with Seymour. Whig historians blamed her for the liaison, claiming that since Tudor-era girls could marry at age 12, they must have been fully sexual adults at that age, and that Seymour was the victim of a [[FilleFatale sexually precocious]] Elizabeth. No wonder Parr sent her away! But not only is this a misreading of Tudor beliefs on marriage and sexuality, it's one of the most obvious [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming victim-blaming]] exercises in history. Even in Tudor times, a gentleman was supposed to be proper toward any young girl under his roof. He could offer honourable marriage to a ward unrelated to him by marriage or blood, but a stepdaughter was sacrosanct. But it's only in the 21st century that historians have had the detachment to label Seymour's actions as the sexual abuse they most undoubtedly were.
** Contrary to some claims, Elizabeth, unlike Mary, did not have an unhappy childhood. She was not sent away in disgrace after Anne's execution; in fact, Henry VIII was seen playing with her and judged to "love her very much" the Christmas after his marriage to Jane Seymour. Court sycophants praised the young Elizabeth to her father -- which they certainly would not have had she been in disfavor. She seems to have spent time at court whenever there was a queen to chaperon her and was living there under the care of Catherine Parr during Henry's last years.
* UsefulNotes/IvanTheTerrible blinding architect Postnik Yakovlev after the construction of Saint Basil's Cathedral was complete so that he could never design anything so beautiful again is now considered to be probably a myth, since it's now known that Yakovlev collaborated with Ivan [=ShirIai=] on some projects in Kazan after he finished his work on the famous cathedral.
* One popular explanation for the existence of the "Black Irish" (a dark-haired phenotype appearing in people of Irish origin) was that they were descended from survivors of the [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOfTheSpanishArmada Spanish Armada]]. However, historical analysis has shown that what few survivors weren't immediately killed or handed over to the English couldn't possibly have left such a large impact on the Irish genome, and genetic analysis suggests that the Black Irish have far deeper roots.
* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Terraces_of_the_Philippine_Cordilleras Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras]] were once thought to be ancient agricultural relics that were over 2000 years old. However, they were later found to be from the sixteenth century at the very earliest, developed as a response to Spanish colonization of the islands driving lowlanders up the cordillera, where taro was previously farmed.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:17th century]]
* Once, the general consensus was that Native Americans had developed scalping independently of the Old World and practiced it for centuries if not millennia. In the latter half of the 20th century, a competing theory occurred, claiming that scalping was unknown among Native Americans until they learned how to do so from Europeans, who offered to pay allied tribes bounties for the scalps of members of enemy tribes. This competing theory was debunked after the discovery of the Crow Creek massacre site, which proved that Native Americans were scalping people over a century before Columbus first arrived in the New World, and it's now thought that the Europeans paid Native Americans for scalps because they were already known to be good at collecting them.
* Once upon a time, the prevailing view was that Australia was completely isolated from the rest of the world until Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed there in 1606. Today, it's known that there was (admittedly somewhat isolated) contact with other areas beforehand; perhaps most notably, people from Indonesia and New Guinea visited Australia's north coast, developing trading and social relationships with the Aborigines who lived there.
* John Smith never mentioned a romance with UsefulNotes/{{Pocahontas}}. This story first appeared in the 1803 book ''Travels of the United States of America'' by John Davis and it stuck. Pocahontas (who was actually about 10 when they met) and John Smith were [[IntergenerationalFriendship friends]], though. Historians agree that Smith was captured by the Powhatan but was released without Pocahontas' involvement; he didn't write that Pocahontas rescued him from death until 1616 in a letter to the queen of Denmark -- possibly to build up Pocahontas' reputation as TheChiefsDaughter. In 1995, historians pointed out that this story is suspiciously similar to that of the Spaniard Juan Ortiz in Florida, mentioned in the narrative of the De Soto expedition which just happened to be translated and become a best-seller in England a few years before, in 1609.
* While Jan Pieterszoon Coen was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, his legacy has become more controversial since the 19th century when certain unpleasant facts about his conduct were brought back to light. Now he's widely criticized for the violence he employed, such as in the final stages of the Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands, which was excessive even by the standards of his time.
* The conventional black-and-white view of the UsefulNotes/GalileoGalilei affair as a conflict between reason and dogmatism is now considered a gross oversimplification of a more grey-shaded reality, in part because Galileo never actually conclusively proved heliocentrism. Tellingly, he had no answers for the strongest argument against heliocentrism: if the heliocentric model were the truth, there should be observable parallax shifts in the position of the stars as the Earth moved.[[note]]There ''are'' such parallax shifts, but they're too subtle to be seen with the naked eye; the technology to prove they existed wouldn't be developed until decades after Galileo died[[/note]] Furthermore, before Galileo's trial began, he received a proposal from cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a staunch defender of heliocentrism, that was actually a brilliant workaround to reconcile Galileo's position with the Church: he could teach heliocentrism as a ''theoretical model'', on the basis that the apparent motions of the planets could be better understood [[LoopholeAbuse if Earth was imagined as if it rotated around the Sun]]. However, Galileo was too stubborn to settle on a workaround instead of having his theory accepted as it was.
* Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba was a ruthless political operator and certainly had blood on her hands, but contemporary historians are by and large skeptical of certain negative claims made about her (that she murdered one of her own servants to prove a point, that she took the throne by having her brother poisoned, that she forced her lovers to fight each other to the death), mostly because they were originally made by her Portuguese enemies.
* After the death of Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Lützen, rumors circulated that he was assassinated by Prince Francis Albert of Saxe-Lauenburg. While these rumors continued to be retold as late as the 19th century, it's now generally accepted that he was killed by enemy fire.
* Scottish journalist Charles Mackay's 1841 account of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania Tulip mania]] was more or less taken as fact for over a century. But in the 1980s, historians and economists began to examine the story with a more critical eye. Nowadays, Mackay's story is generally considered to have been incomplete and inaccurate. For example, the economic fallout from the bubble is now believed to be greatly exaggerated; contrary to claims that Dutch commerce suffered a severe shock, there's no evidence that anyone besides a relative handful of merchants and craftsmen was seriously affected by the bubble. Some of the anecdotes he recounts are also now considered very unlikely; for example, the story about a foreign sailor who ate a tulip bulb thinking it was an onion and got locked up for it was probably a lie, since tulip bulbs taste nothing like onions and are poisonous if not prepared properly.
* Rembrandt's iconic painting ''Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq'' was thought to be a night scene for a very long time, hence the more common (and succinct) name ''The Night Watch''. However, after World War II, it was discovered to be coated in a dark varnish.
* For a long time, it was believed that UsefulNotes/OliverCromwell's son Oliver Cromwell II died in a skirmish. But in the 20th century, letters were rediscovered proving that he died of smallpox.
* Once, it was nearly universally held that the Han Chinese managed to "sinicize" their Manchu conquerors, leading to the idea that the Qing dynasty was run by people who were Chinese in their thoughts and institutions. Nobody seriously doubts that there was strong Chinese influence on the Manchu: Manchu people today are overwhelmingly Chinese speakers, while native Manchu speakers count a few hundreds at best. However, the opening of Chinese archives in the 1990s led to the growth of a competing theory: that the Qing merely manipulated their subjects, used Central and North Asian models of rule as much as they did Confucian ones, and regarded China as only a part (though admittedly a very large and important part) of a much wider empire that extended well into Inner Asia. While there are critics of this new theory, one of the most prominent being the Chinese-American academic Ping-ti Ho, the older conception of the Qing dynasty is now considered debatable.
* When historian John Fiske came up with the name "UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfPiracy" in 1897, he defined it as lasting 70 years, spanning the era between 1650 and 1720. Between 1909 and the 1990s, the trend for defining the age was one towards narrowing its scope, with some defining it as lasing only ten years or even less. However, in the new millennium, influential research suggested that Fiske was closer to the truth after all and may have actually been ''underestimating'' its length (some scholars have proposed ending dates as late as 1730, a full decade after Fiske said it ended), even if the idea of the Golden Age has changed to less of a singular period and more of a series of similar but distinct phases.
* Nowadays, it's believed that the idea of the Great Fire of London putting an end to the Great Plague is a myth. By 1666, the plague was already on its way out, and the city had been on the road to recovery for more than six months. That being said, it did help bring about conditions that helped mitigate the impact of future outbreaks; London was rebuilt to better standards and more sanitary conditions prevailed.
* Traditionally, it has been said that the Sikhs saved the Hindus from the depravations of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Rediscovered information shows that things were more complicated: the Sikhs initially took up arms to defend ''themselves'', the Sikh leadership were more reliant on Hindu Rajputs to train their troops and fight for them than previously thought, and some Sikhs (perhaps most notably Guru Har Rai’s eldest son Ram Rai) actually fought on the side of the Mughals against their fellow Sikhs.
* UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment was interpreted in the post-revolutionary and early modern era as embodying a largely aristocratic culture and society. The dominant image is still a bunch of cosmopolitan individuals gathering in a salon hosted by liberal nobles and later trickling down to upstart middle-class societies who wanted to be TheTeamWannabe and who later misinterpreted ideas during the Revolution, at least as seen by the pro-Enlightenment Anglophones. This exploded when Robert Darnton published ''The Literary Underground of the Old Regime'' and explored the fact that many Enlightenment ideas and works proliferated to ordinary people via pirated books or in some cases disguised as cheap pulp and pornography, some of them written by Enlightenment types like Mirabeau specifically to flout censorship and pass BeneathSuspicion, and this played a crucial role in spreading and disseminating ideas to a larger audience than previously envisioned.
* The accounts of multiple great waves in the earthquake that destroyed the Jamaican city of Port Royal were once thought to be exaggerated. That is, until geological surveys of the area showed that it was indeed possible for a tsunami to enter the harbor, hit one side, rebound, hit the other side, rebound and repeat.
* The standard story about 17th century London's private fire brigades has always been that, if a building didn't have a firemark indicating that they were insured with that company, the firefighters would let it burn. Investigating this claim, however, suggests there isn't any evidence it was ever official policy, and that it possibly derives from rival fire insurance firms refusing to assist each other, which wasn't an official policy either, but did happen. As Creator/TomScott [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wif1EAgEQKI&t=294s put it]], when he discovered one of his sources had removed the claim after he made a video on the subject:
-->'''Scott''': I was wrong. ''Series/{{QI}}'' was wrong. ''Series/HorribleHistories'' was wrong. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of pop-history books and storytellers were wrong. ''({{beat}})'' We think.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:18th century]]
* Charles XII of Sweden was noted during his lifetime for never marrying, having no mistresses, and very likely abstaining from sex altogether. The reasons why continue to be debated, but one popular theory held that he was intersex. In 1917, his remains were examined to test this hypothesis, and it was found that he had no traits of an intersex person.
* The Will of Peter the Great, a document purporting to show Russian ambitions to dominate Europe, is now known to have been forged by French essayist Charles-Louis Lesur as an attempt to justify Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
* King George III's madness was once thought to be a result of RoyalInbreeding. Now, however, it's generally believed to have been a side effect of porphyria, a disease that has nothing to do with inbreeding.
* Some myths about the Battle of Culloden are now understood to be just that:
** Not only were not all the Highlanders swordsmen, it seems likely that most of them ''weren't''. Only 190 broadswords could be discovered on the battlefield, as opposed to the more than 2,000 muskets that were found.
** Bayonets were not the decisive factor that allowed the government forces to win the battle. One widely-touted eyewitness account reported that the men of Barrell’s and Munro’s regiments killed one or two men each with their bayonets, but some quick math makes this seem very dubious. Barrell’s numbered just over 300 men; supposing the estimate is correct, that means this regiment alone accounted for 3-600 enemy casualties with just their bayonets. This doesn’t tally. Nor does the historical record. Cumberland instructed his infantry to stab into the body of the man opposing the soldier to his right. This proved effective at first but in fact, while it blunted the Jacobite charge, it neither stopped it nor repelled it. The Clans cut clean through the center of Barrell’s and were only stopped by the concentrated firepower of the second line.
** Lord George Murray, one of the Jacobite commanders, later claimed that the [[GeoEffects plain, open flatness]] of the battlefield inordinately favored the English cavalry and artillery while proving unsuitable for the Highlanders. This was accepted as fact for many years but is now not considered credible because the Highlanders had fought and won on much flatter ground at Prestonpans. In reality, the problem was the boggy state of the field, which actually disadvantaged ''both'' sides.
** While it was once thought that most of the Jacobite casualties occurred at the hands of the government artillery, it's now known that the artillery's effectiveness has been greatly exaggerated. True, it played an important role in provoking the fateful charge, but the softness of the ground prevented the cannonballs from bouncing as they should have. In fact, the artillery didn't become effective until they switched to canister shot ''after'' the clans charged. Because of this, estimates have been lowered from a 30-minute-long barrage of unanswered cannon fire that killed hundreds to a bombardment that lasted 15 minutes at most and only killed 150 at a maximum.
** One popular legend claims that the three regiments of Clan [=MacDonald=] on the left flank didn't close with the enemy because they never charged. The story goes that they were in a snit about Lord George allocating the right flank to the Atholl battalions and refused to obey orders. However, while it's true that they failed to strike a blow against the government forces, it's not because they didn't charge. What really happened is more complicated. They stubbornly refused to redeploy when the Jacobite line was moved closer to the longitude of the Culwhiniac enclosure, thus accounting for the strange skewed nature of the Jacobite line. When the main charge went in, the [=MacDonalds=] also charged... but they had further to run and they encountered knee-deep bogs in the terrain they had to cover, which impeded their momentum. Thus, when they met with the steady platoon volleys of the Royals and Pulteney’s regiments, their advance was checked and they were forced to withdraw by the movement of the enemy cavalry.
* For a long time, it was believed that after Fort William was captured by Bengali troops in 1756, 146 people (consisting of British soldiers and Indian sepoys and civilians) were locked in a dungeon known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_of_Calcutta Black Hole of Calcutta]] overnight, and 123 of them died from the ordeal. This was thought to be credible due to it being based on an eyewitness account by John Zephaniah Holwell, but in the 20th century, it came to be questioned, not least because it was dubious as to whether it was even possible for that many people to have been crammed into a room 14 feet long and 18 feet wide. Today, more modest estimates are considered far more likely, with the highest considered credible being 64 prisoners (of whom 21 survived).
* Mason Locke "Parson" Weems wrote a hagiographic biography of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington that contained many anecdotes about him that later became iconic, such as him refusing to lie about chopping down a cherry tree and praying in the snow at Valley Forge. While these stories were generally accepted as true for many years, they are now considered apocryphal, probably invented out of whole cloth by Weems to provide moral instruction to America's youth.
* As the United States came into increasing conflict with Native Americans over the course of the 19th century, Daniel Boone was falsely characterized as a man who hated Indians and killed them by the score. In reality, Boone respected Native Americans and was respected by them, and by his own admission could only be sure of ever killing a grand total of three Amerindians.
* Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart:
** Mozart's composition method was the subject of myths in the 19th century, with a prevalent claim being that he composed entirely in his head and then wrote the music down in a single draft. However, the rediscovery of earlier drafts of his compositions has since proven that his sheet music went through numerous revisions.
** The idea that Mozart was buried in a pauper's grave is now generally understood to have been based on a misunderstanding of funeral practices in 18th-century Vienna. While it's true that he was buried in the same plot as several other people, this was standard practice for middle-income families at the time; the burial was organized and dignified, a far cry from the images of corpses being unceremoniously dumped into an open pit now synonymous with "mass graves". His remains really were later dug up and moved somewhere else to make room for more burials, but once again, this was commonly done due to grave space being at a premium in Viennese cemeteries; it had nothing to do with the wealth and status of those interred.
* One popular myth is that the kangaroo got its name when James Cook and Joseph Banks asked a local Aborigine what it was called, and the local responded with "kangaroo", which actually meant "I don't understand". This was disproven in 1972 when linguist John B. Haviland in his research with the Guugu Yimithirr people was able to confirm that "gangurru" referred to a rare large dark-coloured species of kangaroo (the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilopine_kangaroo antilopine kangaroo]], to be exact).
* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution:
** It was widely believed that the Revolution was caused solely due to the imposition of British taxes without any representation from the colonists, who held no power in the American colonies. While taxation is still considered to be a major reason behind the revolution, more recent historians cite the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar as sowing the seeds for America's independence, as not only did the war drain Britain's economy and lead them to impose heavy taxes on America in the first place, but the Proclamation of 1763 forbade any settlement west of the Appalachians, in order to prevent future conflicts with Native Americans. This angered colonists, who were eager to settle new lands. In addition, the British were initially lenient on colonists who wouldn't pay taxes; it wasn't until the Tea Act of 1773 that they began to seriously enforce these new taxes, which became the straw that broke the camel's back and caused revolution to erupt.
** While the basic facts of Paul Revere's ride are relatively well known, their interpretation has gone back and forth based more upon the tenor of the times and the personal slant of historians than the known facts of the event itself. A recent history devoted nearly a third of the book to the perpetual debate between Revere's skeptics and partisans. What's certain is that most people get their view of Revere from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem. It gets a lot wrong, the most crucial being that he didn't actually get to his destination. He was arrested, while another rider was the one who got through. But "Revere" [[RhymesOnADime rhymed best]], so he got the credit (the successful rider in reality was the far more obscure Dr. Samuel Prescott).
** When ''[[Theatre/SeventeenSeventySix 1776]]'' was written, not a lot of information about James Wilson was available. The playwrights tossed in a bit of ArtisticLicense and created a climax where his desire to remain a nobody is the crucial factor in him breaking with Dickinson and voting for independence. They note in the DVDCommentary that this was never singled out by historians as a major misstep, but later findings show that James Wilson was a staunch proponent of independence, and that the delay in the vote which the play attributes to stalling techniques by Adams was in reality partially due to Wilson wanting to go home and check that his constituents were all right with his vote.
** No, the Hessians probably weren't drunk at the Battle of Trenton. While they weren't as alert as they should've been, it's now generally believed that they (or at least most of them) were sober when they were attacked by the Continental Army. Some of Washington's officers believed that the Hessians ''would'' have a boozy German Christmas, and [[CurbStompBattle the sheer magnitude of the Hessian defeat]] makes it easy to believe. However, Colonel Rall had been tipped off that Washington was up to something and asked for reinforcements, only to be denied by British commanders who no longer believed Washington's army to be a threat.
** The claim that Martha Washington [[WeNamedTheMonkeyJack named a feral tomcat]] after UsefulNotes/AlexanderHamilton to make fun of his [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuity]] was generally accepted as true for decades, but is now considered dubious due to there being no evidence of the story circulating until after Hamilton died. Nowadays, it's widely suspected to be posthumous slander against Hamilton, possibly by UsefulNotes/JohnAdams who was still bitter about Hamilton trying to undermine his administration, possibly by vengeful Loyalists who were trying to diminish [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff Hamilton's popularity abroad]].
** Conditions at Valley Forge were indisputably awful, but the idea that inclement weather was a major problem is now considered a myth, or at least an exaggeration. While it was once claimed that the encampment was blanketed in snow and many soldiers were killed by frostbite and hypothermia, no contemporary accounts or sources state that death occurred from freezing temperatures alone, even if some soldiers needed amputations. Rather, snowfall occurred infrequently, above-freezing temperatures were regular, and ice was uncommon. Stories of harsh weather are most likely the result of unintentionally conflating Valley Forge with the later winter encampment at Jockey Hollow in New Jersey, which saw the coldest winter of the war. At Valley Forge, disease and a lack of supplies were far bigger problems than the weather.
* The original [[LuddWasRight Luddites]] of the 1810s took their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver who, in 1779, broke two stocking frames in a fit of rage. While Ludd's existence was accepted for a long time, he's now considered a legendary figure, since the first mention of him is in an 1811 article in ''The Nottingham Review'' that has no independent evidence of its veracity.
* Stories of UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson having children with one of his slaves, a woman named Sally Hemmings, were once considered mere political mudslinging. However, DNA testing has proven that some of her descendants were ''also'' descended from a member of the Jefferson family, which almost certainly means that at least some of her children were fathered by Thomas.
* For decades, George Washington was credited with starting the tradition of adding "so help me God" to the presidential inaugural oath. While this wouldn't be out of character, since Washington was one of the most religiously devout founding fathers, an investigation by the Library of Congress found no evidence that the phrase was ever used in that context before the inauguration of UsefulNotes/ChesterAArthur, almost a century after Washington first swore the oath.
* One famous story claimed that Grigory Potemkin built fake settlements in Crimea using hollow facades to fool UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat when she paid the area a visit with some foreign dignitaries. While it gave rise to the term [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village "Potemkin village",]] most modern historians believe the tale to be an exaggeration or even an outright myth.
* While UsefulNotes/FrederickTheGreat is now considered by most historians to have been his period's equivalent of a homosexual, this fact about his life was denied even while he was still alive, with his physician, Ritter von Zimmermann, publishing an entire book claiming that a botched surgery on his genitals had rendered him impotent. Despite this claim being immediately denied by the very surgeon who performed the operation, the idea of Frederick being impotent stuck around for decades after his death. In UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, where homosexuality was violently suppressed, it was believed that Frederick simply had a mere hatred towards women, prioritizing administration of the state over romantic pursuits. With the discovery of several love letters exchanged between Frederick and his male partners, it is now generally accepted by historians that Frederick was in fact gay.
* The death of Adolf Frederick of Sweden being attributed to [[DeathByGluttony an excessive meal consisting of 14 helpings of his favorite dessert]] has since been doubted by modern historians, who generally attribute his death to a heart attack.
* UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution, being one of the most controversial events in world history, is often periodically updated and revised:
** UsefulNotes/MarieAntoinette's spending habits were not a major contribution to the financial crisis that helped cause the revolution. Not only do financial records prove that her spending was actually significantly ''less'' than that of many other people at Versailles (and certainly not enough to be one of the main causes of the economic problems facing the country), but France's finances were also already in a shaky situation before she arrived. While calling her spending extravagant isn't entirely inaccurate (at least taken in a vacuum), it didn't even come close to bankrupting the country; her "Madame Deficit" nickname was undeserved. If she hadn't spent a single livre between 1770 and 1789, the situation still wouldn't have been salvaged. She was simply scapegoated for a number of reasons.
** On the topic of Antoinette, the idea that the Petit Trianon royal estate was a completely private getaway where she pretended to be a commoner is now considered apocryphal by most serious historians. While it was described as "private" by contemporary sources, it was only private by the standards of a royal estate; her entourage there consisted of "only" a single footman and maybe some friends, which was small compared to the much larger one she had at Versailles. Notably, contemporary depictions of the estate make it clear that there would have been many guests and servants there. There's no evidence to back up the stories that she pretended to be a farm girl, milkmaid, shepherdess, or anything of the sort when she was there either; claims that she did can be dated to 1798 at the absolute earliest, and even that may be too generous. All contemporary evidence points to her running the ''hameau de la reine'' the way any elite landowner of the time would have managed a country estate they owned. Contemporary criticism of the hameau was about its relative secrecy and seclusion, about the supposed unethical sexual and political dealings going on there, about its expense; they make no mention of her pretending to be a peasant woman.
** Revolutionary propaganda claimed that the Storming of the Bastille resulted in the release of numerous mistreated prisoners who were locked up for political reasons. It's now known that at the time of the storming, there were only seven prisoners, none of their imprisonments were political in nature [[note]]they included four forgers, an Irishman accused of spying for the British government, a failed assassin of UsefulNotes/LouisXV, and a "deviant" aristocrat suspected of murder[[/note]] and [[LuxuryPrisonSuite they were treated quite well]]. For that matter, contrary to revolutionary claims, the Bastille was stormed to seize armaments said to be inside it, with liberation of prisoners being a secondary concern at best.
** The Sans-Culottes weren't exactly the prototypical urban proletariat they were long imagined as. In reality, they were a RagtagBunchOfMisfits that included shopkeepers, artisans, unemployed youth, low-rent actors, dissident clergy, and even aristocrats who were SlummingIt, among others.
** Mostly thanks to Anglophone portrayals, the Revolution is often painted as undone by revolutionary excess, thanks to misunderstandings of the original ReignOfTerror which is almost never presented in its original context of [[EmergencyAuthority a series of emergency laws]] to save France from CivilWar and invasion. Later historians see the Terror as being part of the Revolution's war effort, calling it the first Total War. They also note that many key reforms happened during this period: increased participation of citizens with the government, restructuring the army, building institutions like the Louvre and Jardin des Plantes, and in 1794, the [[SlaveLiberation abolition of slavery]]. Almost none of this ever gets so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a depiction, outside France itself.
** While it was long taught that the French nobility was one of the primary victims of the Reign of Terror, this is now known to be not entirely accurate. In reality, only 8% of the Terror's victims were aristocrats (though since the aristocracy made up less than 2% of the population, they still suffered disproportionate casualties), and for most of its existence, the Terror mainly targeted clergy, food hoarders and actual or accused counter-revolutionaries. There ''was'' a greater focus on nobles during the "Great Terror" after the Law of 22 Prarial, but even that was abolished in a matter of days after Robespierre fell.
** Edmund Burke's ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' was perhaps the most influential commentary on the Revolution in the Anglosphere and is still heavily cited by the most conservative commentators. However, Burke is no longer taken seriously by the majority. Alfred Cobban, a conservative historian himself, noted that Burke did very poor research on France, basing his work on memories of a single visit to the country. Burke's defenders argue that he predicted the ReignOfTerror, but the Terror was a consequence of the declaration of war, made by the Girondins and supported by Louis XVI (i.e. the more traditionalist side) and opposed by radicals like Marat and Robespierre. In addition, the essay is dated for its classist dismissal of the Third Estate as malicious rabble and "[[ValuesDissonance Jew brokers]]", and its echoing of Augustin Barruel's conspiracy theory that TheIlluminati and Freemasons orchestrated the Revolution as part of a ploy to overthrow Christendom.
---> '''Alfred Cobban:''' "As literature, as political theory, [[DamnedByFaintPraise as anything but history]], [Burke's] ''Reflections'' is magnificent."
** UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre was once often depicted as a proto-Lenin and/or a proto-Stalin when Robespierre never had anything near that level of influence and authority in actual policy-making. David A. Bell remarked that "No serious historian of the French Revolution of the past century has accepted the idea that Robespierre ever exercised a true personal dictatorship." But thanks to HollywoodHistory and Robespierre being far more well-known than most other revolutionaries, this fact has yet to trickle down to the common public.
** Speaking of Robespierre, for many years, it was said that the Reign of Terror ended after his fall from power. Today's historians take a more nuanced view. While it's true that certain laws and procedures were abolished after he and his supporters were executed, the mechanisms of the Terror continued to operate for many months.
** The Revolution has also been misunderstood as being a case of "anarchy" and mob rule with the masses rising against the nobles. In reality, the French Revolution was predominantly a middle-class revolution. The most radical major party, the Jacobins, advocated for what we would call free market capitalism. The Parisian mob so often sentimentalized and demonized rather was a highly literate community for the era (Paris had an almost entirely literate male population). More left-wing factions were actually repressed by the Jacobins.
** In the years following the Revolution, stories cropped up of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bals_des_victimes Victims' Balls,]] where people targeted by the Reign of Terror wore mourning clothes and red sashes around their necks to symbolize the guillotine they narrowly avoided. Generations of historians both inside and outside France accepted their existence as fact, but later scholarship suggested that, based on a near-total lack of primary evidence, they were more likely fabrications after the fact. Historian David Bell went so far as to call them "an invention of early 19th-century Romantic authors".
* The 1790 Footprints, a set of footprints discovered near Kīlauea on the island of Hawaiʻi, were long thought to have been left by retreating war parties led by the warlord Keōua Kūʻahuʻula that are known to have been in the area during an eruption that year. However, a 2008 forensic study determined that many of the footprints were actually left by women and children, strongly indicating that at least some of them can be attributed to everyday activities rather than warfare.
* The Haitian Revolution:
** It used to be generally thought that Haiti's population of black slaves always wanted independence. But it's now known that the majority actually supported continued French rule initially, because the first calls for independence came from slave owners, and the slaves justifiably feared even harsher treatment from their masters without the threat of retribution from the French government to keep their abuses in check.
** The story used to go that Haiti's population was divided by race. While not ''wrong'', per se, that view is now known to be a considerable simplification of how things actually were. The white population was divided based on class[[note]]the wealthy slaveowners (especially the planters) generally scoffed at the more "common" whites, while the less affluent whites resented and envied the richer ones[[/note]] and origin[[note]]French-born whites often looked down on Haiti-born whites as "provincials", while white Haitians frequently viewed the French as "outsiders"[[/note]]. As for the black population, it was also divided between the free and the slaves, as well as between those born in Haiti and those born in Africa (the former tended to view the latter as "savages", while the latter considered the former "lapdogs") and between Christians and Voudoun practitioners. Only the free people of color could really be called united.
** Until 1938, it was believed that Toussaint Louverture, the most prominent and well-regarded of the revolutionary leaders, had been a slave until the start of the revolution. That year, the discovery of a 1776 marriage certificate that referred to Louverture as a freeman proved that he had been [[SlaveLiberation manumitted]] over a decade beforehand, possibly as early as 1772.
[[/folder]]

!!Late Modern Age

[[folder:19th century]]
* UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte and UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars:
** Napoleon is now believed to have been of about average height for a man of his era. The commonly held Anglosphere idea that he was short is derived from the fact that the French foot was longer than the English foot, so the English unknowingly shaved a few inches off his height after seeing reports of how tall he was. Other possible factors were his AffectionateNickname ''le petit caporal'' and the fact that he was often surrounded by members of the Old Guard (who were mostly of above average height, making him look shorter in comparison).
** A once-popular myth about the Ulm campaign is that Austrian and Russian armies failed to join forces in time because the Austrians used the Gregorian calendar while the Russians were still using the older Julian calendar. Some historians have pointed out that this idea is contradicted by the fact that virtually all known Russian correspondence with Austria during the War of the Third Coalition made sure to include both the Gregorian and Julian dates of events as a matter of course. It's now believed things were more complicated than that: the Austrians believed Napoleon would choose to give battle in northern Italy, and their planning with the Russians reflected that fact, so both were caught off guard when Napoleon chose to focus his efforts in southern Germany instead.
* It was once generally accepted that African Americans largely had the same names as their white counterparts up until the 1960s at the earliest. This narrative was cited in Chapter 6 ''Literature/{{Freakonomics}}'' as part of an extended discussion of nominative determinism. However, [[https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-black-names-from-perlie-to-latasha-130102 analysis of census records and birth and death certificates]] has shown that "distinctively black" names have been around for much longer than that; they've been around since the Antebellum era. It's just that the names that were recognized as such were different across different eras; for example, the 1920 census shows that 99% of Americans named Booker who were alive at the time were black.
* The German Coast uprising of 1811 was long written off as a fight against bandits, if not omitted altogether. Now, though, it's understood as a major slave rebellion. The prevailing theory as to why the truth was suppressed was because an organized, politically sophisticated slave revolt that ''wasn't'' wantonly murderous didn't gel with the popular narrative among slaveowners and slavery defenders that holding on to slaves was good for everyone involved.
* 2021 saw [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/20/liberia-purchase-agreement-1821-burrowes/ the unearthing of a document]] detailing the purchase of land that would become UsefulNotes/{{Liberia}}'s capital Monrovia, which proved several widely accepted facts about said purchase to be myths.
** Once it was said that local chieftains rejected the contract because their societies prohibited the purchase and sale of land. The fact that this purchase agreement shows formal approval of the land sale proves this wrong.
** While it was said that the locals couldn't comprehend the contents of the contract because they had no knowledge of English, there is now proof that at least two of the West African signatories knew at least enough of the language to conduct negotiations in it.
** The notion that Robert Stockton forced the locals to sign the contract at gunpoint is now known to be based on a misunderstanding. While he did draw his guns during the meeting, it was to ward off two pro-slavery outsiders who tried to sabotage the negotiations. In any event, the signing only happened the day after he drew his guns, so even if he had threatened the rulers he was in talks with, they would've had ample time to mobilize their troops, many of whom had guns of their own.
* Ranavalona I, Queen of Madagascar, was not viewed in a kind light by foreign contemporaries. They strongly condemned her policies and made her out to be little more than [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen a cruel and xenophobic tyrant]], and possibly a [[TheCaligula madwoman]] to boot. However, more recent historical analyses have taken a less overtly negative stance on her, with many recharacterizing her as an astute political operator who worked to expand her realm's territory and influence and tried to preserve Malagasy political and cultural sovereignty from European encroachment.
* British machinations during the Great Game were motivated by fears that Russia would use its expansion into Central Asia as a springboard to threaten the British presence in South Asia. While this was considered a very real possibility even after the original Great Game ended, most contemporary historians believe that Russia had no serious plans for South Asia.
* Scholarly consensus on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee Thuggee]] seems to be constantly in flux. Were they really motivated by warped devotion to Kali, or were they just after money? Had they existed since antiquity, or did they only arise much later? Were they as divided as they seemed, or were they decentralized cells of a larger organization? Did they even exist at all?
* Like George III's porphyria, UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria's status as a carrier of hemophilia was also originally blamed on RoyalInbreeding. As is the case with George's porphyria, hemophilia is caused by a single mutated gene and is therefore not more common in inbred populations. The mutation is believed to have first occurred spontaneously in the gametes (=eggs/sperm) of either of Victoria's parents, making her the first person in her family ever to have the mutation. It’s now believed the mutation probably came from her father since he was in his early fifties when she was born and these types of mutations tend to pop up in the children of older fathers. Thus, inbreeding would have absolutely nothing to do with it. If anything, it's in''ter''breeding with Victoria's daughters that spread hemophilia to so many other nations' royals, whether they were previously related to her or not. American television shows ''love'' this trope, though.
* Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's reputation as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman is now known to stem from character assassination by his literary [[TheRival rival]] Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who wrote a slanderous biography of Poe full of distortions and outright lies after Poe's mysterious death in 1849. This biography was treated with undeserved credibility for a long time and became the standard for characterization of Poe.
* Franklin's lost expedition:
** Inuit accounts that some members of the expedition [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty resorted to cannibalism to survive]] were once largely considered unreliable, with the [[{{allegory}} allegorical]] play ''The Frozen Deep'' (co-written by Creator/WilkieCollins and Creator/CharlesDickens) including a TakeThat at the idea that such respected sailors and researchers would do such a disgusting thing. However, in 1992, Canadian researchers discovered the skeletal remains of some expedition members that showed evidence of having been cannibalized, most notably cut marks on bones consistent with de-fleshing. On the basis of this evidence, it's now accepted that the Inuit witnesses were right and at least some among the men turned to eating their own dead in desperation.
** More recently, the idea that lead poisoning may have played a part in the expedition's fate, showcased in both ''Series/TheTerror'' and ''ComicBook/ImEisland'' has been disproven. Although large quantities of lead were discovered in the bodies discovered from the expedition, studies indicate that they aren't enough to be harmful and are equal to others of the time.
* The Revolutions of 1848 were once considered largely failures. However, it's now believed that they had more success than previously thought. Governments were forced to change how they acted or at least presented themselves, and the revolutionaries did obtain some political successes, both immediately (such as the end of feudalism in Austria and Prussia) and in the longer term (greater self-determination for the Hungarians).
* Empress Dowager Cixi's reputation in her own lifetime and for some decades afterwards, both within China and abroad, was that of a cruel, self-serving, reactionary despot more concerned with prolonging the existence of the ailing Qing dynasty and using state resources for her own benefit than the wellbeing of her country and people, who played no small part in China's downward spiral during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This traditional appraisal, however, was called into serious question by revisionist historians starting in the 1970s. Through examination of primary sources, it has become clear that much of her bad reputation comes from backdoor gossip and misrepresentation. Within China, both Nationalist and Communist historians scapegoated her for deep-rooted problems that created a virtually unsalvageable situation; while in the Western world, Orientalist stereotypes were a contributing factor to her vilification. Many historians have painted a more nuanced portrait of her as a charming, shrewd, and conscientious administrator and political operator who had to balance multiple internal and external influences and whose leadership was probably the best option China had at the time. She was also not as anti-reform as she has often been painted; she was involved in the abolition of slavery and torture in China and led a program of sweeping political change whose main flaw was not being implemented until late in the Qing dynasty's decline.
* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar:
** After the war, it became a common refrain (especially in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy Lost Cause]] mythology) that the Confederate states seceded partly or even entirely for reasons other than slavery, the most popular one being states' rights (with the nature of those "rights" usually left nebulous). However, examination of primary sources (including the declarations made by the seceding states) reveals that the Confederate politicians were motivated largely if not completely by wanting to preserve slavery in perpetuity, which is why they were so reluctant to accept proposals that they boost their dwindling manpower by giving slaves their freedom in exchange for service in the Confederate military. Their supposed commitment to states' rights is now considered particularly laughable since the federal government of the Confederacy actually passed laws ''prohibiting'' any of its constituent states from abolishing slavery, showing where their priorities truly lay. This myth appears as recently as the 1996 ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS7E23MuchApuAboutNothing Much Apu About Nothing]]". When Apu is taking the US citizenship test, his examiner asks him about what caused the Civil War; Apu responds with a long-winded explanation of the complexities, to which the examiner annoyedly responds with "just say 'slavery'". Ironically, this means the joke has the opposite effect of its original intent; while it was originally meant to show how intelligent and knowledgeable Apu was, it now makes it look as if he unknowingly bought into a debunked myth.
*** It should be noted that the idea of the "lost cause" as we think of it was specifically created in the later part of the 19th century by those in the Confederacy who didn't want to be viewed like they supported slavery, especially as slavery became less and less popular after the passage of the 13th Amendment. The term "lost cause" specifically comes from an 1866 book by southern journalist Edward A. Pollard titled ''The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates'', Pollard having previously endorsed slavery in his writings (which even got him arrested in 1865) and still being a supporter of both segregation and white supremacy until the end of his life. Still, by this point he understood that slavery was immoral and wanted to distance those who fought on the side he supported from such a cause.
** A popular idea rose in the 1920s that the Confederacy's supposed commitment to states' rights [[WeAREStrugglingTogether prevented the Confederate states from properly coordinating with each other and the Confederate central government]], which hamstrung their war effort. This is now considered a myth: while the Confederacy did have problems with internal divisions, the impact they had is believed to have been exaggerated, and the Union ''also'' had serious internal divisions.
** The once-popular idea of the Confederates as "libertarians in gray" has been shown to be a sanitization of a more complicated reality. Throughout the Confederacy's short-lived existence, there were increasingly vocal and widespread calls for it to abandon liberal democracy and free-market capitalism in favor of adopting a more authoritarian political system (such as a military dictatorship or an absolute monarchy) and much stronger government intervention in economic matters (with some going so far as to call for something akin to a command economy).
** Robert E. Lee's traditional reputation is now believed to have been overblown. Not many seriously doubt that he was a talented commander, but it's thought that he wasn't ''as'' talented as once thought. While it was once thought that his defeats on the battlefield were the result of incompetence and/or disobedience by his subordinates (with James Longstreet in particular taking flack due to some of his postwar statements and actions), the fact that Lee willingly accepted the blame for them during his own lifetime combined with scholarly analysis of his tactics and strategies have shown that he wasn't quite the infallible general he was often made out to be.\\
\\
Lee pursued aggressive, flashy attacks which -- while they often intimidated more timid Union commanders like [=McClellan=] -- ran up casualty lists for the South, something the Confederacy could not afford as they were up against a more industrialized opponent with almost four times as many men of fighting age, and often failed to win strategic advantages in the war. For example, Lee's greatest victory in the war -- the Battle of Chancellorsville -- cost him [[PyrrhicVictory more than 20% of his troops killed or wounded (including one of his best commanders, Stonewall Jackson) in a series of audacious but bloody frontal charges, without gaining a single yard of ground for the Confederacy]]. Despite Grant's traditional reputation as a butcher, he suffered fewer casualties while commanding three armies in two different theaters than Lee did while commanding one army in one theater.
** It was traditionally held that the Confederate leadership was qualitatively superior to their Union counterparts, an advantage the Union overcame through its quantitative edge, overwhelming the Confederacy with its greater manpower, bank deposits, and industrial capacity. While these advantages certainly played a key role in the eventual Union victory, the idea that the Confederate generals were straight-up superior is now considered an exaggeration, or at least a simplification. Many Union generals, like William Tecumseh Sherman and George Henry Thomas, are now considered to have been very good commanders in their own right, while quite a few prominent Confederate generals (such as Braxton Bragg and Gideon Pillow) are now believed to have been straight-up incompetent.
** Contrary to the idea that Union generals won largely by [[WeHaveReserves sending wave after wave of troops into the meatgrinder]], it's now known that Confederate casualty rates were actually significantly higher than Union ones. In fact, Robert E. Lee had the highest casualty rates of any general on either side of the war. UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant in particular was [[HistoricalDowngrade unfairly labeled a "butcher" who won mainly through brute force]]; starting in the 1950s, the view among historians has increasingly shifted towards him being a calculating and skillful strategist and commander who had the talent to utilize the Union's potential advantages and understood how to wage war in an age of industry better than many of his contemporaries.
** Nowadays, it's known that the use of "hooker" as slang for a prostitute doesn't come from Joseph Hooker hiring prostitutes to service his soldiers. This use of the word with its popular meaning occurred in print as early as 1845 and likely comes from the fact that the Corlear's Hook area of Manhattan was a notorious RedLightDistrict in the early 19th century.
** Gettysburg as the war's main turning point is now considered a flawed idea by many historians, as it ignores the impact Union victories in Tennessee and Mississippi had. Even those who believe it ''did'' mark a turning point in the overall war generally say a large part of its impact was due to it happening the day before Vicksburg's surrender, which meant the Confederacy had been put on the backfoot in the Eastern Theater at the worst possible time.
** While the Union's conduct during the war was by no means spotless, the stories of marauding Union troops are now believed to be exaggerations. Evidence suggests that the worst offenses were generally perpetrated by opportunistic criminals and pro-Union partisans and paramilitaries, not by Union regulars. The only theater where the stereotypical raving, rapacious bluebellies could be considered the norm was the brutal fighting in Kansas and Missouri (due to a combination of preexisting strife from Bleeding Kansas and people using the conflict as an excuse/opportunity to settle old scores), and even then, pro-Confederate forces didn't exactly hold a moral edge.
* The Dunning School of Reconstruction, which held that granting blacks the vote and the right to hold office had been a mistake and Radical Republican efforts to reform the postwar South were just a means of attacking it after it had already lost the war, dominated scholarly and popular depictions of the era from the 1900s to the 1930s. Elements of this narrative appeared in ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'', a movie that infamously painted the first incarnation of the UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan as a band of morally justified vigilantes retaliating against abuses the legal authorities couldn't or wouldn't punish. However, its fundamental precepts were re-examined as [[UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement the African-American civil rights movement]] gained steam in the mid-20th century and found to be wanting. While it was true that corruption and oppression were problems, the bad parts of Reconstruction were blown out of proportion while the more positive elements were minimized or twisted. One recurring thread that got particular criticism was the characterization of freedmen as either ignorant dupes who were used and abused by unscrupulous whites (both Northern carpetbaggers and Southern scalawags) or unthinking savages whose depredations threatened civilized society. New attention was paid to the role African-Americans played in shaping the course of events as this racist attempt to diminish their capacity as independent actors capable of constructive activity fell out of favor.
* Thanks to the influence of a famous 1930s biography, it was once widely believed that Sitting Bull was made "Supreme Chief of the whole Sioux Nation" sometime during Red Cloud's War. Later historians and ethnologists have found that Lakota society was highly decentralized, with different bands being largely autonomous and their elders making most decisions, meaning that this concept of authority was probably foreign to them.
* Spurious precision exaggerated the Paraguayan casualties of the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheTripleAlliance. The traditional view was that Paraguay lost 84% of its pre-war population. This estimate was based partly on anecdotal evidence and partly on an 1857 census that is now known to have accidentally or purposely inflated the country's population. While the number of casualties will probably never be known for certain (though just about everyone agrees that military-aged males suffered disproportionate losses) and even the lowest estimates are pretty terrible in their own right (a country losing 7% of its population is certainly nothing to sneeze at), figures of more than 69% are now considered unlikely at best.
* TheWildWest:
** It's now believed that the Old West probably wasn't as violent or "wild" as generally imagined. The overall homicide rate was actually rather low in most places, about 1.5 murders per year per average western town. Additionally, those murders weren't likely to be committed with guns, and gunfights/shootouts/duels in general were not as common as is thought due to many frontier towns putting restrictions on guns. However, death from diseases like cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis, or in an accident like being kicked/dragged by your own horse, makes for far less compelling media. While there were large-scale violent events like range wars and family feuds, similar or even worse events could be found elsewhere in the country at different times (with the Coal Wars notably continuing well into the 1930s).
** The west is accepted as having been much more racially diverse in modern times than in years past or in the media. There are estimates that anywhere from about 30-50% of cowboys were black, Hispanic, or Native American. The media is largely still quite far behind on this matter as well.
** Famed gunslinger Doc Holliday was reputed in his own time and for decades afterward to have killed over a dozen men in various altercations. Modern historians have concluded that a more modest body count of between one and four men is far more likely.
* 19th-century German historians promoted what is now known as the Borussian myth, the idea that German unification was inevitable and it was Prussia's destiny to accomplish it. After World War II, this myth was deconstructed and analyzed, and is now considered merely an attempt to work backwards and rationalize why German history took the course it did.
* Assessments of George Armstrong Custer have shifted over the years. While he initially received criticism after his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, it wasn't long before the public saw him as a tragic military hero, due in no small part to a number of hagiographic books written about him by his widow Elizabeth. The disaster was frequently blamed on Marcus Reno's alleged cowardice and Frederick Benteen's alleged tardiness. This portrait of Custer translated into countless works of fiction, perhaps most famously ''Film/TheyDiedWithTheirBootsOn''. However, later historians cast a more critical eye on Custer's conduct, pointing to his refusal of reinforcements and leaving behind a battery of gatling guns despite knowing he was facing superior numbers, as well as his decision to divide his command. Though Custer still has a number of defenders, the "tragic hero" Custer is no longer the consensus. The more critical view has bled into the mainstream, with many works of fiction and popular history characterizing him as a reckless, arrogant GloryHound who needlessly got himself and hundreds of his men killed.
* For a long time, it was believed that one of the key reasons for the British defeat at Isandlwana was that the soldiers ran out of ammunition because Quartermaster Bloomfield dispensed reserve bullets to soldiers in an absurdly slow, "orderly" fashion. However, it appears this story is exaggerated, if not a myth; while Durnford's Native troops did run out of ammunition, it was mostly because they had been deployed too far from the camp to ensure a steady supply of ammo, not Bloomfield's poor handling of supply. Most British units closer to the main camp were able to keep up a steady stream of fire until they were overrun, as attested by both British and Zulu accounts of the battle. A related myth is that Bloomfield and his aides weren't able to open the ammo boxes because the commissary had misplaced their screwdrivers; even if this had been the case, the boxes could've easily been broken open with rifle butts or other tools. Both of these myths appear in the ''Film/{{Zulu}}'' prequel ''Zulu Dawn''.
* The [[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2570/did-90-000-people-die-of-typhoid-fever-and-cholera-in-chicago-in-1885 Chicago cholera epidemic of 1885]], which is claimed to have killed up to 90,000 Chicagoans after a thunderstorm washed polluted water into Lake Michigan. Historian Libby Hill debunked this in her 2000 book ''The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History'', showing that there were no contemporary records of such an epidemic; no more than 1,000 Chicagoans died from cholera, typhoid, or other diseases in 1885. Hill's book hasn't stopped newspapers, novelists, and even historians from propagating the claim, including Creator/ErikLarson's popular nonfiction book ''The Devil in the White City''.
* While the First and Second Boer Wars were commonly thought of as "white men's wars" (even when they took place), in more recent times increasing scholarly efforts have been undertaken to document the role black Africans in the region played in the conflicts, both as military personnel and non-combatants. Black people living in the Boer Republics were also forced into concentration camps, though they were separated from interned Afrikaners; Africans were also the victims of massacres (at the hands of Boer forces) and forced labor during the war.
* Painters and musicians of the 18th and 19th century were captivated by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism Orientalism]], and especially by the concept of the Turkish [[RoyalHarem harem]]. They were enraptured by the idea of hundreds of beautiful young concubines or "odalisques" loitering around in various states of undress, fawned on by cringing slaves and guarded by eunuchs, all existing solely for the pleasure of the Sultan. The best-known works influenced by this are probably Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart's ''Abduction from the Seraglio'' and Ingres's ''Art/GrandeOdalisque''.
** We now know, of course, that the RealLife Turkish harem was very different from the imaginations of these artists; most inhabitants were older female relatives of the sultan or of previous sultans, and the concubines that did live in the harem were often left to wither on the branch, most sultans being either too old, too drunk, or too uninterested to make use of them. In fact, non-castrated men were generally forbidden to enter the harem, which included the sultan himself. The task of choosing his bedmate generally fell to his mother.
** The majority of women in the Seraglio weren't on the concubine track at all, but engaged in various professions necessary to the running of the Sultan's household. A woman could make a nice little fortune for herself and look forward to eventual retirement and marriage.
* Creator/VincentVanGogh's last painting was once believed to be ''Wheatfield with Crows''. However, new studies conducted in 2020 have cast this into doubt, and a competing theory that ''Tree Roots'' was his final painting has gained significant credence.
* Some beliefs about the beatified Chilean girl Laura Vicuña are now known to be inaccurate:
** For many years that included the time of her beatification, no photograph of her was known to exist. This meant that representations of her were derived from a portrait painted by Italian artist Caffaro Rore, which was based on an account of Laura's appearance by her younger sister Julia decades after the fact. This portrait made her appear very European-looking, and other depictions followed suit. However, a rediscovered school picture of Laura has made it clear that she was actually Mestizo and looked it, and church depictions have been changed to match.
** Popular accounts of Laura's life and death have been debunked by biographers Bernhard Maier and Ciro Brugna, who have pointed out multiple inaccuracies, especially in regards to Laura's father José Domingo. Unlike in the earlier accounts, he never legally married her mother Mercedes Pino and didn't die before the family moved to Argentina; in actuality, [[OutlivingOnesOffspring he outlived Laura]], as shown in rediscovered notes saying that Laura actually offered her life for ''both'' her parents.
* While the notion that Creator/BramStoker based {{Dracula}} on UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler has been seriously discussed since at least 1958, it was the 1972 publication of ''In Search of Dracula'' that popularized it. However, the rediscovery of Stoker's notes has cast this idea into doubt:
** The notes give no indication that Stoker even knew Vlad the Impaler ''existed''. According to them, he got the name from the book ''An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia'', which contained references to multiple voivodes known as "Dracula" and a footnote claiming that "Dracula" meant "Devil" and was a name given by Wallachians to people who were particularly courageous, cruel or cunning. This strongly indicates that he chose the name because of its devilish associations, not because of the history and legends attached to its owner.
** For that matter, the idea that there was a singular model for Dracula has itself come under attack. More likely, he was a [[CompositeCharacter composite containing aspects of multiple people]], both historical figures and people Stoker knew personally.
** We now know a great deal of where Stoker's knowledge of vampire lore came from. He consulted numerous books on superstitions and added a few inventions of his own to make his vampires stand out from others. We also know more about how the novel changed over time. Originally, the count wasn't from Transylvania at all; he was from Styria in Austria. And before he came across the name Dracula, it appears Stoker was calling his vampire Count Wampyr. There are actually multiple places in his intermediate manuscripts where the name "Wampyr" is crossed out and replaced with "Dracula". If Stoker had based Dracula on Vlad, it seems likely that he would've been named that from the beginning. The evidence points to Dracula being an amalgam like many other fictional characters, a mix of information Stoker found interesting and ideas he developed on the way. Dracula isn't even representative of one European state: he's a pinch of Transylvanian folklore with a Wallachian name, a Hungarian ethnic background, and a feudal estate straight out of English GothicHorror.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:20th Century]]
* While it was once believed that Ty Cobb was one of the most violent and racist individuals to ever play baseball, it's now generally accepted among historians that his bad reputation was based on sensationalized and even outright fictionalized biographies. Cobb really did get into a number of fights, but his reputation for violence was exaggerated and what he did wasn't as extreme by the standards of the time as it would be today; though it's true that he assaulted a heckler, that was hardly uncommon in those days. Not only was he not as violent as claimed, he was also an advocate for racial equality, in contrast to the once-accepted image of him as a virulent racist, and his advocacy was recognized and praised in black newspapers of the era. He noted his approval when UsefulNotes/JackieRobinson broke the color barrier and called Roy Campanella one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, hardly statements one would expect from a man who hated black people. Before the traditional image of him was proven wrong, this characterization of Cobb was the norm in both fiction and non-fiction for decades; WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob even jokingly alluded to it (and implied it was true) in his review of ''The Babe Ruth Story''.
* For over 70 years, it was taken for granted that ill-fated Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott was a brave and noble hero undone by bad weather and bad luck. That changed dramatically with the publication of a 1979 book called ''Scott and Amundsen'' (later re-titled ''The Last Place on Earth'') which characterized Robert Scott as a bungler out of his depth. According to this view, Scott made a series of blunders that led to the deaths of him and his party, including: using ponies that were ill-suited for polar conditions (and getting weak, poor-quality ponies at that) when he had been advised to use dogs, deciding to rely on man-hauling sledges to the Pole instead of using dogs, failing to ensure that the motorized sledges would actually work, failing to lay enough fuel and supplies, choosing to take a fifth man to the Pole when they had rationed for four, and not issuing clear instructions for a dogsled party to come to his rescue. Full publication of Scott's diaries has also revealed some pretty unflattering passages, including what can only be described as irritation towards Edward Evans for dying. There has been pushback against this view since, with Scott defenders pointing out that he actually ''did'' leave orders for a relief party to come get him (although it was phrased to not be a priority), and Scott falling victim to what was, even for the Antarctic, a terrible blizzard. But even as the issue has continued to be debated, it's basically consensus that Scott's party met with failure and disaster, while Amundsen got to the Pole first and got back alive, because Amundsen's expedition was planned better and led better than Scott's.
* For decades, western historians attributed the fall of the [[UsefulNotes/DynastiesFromShangToQing Qing Dynasty]] solely to the Qing's own corruption and misrule of the Chinese people, who had since become enlightened by western ideals of democracy and political revolution. With the rise of RedChina as a serious world power, however, this consensus has been largely discredited, with the collapse of the Qing Dynasty now being attributed to the expansion of European colonial empires and the Qing's own failure to industrialize, resulting in their defeat and subjugation by their much more powerful neighbors. The 1911 revolution that ultimately brought down the Qing was caused largely by the fact that the Qing were seen as too weak to ward off foreign control, and thus the Chinese people in their revolution aimed to establish a new Chinese state which could defend itself against European intrusions.
** It was also once believed in the west that one of the main reasons the Qing were overthrown was due to their being perceived by most Han Chinese as foreigners due to their Manchu roots. This theory has also been largely disproven, as the distinction between Han Chinese and non-Han peoples was not prevalent in China at the time, and didn't become so until later in the twentieth century.
* The ''UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic'' sank on a dark, moonless night. Most survivors in lifeboats thought they saw the ship sink in one piece, while the few survivors struggling in the water thought it broke in two. The inquiry into the sinking accepted that the lifeboats had a better vantage point, and it was accepted that the ''Titanic'' sank whole. In 1985, however, the ship was found on the ocean floor in two pieces, surrounded by a debris field that could only have been created by the two pieces separating at or near the surface. All movies about the sinking filmed before 1985 show the ship sinking whole, while the ones made afterwards show it splitting before sinking.
** Creator/CliveCussler's bestseller ''Literature/RaiseTheTitanic'' (published 1976 and [[FailedFutureForecast set in 1987]]) imagines the ship in one piece. Furthermore, the book argues that thanks to the icy cold temperatures, the ship would be nearly perfectly preserved and capable of salvaging. Cussler himself wrote in later editions how he was working off the assumptions of the time and how happy he was the novel was finished before the discovery invalidated the entire plot.
** TheFilmOfTheBook was outdated even faster, being released in 1980. Here, the ship has the bridge and three of four funnels intact, and there is even a barely decomposed human body aboard!
** ''Raise the Titanic!'' also mentions the ship having a massive gash across the bow from the iceberg. In reality, the iceberg just pushed in the hull's plating to allow water to seep in (had there been such a huge gash, the ship would have sunk in half the time).
** Some works written before the wreck was found, like ''Literature/Millennium1983'' by John Varley, have the wreck never being found at all. In this case, the ship and the "casualties" were taken forward in time.
* The fatalities that occurred as a result of the Colorado Coalfield War are now believed to be significantly higher than official records suggest. Modern estimates vary significantly, but even the minimum suggested death toll of 69 is more than twice as high as the contemporary figures.
* [[UsefulNotes/TheMexicanRevolution Mexican revolutionary]] Pancho Villa signed a contract with Mutual Film Company, one where the studio paid him for the exclusive right to film his troops in battle. This much is true. However, the supposed clauses demanding Villa conduct his battles in certain ways (such as saying he could only fight in the daytime) while being recorded were proven to be apocryphal when Villa's biographer Friedrich Katz found a copy of the contract in a Mexico City archive and discovered that they were nowhere to be found.
* On a more light-hearted note, the bra was considered a very modern invention, and post-WWI women's fashion was considered revolutionary, with the earlier eras of costume popularly perceived as very restricting to women (although this latter view is often more HollywoodHistory than actual fact). With the 2008 discovery of some well-preserved textile remnants in the Austrian castle of Lengberg, it suddenly turns out that bra-like garments with separate breast cups were worn ''[[OlderThanTheyThink in the 15th century]]'', and [[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336532748_The_Lengberg_Finds_Remnants_of_a_lost_15th_century_tailoring_revolution the tailoring techniques of that time bear some surprising similarities to 1930s fashions]]... In other words, 20th-century women's fashion only reinvented the wheel.
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI:
** Studies of German documents after the fall of the Berlin Wall suggest that there might have never been a "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieffen_plan Schlieffen Plan]]", at least as most commonly presented in post-1918 literature. This is, however, hotly contested among historians.
** In Britain and the US at least, even historians who saw the war as worthwhile depicted Western Front generals like Douglas Haig and Sir John French as blundering incompetents wantonly sacrificing their men for little appreciable gain. This view was propagated by popular histories like Basil Liddell Hart's ''The History of the First World War'' and Alan Clark's ''The Donkeys'', not to mention fiction like ''Film/PathsOfGlory'' and ''Series/{{Blackadder}}''. More recent historians (Hew Strachan, Brian Bond) tend to emphasize the tactical and logistical difficulties brought by the war's unprecedented scale and new technologies (planes, tanks, gas) making it extraordinarily difficult for generals on either side to adapt. More extreme claims, like Haig's supposed obsession with cavalry, have been sharply revised. This is by no means a consensus view (see John Mosier and Denis Winter for opposing views), but analysis of WWI became less one-sided in just 20 years.
** UsefulNotes/TELawrence's reputation seems to shift with each passing decade. From the '20s through 1955, he was viewed as a ChasteHero and military genius serving both the British and his Arab allies. After Richard Aldington's ''Biographical Enquiry'' of 1955, he was viewed as some combination of ConsummateLiar, SmallNameBigEgo, and DepravedHomosexual. In the '60s, it was common to depict him as an imperialist agent knowingly selling out the Arab rebels, based on a selective reading of declassified War Office files. From the '70s onward, biographies like John Mack's ''Prince Of Our Disorder'' focused on his psychosexual hangups and literary output. More recent volumes typically explore Lawrence's military and diplomatic achievements, framing them in light of more recent events in the Middle East.
** Unlike what was claimed in some contemporary accounts, UsefulNotes/MataHari almost certainly never blew a kiss at the firing squad that executed her.
** The Treaty of Versailles was seen in its time, mostly thanks to J. M. Keynes' book ''The Economic Consequences of the Peace'', as a "Carthaginian peace" or a victor's justice forced unfairly on UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany. This was an explanation shared within Germany, [[EnemyMine by liberals, by conservatives, by centrists, by socialists, by fascists, and by communists]], who agreed with Keynes because of his later fame as an economist. Decades later, the French economist Etienne Mantoux debunked Keynes' analysis, and historians A.J.P. Taylor, Fritz Fischer, and Hans Mommsen argued that Imperial Germany was truly culpable for the First World War, and deserved to pay reparations. They also claimed that the real problem with the reparations was that they were ''too lenient'', [[https://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Guilt-trip--Versailles--avant-garde---kitsch-7942 as Germany was in a position to pay]], meaning that Versailles was a GoldenMeanFallacy that humiliated Germany politically but left it in a militarily and economically secure position to act on its desire for vengeance, while at the same time leaving the League of Nations with no force and authority to enforce the conditions of the Treaty.
* Remember [[UsefulNotes/RasputinTheMadMonk Rasputin]]? The mad monk who was [[RasputinianDeath poisoned, beaten, and shot in the head four times before being thrown in the icy Neva River, and when they fished him out they discovered that he'd drowned]]? Turns out, the entire story was probably not true. The autopsy report (discovered after the fall of the Iron Curtain) states that Rasputin was shot in the head by a .455 Webley revolver, a gun normally issued at the time to British Secret Intelligence Service, and died instantly. There was no evidence of poison, no evidence of pre-mortem beating, and no evidence of drowning. Whether he was killed by the SIS or by Prince Felix Yusupov, who had close ties to the British government, using a British gun, will probably never be known, but the story of poisoned cakes and wine and the indestructible mad monk seems to be an invention. It's even unwise to read too much into the murder weapon being a Webley because, while it was issued to the SIS, the revolver and its ammunition could be bought all over the world and was a popular sporting and self-defence weapon.
* It was speculated for decades that [[DidAnastasiaSurvive Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia survived the execution of her family by the Bolsheviks]]. This inspired two movies and numerous pretenders who claimed to be Anastasia or one of her sisters.[[note]]In Russia, the sister believed to have survived was either Maria or Tatiana; in the West, it was Anastasia.[[/note]] Later, the Romanovs' mass grave was found and five of the seven family members were identified; Alexei (the only son) and either Anastasia or Maria remained missing. In 2007, charred remains of a boy and girl were found near the mass grave, and in 2009 they were proven through DNA testing to be Alexei and one of his sisters, proving definitively that the whole Romanov family was killed.
* [[http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp Mussolini did not make the trains run on time.]] Even in his own time, some observers (namely American journalist George Seldes) called Mussolini on this, but the myth persisted (and nobody stopped him from lying about it).
* Thanks to the influence of UsefulNotes/LeonTrotsky and his writings, it was once a common belief among the anti-Stalinist left that UsefulNotes/JosefStalin was just being used as a [[PuppetKing front-man]] by a nebulous conspiracy of "Bolshevik Rightists". It's now understood that this viewpoint was due to Trotsky fatally [[UnderestimatingBadassery underestimating]] Stalin, a fact he himself acknowledged later on.
* The Zinoviev letter, a supposed directive from the Comintern to the Communist Party of Great Britain, was widely thought to be genuine for decades. Since the 1960s, however, the consensus has been that it was a forgery designed to energize the Conservative Party's base and undermine support for UsefulNotes/RamsayMacDonald's government.
* In 1928, a young woman named Nan Britton wrote a book claiming that her daughter Elizabeth Ann had been fathered by US President UsefulNotes/WarrenGHarding, dead with no known children in 1923. She was generally dismissed as delusional: the book was terribly written, it had outright ridiculous parts like Britton claiming to have had sex with Harding in a closet in the executive office of the White House, and Harding's family said that he was infertile. Yet in 2015, a DNA test proved that Harding really was the father of Britton's daughter. Funnily enough, in a rare inversion of this trope, ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'' presented Nan's claims as true [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting several years before they were proven right]].
* Today, it's generally accepted that UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan didn't really have a coherent state ideology. Different nationalist and military leaders had different interpretations of how to achieve an ideal nationalist state, with different degrees of militarism and authoritarianism, and they frequently disagreed with each other. Some were into ultratraditionalist Buddhist esotericism, others were arch-modernizers and wanted a totalitarian state to industrialize more and more, and still others were even genuine pan-Asianists that wanted Japan to become leaders of an anti-colonial East Asia (members of this last group generally had little authority outside the production and distribution of propaganda).
* While Eliot Ness certainly disrupted UsefulNotes/AlCapone's operations, the animosity between them is now considered to have been exaggerated. Capone was significantly more concerned with rival gangsters than he was with federal agents, and there's no hard evidence that the two ever met until 1932 -- at the very end of Capone's criminal career when Ness was helping escort Capone to prison.
* There were a lot of misconceptions widely held about Creator/AlfredHitchcock, the way he worked, and even his own personality that were taken as fact until quite recently:
** It was commonly believed that Hitchcock pre-planned all his films, that he story-boarded all the scenes in his films to the last detail and never improvised or changed his mind during production. As Bill Krohn's ''Hitchcock at Work'' reveals, while Hitchcock ''did'' in fact do a great deal of pre-planning, not all of his films were such models of efficiency as he led everyone to believe. To begin with, Hitchcock shot all his films in sequence rather than out of narrative order. This was rare and exceptional in [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood the Golden Age]], and it meant that a surprising number of his films went over-budget and over-schedule, which never became a problem for him because they were all hugely successful at the box office and because Hitchcock managed [[GuileHero to convince film journalists]] [[BeneathSuspicion that there was nothing to see there]].
** A number of his movies actually went into production without a complete script. These included the remake of ''Film/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch'' and ''Film/StrangersOnATrain'' and also ''Film/{{Notorious|1946}}'', which was more or less [[WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants made up as it went along]]. Likewise, while Hitchcock did storyboard a large portion of his scenes, he also winged it on many occasions. The famous crop-duster sequence in ''Film/NorthByNorthwest'' wasn't storyboarded at all, but after the film was finished, Hitchcock commissioned artists to create new storyboards based on the scene he shot for promotional purposes, to make it look like he planned the whole thing all along. And likewise, many of the scenes in his films differed from how they were storyboarded.
** Hitchcock also had a tendency to deflect or invent excuses to explain the reasons certain films didn't work. In the case of ''Film/{{Suspicion}}'', he said that the film's ending was rejected because audiences didn't want Creator/CaryGrant to be a villain and a KarmaHoudini, implying that the studio originally ''approved'' a script with such an ending to begin with[[note]]An impossibility given the nature of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode which pre-approved and vetoed all properties and scripts in the pre-production stage[[/note]]. It's now known that in actual fact, the original ending of ''Film/{{Suspicion}}'' ended much the way the film currently does, differing only in that preview audiences didn't find it as laughably funny as the one Hitchcock shot[[note]]Hitchcock's real ending had Joan Fontaine drinking the glass of milk she thought was poison only to survive and then hearing a commotion and barely stopping Cary Grant's character from committing suicide. Audiences found this ending a little too bizarre and out of nowhere[[/note]].
* Ma Barker was once thought to be the [[TheQueenpin leader]] of the Barker–Karpis Gang, gaining a reputation as a ruthless criminal matriarch who organized and controlled her sons' activities. J. Edgar Hoover's characterization of her as "the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade" was cemented in popular culture for a long time with her depictions in movies like ''Ma Barker's Killer Brood'' and ''Bloody Mama''. Nowadays, however, most historians believe this popular image of her is an exaggeration. While she did know of her sons' criminal activities and provided a certain degree of support (which made her an accomplice to their crimes), there's no evidence that she was personally involved in planning or executing them, surviving members of the gang insisted she was only tangentially involved, and the gang's actual leader was more likely a Canadian gangster named Alvin Karpis. It's widely suspected that Hoover tarnished her reputation to avoid criticism for her death in a shootout between the FBI and her son Fred; according to this theory, he figured it would be easier to stomach the death of an old woman with no warrant for her arrest if she was made out to be a criminal mastermind who shot at {{FBI Agent}}s.
* When UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg suffered its infamous explosion, suspicions that it was destroyed in an act of deliberate sabotage led to decades of speculation. This even became a major part of the plot of ''Film/TheHindenburg1975'', where a Luftwaffe colonel investigates a plot to bomb the zeppelin on what would turn out to be its fateful final voyage. However, examination of declassified FBI documents has led most historians to conclude that the disaster really was an accident, and any "evidence" pointing to one or more people trying to destroy the zeppelin was most likely mere coincidence.
* On account of being controversial and a major celebrity, there were huge numbers of myths spread about Creator/OrsonWelles that are now known to be false:
** The initial radio broadcast of ''Radio/TheWarOfTheWorlds1938'' allegedly causing mass hysteria and chaos because people thought that Earth really ''was'' being attacked by Martians: there is no evidence of any "mass hysteria," riots, looting, or chaos taking place that night or in the days that followed. Also, according to a kind of ratings data, the entire United States was ''not'' tuned in to that particular broadcast; only a relatively small number of people actually listened to it, certainly not enough for there to be "mass hysteria." Even among those, very few could be described as panicking. Most just called up the newspapers and police to learn if something was really going on.
** Due to the high-profile ExecutiveMeddling on some of his films, Welles was often held as the emblematic "irresponsible director" by critics and the emblematic martyr of creative expression by supporters. Now, of course, Welles does bear some amount of blame for the way his career turned out, and his feuds with his former colleagues were by no means one-sided and by all accounts he did have a self-righteous and myth-making tendency, but this wasn't in any sense exceptional in kind or degree, or atypical of show business types. For one thing, Welles never quite made films on very expensive budgets (unlike, say, Creator/{{Michael Cimino|Director}}); indeed, Welles was critical of UsefulNotes/NewHollywood for [[YouthIsWastedOnTheDumb young directors being given such large amounts of money]] for personal films, feeling it would lead to irresponsible behavior, concerns that were [[CassandraTruth dismissed at the time]]. Even ''Film/CitizenKane'' was relatively cheap compared to other films of its kind, and that film had a smooth, competent production; the controversy around the film began during the editing and around the time of its release. The majority of Welles' films were made on low budgets and they were delayed because of the usual low-budget difficulties, but even given all that, Welles had a gift for working very fast, quickly and improvising and maximizing from very limited resources, as well as having enough people skills to command loyalty from production crew and actors to stick with him in very trying circumstances.
** Many once widely believed misconceptions about ''Film/CitizenKane'' and its production originated in Creator/PaulineKael's essay "Raising Kane", written to accompany the published screenplay. Besides propagating the CommonKnowledge that Welles carelessly forgot to explain how anyone knew Charles Foster Kane's last words when there was nobody around to hear them,[[note]]In actuality, Kane's butler Raymond says he was there when his boss died; we just don't see him because the entire scene is shot in extreme close-ups (in fact, the scene may have been shot from Raymond's POV)[[/note]] she argued at length that Creator/HermanMankiewicz was the sole author of the screenplay, with Welles [[StealingTheCredit merely stealing credit after the fact]] -- an argument that's still popular today. In reality, the two wrote separate drafts of the script and Welles combined together before shooting began, so the co-author credit is accurate.
** As for Welles' films being taken away from him, and him being a martyr for artistic expression, the majority of Welles' completed films (''Citizen Kane'', ''Macbeth'', ''The Tragedy of Othello'', ''Chimes at Midnight'', ''The Trial'', ''The Immortal Story'', ''F For Fake'') are now known to exist as per his intentions with full AuteurLicense. This actually makes him exceptional to most directors of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood (who would be lucky to even be allowed in the editing room and many of whom at the end of their careers would only claim three or four films as works they were entirely satisfied with). The likes of Creator/GeorgeCukor and Creator/KingVidor who enjoyed far more prolific Hollywood careers faced ExecutiveMeddling far more often; for just one example, ''Film/AStarIsBorn1954'' was butchered worse than any of Welles' films (in fact, the movie's ReCut version has to be filled in ''with production stills''). It also differentiates him from Creator/ErichVonStroheim (who with the exception of ''Blind Husbands'' faced ExecutiveMeddling ''on each and every one of his films''). The butchering of some of Welles' films (''Touch of Evil'', ''The Magnificent Ambersons'', ''Mr. Arkadin'') is more well known, and in each case, Welles finished shooting, and he's relatively fortunate for the fact that, ''Ambersons'' excepted, his films are generally capable of being reconstructed.
* About UsefulNotes/NaziGermany, the conversations Hermann Rauschning claimed to have had with UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, which he wrote down in his book ''Conversations with Hitler'' (''Hitler Speaks'' in the UK). Modern historians specializing in Nazism have since questioned the authenticity of said conversations, and the most serious among them such as Ian Kershaw tend to simply disregard them. Some documentaries such as ''Film/DeNurembergANuremberg'' made ample use of them before more research was done.
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII:
** For a while, it was assumed that Nazi Germany was [[GermanicEfficiency efficiently-run]] because of its fast ascension from economic devastation to conqueror of Europe. For example, in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "Patterns of Force", this view led a misguided historian to believe he could make it work without the ethical problems. Creator/PhilipKDick also wrote the AlternateHistory novel ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle'' on the assumption that the Nazis were capable of overrunning half the planet. Since then, a lot of evidence has drawn historians to the conclusion that the regime was full of internal corruption and egotistical rivalries, which [[FascistButInefficient hurt its efficiency in many ways]]. Some of this was by design: Hitler wanted his subordinates feuding with each other, both out of [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinist ideology]] and because bitter rivals would be much less likely to join forces and [[TheCoup seize power from him]]. Ultimately, the modern historical view is that Germany did as well as it did in the first half of WWII ''in spite of'' the Nazi regime, and a lot of it had more to do with Allied {{General Failure}}s and unwillingness to take decisive action until the winter of 1939-40.
** While the image of Polish cavalry charging at German tanks with lances and sabers is undoubtedly iconic and has been interpreted in many different lights, it's now known to be based on a misunderstanding. War correspondents saw the corpses of Polish cavalrymen and horses near German tanks in the aftermath of the Battle of Krojanty and incorrectly assumed the Poles had tried to charge them, a misinterpretation Nazi and later Soviet propaganda ran with. What really happened was that a group of Polish cavalry made a surprise charge that dispersed a resting German infantry unit, only to be themselves surprised by a German armor column that drove up a nearby road. Note also that the cavalry unit was not a traditional 19th century cavalry that attacked with swords from horseback, they were a modern (for the time) partially mechanized unit armed with anti-tank rifles and TKS tankettes that dismounted to fight.
** Italo Balbo's death in a 1940 friendly fire incident was long suspected to be an assassination ordered by UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini. These rumors have been conclusively debunked, and it's now generally accepted that Balbo's aircraft was simply mistaken for a British plane.
** The Pearl Harbor attack has become enshrined in history as brilliantly planned and executed primarily as a CYA and face-saving gesture for both sides. In reality, Fuchida's execution was effective but not brilliant and Genda's attack plan contained fundamental errors that become apparent in hindsight. The US Military played up the brilliance of the attack to make their own mistakes seem less important. And the mythical "third wave" attack on the oil storage facilities was not considered by Genda or Fuchida until after the war when they realized it was what their US interrogators wanted to hear and went SureLetsGoWithThat. A lot of this is thanks to the Pearl Harbor raid only being a small part of a simultaneous attack at targets right across the Pacific that was otherwise a complete success.
** The Battle Off Samar:
*** It became ShroudedInMyth fairly quickly: Modern scholarship comparing photographs and cinematography with the various ship's logs and action reports revealed that the traditional narrative of the battle promulgated in Samuel Eliot Morrison's ''Literature/HistoryOfUSNavalOperationsInWorldWarII'' simply cannot be reconciled with the courses and positions of the Japanese ships involved. Even if Morrison had access to Japanese primary sources the heroic nature of the engagement and triumphalist tenor of the times could have prevented him from cross-checking "his" heroic sailors' accounts against their defeated enemies'. Among other things, the battleships ''Yamato'' and ''Nagato'' played a much bigger role in the battle than previously believed (the shell that crippled USS ''White Plains'' was almost certainly fired by ''Yamato'' from an estimated range of 31.6 km, eclipsing by a wide margin the record-setting 24 km hits by ''Scharnhorst'' against HMS ''Glorious'' and by HMS ''Warspite'' against ''Guilio Cesare''), and the torpedo salvo that forced ''Yamato'' to steam north out of battle was probably fired by USS ''Hoel'', and not USS ''Johnston'' as commonly reported.
*** Japanese cruiser ''Chokai'' was proposed to have been fatally damaged by hits from USS ''White Plains'' sole 5-inch gun but it sank leaving only one survivor, and the sole surviving Japanese source (''Haguro''[='=]s action report) to mention ''Chokai''[='=]s damage states that it came from an air attack. ''Chokai'''s wreck was found in 2019 with all of her torpedo launchers and reloads intact, debunking its sinking by ''White Plains''. Instead, evidence was found for a disabling hit on one turret, which was also mentioned in her action log.
** It was once generally held that the battleship ''Yamato'' was sunk mostly intact. But it's now known that this was not the case: the ship's ammunition exploded while sinking, splitting off the bow and forcing out its monster turrets, and the wreckage is more or less torn to pieces.
** During the war, much was made of a document known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Memorial "Tanaka Memorial"]], supposedly written by Japanese Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka in the 20s and detailing the steps that Japan would take to conquer Asia and then the world.[[note]]Essentially: Step 1 -- conquer Manchuria and Mongolia; Step 2 -- Use that as a springboard to conquer China; Step 3 -- Use the conquest of China to dominate and eventually conquer the rest of Asia; [[MissingStepsPlan Step 4 -- ???]]; Step 5 -- JapanTakesOverTheWorld[[/note]] The document was widely believed to be genuine (as shown in ''Series/WhyWeFight''), though well-informed observers doubted it already, and it was decisively exposed as a forgery following the Tokyo Trials. It's still not sure who committed the forgery (some sources say it was the Kuomintang regime or the Chinese Communist Party trying to garner more foreign support for their wars against Japan,[[note]]This theory has credence as the "memorial" was first published in 1929 in a [=KMT=] newspaper[[/note]] others say it was the Soviet NKVD hoping to pull a LetsYouAndHimFight between the West and Japan). The document seemed credible because Japan was indeed engaged in an (undeclared) war with China at the time.
** ''Film/EnemyAtTheGates'' is often mocked for its portrayal of Stalingrad (most notably for showing unarmed Russians charging German machine guns and getting killed by their own officers for retreating). However, the film is actually (loosely) based on a 1973 non-fiction book of the same name, which draws its content from archives and actual anecdotes from soldiers. Unfortunately, governments classified most of their WWII archives at the time and only granted the author access to a select few, and many of the soldiers interviewed turned out to be {{Unreliable Narrator}}s. The {{sniper duel}} is largely based on an interview with the real-life Vasily Zaitsev during the battle, but scholars have failed to find the dueling sniper in German archives (called Major Walter König in contemporary Soviet news, and Heinz Thorvald in Zaitsev's biography). It's now generally accepted to be Soviet propaganda.
** For decades, it was believed that the ''Wehrmacht'' was (aside from the top brass and a handful of "bad apples") a mostly apolitical fighting force that was by and large not involved with the Holocaust or other Nazi war crimes. This was largely because the ''Wehrmacht'''s history immediately after the war was written in part by the very same generals who ran it and who sought to 'rehabilitate' its image, as well as their own actions. While there were some [[note]]like William L. Shirer, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Manfred Messerschmidt, Klaus-Jürgen Muller, Volker R. Berghahn, Christian Streit, Omer Bartov, Alfred Streim, Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm[[/note]] who dissented from this consensus, they were a distinct minority, especially in Germany. The idea started to crumble in the 1980s as new avenues of research opened up, and the fall of communism allowed historians access to documentation and material evidence that had previously been shut up in archives behind the Iron Curtain. By the mid-1990s, evidence that the ''Wehrmacht'' had been complicit and even actively involved in Nazi war crimes (including the Holocaust) became overwhelming. Now the consensus is that, while there were many within the ''Wehrmacht'' who were not involved in these crimes and some who even actively tried to protect people, the ''Wehrmacht'' as an institution was intimately linked with the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
** Albert Speer's conduct during the war has also had some reappraisal over the years. This started at the Nuremberg Trials, where Speer presented himself to the court and the wider public as the [[TokenGoodTeammate token 'Good Nazi']], a ConsummateProfessional devoid of ideology who was Hitler's only true friend, did not know anything about the Holocaust beyond rumors, and whose conscience drove him to refuse Hitler's final "scorched earth" orders and even attempted to assassinate him. While the assassination claim was dismissed as a fabrication even by his former colleagues, his sudden atonement saved Speer from the hangman's noose and he was sentenced to twenty years at Spandau Prison instead. This 'Speer Myth' became the dominant narrative, later codified through his own memoirs. Several historians who did more digging into his record came to question this, including proof that he was present at the 1943 Posen Speeches where UsefulNotes/HeinrichHimmler clearly outlined what was happening in the SS camps, and Speer's rather eager use of slave labor as Minister of Armaments, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths of primarily 'Eastern workers'. He also directly ordered the dispossession of Jewish tenants in Berlin when he was still simply Hitler's chief architect before the war. While several works of fiction until the mid-2000s (such as ''Film/{{Downfall}}'') still give him a fairly sympathetic portrayal, some more recent works (such as ''ComicBook/{{Uber}}'') have accurately reflected the fact that he was one of the key Nazis leading Germany's war effort, not a blameless bureaucrat.
** Isoroku Yamamoto's talk of dictating peace talks in the White House was far from the jingoistic boast it was thought to be at the time. The actual context of the quote was him trying to impress upon his superiors the true enormity of the task they had set themselves in attacking Pearl Harbor — Yamamoto wasn't promising to dictate peace terms in the White House, he was saying that the only way for Japan to definitively win against the United States was to invade, fight across the breadth of the American continent and do just that. In short, he was telling his superiors "you're asking the impossible. They're not going to roll over and die with one bloody nose."
** The idea that Hitler could have won the war had he just listened to his generals is now mostly considered a myth [[UnreliableNarrator promoted by surviving German generals]]. While Hitler certainly made some serious mistakes during the course of the war, it's believed that there were multiple times when he made the right calls, with many historians pointing to cases where he went against his generals' recommendations and succeeded and instances when he went along with his generals (sometimes despite his own misgivings) and things went poorly. Even his long-derided decision to prioritize the Caucasus offensive over taking Moscow is now thought to be a case where Hitler was right and his generals were wrong: taking Moscow wouldn't have made the Soviets capitulate, and Germany and its allies ''really'' needed the oil that the Caucasus oil fields could provide.
** The Kokoda Track campaign was long mythologized in Australia as part of the "Anzac spirit", which has led to some myths about the campaign gaining credence for a long time. One well-known example is the Battle of Isurava: for a long time, it was mythologized as "Australia's Thermopylae", where an Australian force that was defeated by the Japanese nevertheless fought a successful delaying action against an overwhelmingly more numerous enemy and managed to inflict more casualties than it sustained. However, it's now known that the Australians outnumbered the Japanese in the battle, and their successful withdrawal had more to do with Japanese tactical errors than any special Australian moves.
** Outside of Poland, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Wednesday_of_Olkusz Bloody Wednesday of Olkusz]] was long misrepresented as a specifically anti-Semitic event. Now it's generally understood that the atrocity indiscriminately harmed both Jewish and non-Jewish Poles; in fact, the majority of the victims were actually Gentiles.
** There was no Japanese propaganda radio broadcaster who went by TokyoRose. It was a nickname given by American newspapers to describe these broadcasters, who were later conflated into one person by propaganda. While the idea of a singular "Tokyo Rose" started out as merely symbolic for Japanese propaganda as a whole, it was later taken at face value.
*** Further, the woman who was finally identified as "Tokyo Rose", Iva Toguri d'Aquino, wasn't the mythical propagandist either. She broadcasted under the name "Little Orphan Annie" among others. Also, she was not a dyed-in-the-wool Japanese supporter by any means. She was actually a ''Nisei'' (American born of Japanese descent) and [=UCLA=] student who had encountered the great misfortune of being in Japan visiting a dying relative at the time of Pearl Harbor. Due to her fluency in English, she was forced into making propaganda broadcasts aimed at the Allied forces, with the unwilling help of American and British [=POW=]s. She and they colluded to try to defang any propaganda value that the broadcasts would have, according to testimony from those same prisoners during Toguri's 1946 treason trial.
** Few historians now seriously consider the idea that Operation Sea Lion had a realistic chance of defeating Britain. Even if the Luftwaffe had managed to defeat the Royal Air Force, the invasion would've been a logistical nightmare, German intelligence efforts against Britain had already been subverted, and the Royal Navy would've wrought merry havoc on German shipping. The Germans also had a crucial lack of vessels that could be used as landing craft, with their best substitute being river barges that would have had a rough time coping with the strong seas of the Channel, meaning that it's questionable whether an invasion would have even been feasible. Indeed, at least one reason Hitler shifted his gaze East was that he knew Germany didn't possess the navy needed to invade Britain. A 1974 wargame conducted by Royal Military Academy Sandhurst concluded that the invasion, if attempted, would have been a resounding failure.
** Some once generally uncontested claims about the sinking of the USS ''Indianapolis'' have become more controversial or have been outright proven false.
*** The ship's captain, Charles B. [=McVay=] III, was long held responsible for the sinking, especially after he was convicted on charges of incompetence and negligence. While he always had defenders who claimed he was convicted unfairly so he could be used as a [[TheScapegoat scapegoat]] for the loss of life, they were a distinct minority. That was, until research conducted by Hunter Scott in 1998 brought renewed attention to extenuating circumstances that undermined the case against [=McVay=], notably the fact that he was not warned about Japanese submarines in the area and also that his request for a destroyer escort was rejected by naval command, who assumed the area he was sailing in was safe. Now, he's generally considered to have been a fall guy to draw the blame away from the higher-ups who were responsible for putting the ship in danger, and he was exonerated in 2000.
*** While it's long been claimed that huge numbers of the ship's crew were killed by [[ThreateningShark sharks]], perhaps most famously in Quint's iconic monologue from ''Film/{{Jaws}}'', these claims have become hotly contested in the 21st century. Many have gone on record stating that it's likely that sun exposure, thirst, hunger, bleeding, internal injuries, and even suicide killed far more people than the sharks did; with sharks getting a disproportionate share of the blame due to a combination of post-traumatic stress and people mistaking scavenging for predation. To back up these claims, historians and marine biologists have pointed out that Oceanic Whitetips, the species the lion's share of shark deaths in the incident have been attributed to, are now believed to be primarily scavengers. A 2017 investigation hosted by ''Shark Week'' determined that the number of fatalities caused by sharks was most likely in the low dozens.
** Similarly to the claims that sharks killed most of the ''Indianapolis'' survivors, the Battle of Ramree Island has long been said to have seen the worst animal attack in recorded history, where a Japanese battalion trapped in the island's mangrove swamps by British and Indian forces was nearly wiped out by [[NeverSmileAtACrocodile saltwater crocodiles]]; of the 1,000 Japanese soldiers in the wetlands, only 20 survived, with the vast majority of the deaths being attributed to crocodile attacks. It even won a Guinness World Record for the single worst animal attack on humans in recorded history. This is no longer considered credible by most serious historians: while it's certainly not implausible that at least a few of the Japanese were killed by crocs, it's unlikely that the number needed to kill so many people would have willingly gathered in such a small area. What's more likely is that the majority of the Japanese troops died from drowning and/or being shot, with many if not most of the deaths attributed to crocodiles actually being the crocs scavenging on Japanese who were already dead.
** The Bombing of Dresden's death toll was a subject of debate for a long time, but the idea that up to 500,000 people were killed was considered at the very least credible... until it was discovered that the document these higher estimates were based on, the supposed ''Tagesbefehl 47'', was actually a forgery promulgated by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
*** An inflated figure of over 100,000 appears in ''Literature/SlaughterhouseFive'' along with references to David Irving’s then-recent account of the bombing. Irving has since been widely discredited for his pro-Nazi sympathies and Holocaust denial, and Irving himself appears to have retracted the claim and admitted it was based on fabricated evidence.
** ''Werwolf'' was traditionally thought to be intended as a guerrilla force that would harass Allied occupiers after the defeat of Germany. This was in fact a misconception created by the Nazi propaganda station Radio Werwolf, which broadcasted claims that the Germans would continue the fight even if all of Germany was captured; despite its name, it had no actual connection with the ''Werwolf'' unit. Rather than a clandestine organization of irregulars and partisans who would carry out an insurgency, ''Werwolf'' was made up of uniformed commandos who would clandestinely operate behind Allied lines in parallel with the troops fighting in front of the lines. Some within ''Werwolf'' may have continued to operate for a few months after the end of the war, but whether actions frequently credited to them can actually be attributed to any member of the group is questionable and most serious historians agree that ''Werwolf'' ceased to be a threat by Autumn 1945.
** Since Nazi Party Chancellery chief Martin Bormann seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth in the last days of the war in Europe, it was long speculated that he might've escaped. He was even tried ''in absentia'' at the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to death for his complicity in German war crimes. That changed in 1973 when a skeleton discovered by construction workers in Berlin the previous year was determined to be Bormann's. Any reasonable doubt was dispelled in 1998 when genetic testing was done on fragments of the skull conclusively proved that Bormann did indeed die in 1945, either committing suicide or being killed in a firefight shortly after leaving the Fuhrerbunker. Before this, however, many works of fiction would imply or outright state that he was still alive somewhere out there; for example, ''Film/WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' (released in 1971) had a "Paraguayan gambler" with a suspicious resemblance to Bormann fraudulently claim to have won a Golden Ticket.
** Once, it was believed that Francoist Spain saved vast numbers of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis, but it's now understood that previous claims were exaggerated and Spain's actual efforts were more half-hearted and inconsistent. While it's true that the Spanish government allowed 25,000-30,000 Jews to leave Continental Europe through Spain, it failed to repatriate or otherwise protect the vast majority of Sephardi Jews living under Axis occupation, and it severely limited visas granted to Jews from 1943 onwards. Some actions previously credited to the Spanish government were later found to have been carried out by individual Spaniards acting on their own initiative. Not only that but documents uncovered in 2010 show that in 1941, Franco's government collected a list of all Jews living in Spain at the time; the fact that Franco was negotiating a potential alliance with the Axis at the time strongly indicates that he was willing to sacrifice them if he thought it would benefit him to do so.
** UsefulNotes/PopePiusXII was long criticized for his supposed inactivity in allowing the Jews and others to be slaughtered by the Nazis and their allies, with a number of possible reasons being suggested for his allegedly doing so. It is now known, however, that behind the public façade of stubborn neutrality, Pius was busily working to save countless souls from the Nazis and established links with the German Resistance. He allowed officials within the Catholic Church to do whatever they could to protect those targeted for death in the Holocaust and may have actively encouraged and masterminded such activity. Contrary to his nickname of "Hitler's Pope", it is now known that Hitler (who was at least somewhat aware of what Pius was doing but couldn't openly act against him as long as he kept up his public face of neutrality) referred to Pius as "Nazism's greatest enemy".
*** This is not to say that the Catholic Church did not occasionally brush with Nazism. Many German Catholics (Catholicism being the branch of Christianity Hitler aligned himself with publicly) engaged in aid to the Nazis, rather it be through celebrating Hitler's birthday, breaking the seal of confessionals, or turning over birth records to the Nazis. In the same regard, one of the most famous Nazi sympathizers in the United States was Charles Coughlin, a Catholic Priest. Mussolini and Franco (the second of which the Church was friendly with, although that could more be seen more as the the result of fighting against radical anti-Catholics during the Spanish Civil War) were also publicly Catholic. However, it is important to remember that no religious belief can be judged by its worse members. Furthermore, although it is not unfair to say the Church has gone along with fascist leaders and thinkers in the past, to say they were somehow fine with The Holocaust just has no historical basis.
** Many otherwise-well-done books about the war suffer badly from the fact that they were written when all mention of [[ReadingTheEnemysMail the Allies' extensive code-breaking operations]] were still highly classified. For example, the British codebreaking operation codenamed ULTRA was pivotal in winning the Battle of the Atlantic, but no book published prior to 1974 will even mention it.
** The American understanding of the Battle of Midway had to be heavily revised when American historians discovered that the book that American authors had previously used as a primary reference for the Japanese side of the battle (''MIDWAY: The Battle That Doomed Japan'' by Nagumo's senior pilot Fuchida Mitsuo) contained some major lies about the battle -- not just mistakes, but outright and intentional '''lies'''. Somewhat ironically, this had long been known in Japan, and ''Senshi Sōsho'', the Japanese military's official history of the war published in the 1970s, gave a more accurate version of events on the Japanese side. But ''Senshi Sōsho'' had never been translated into English, so the American version remained wrong until the publication of ''Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway'' in 2004.
** The notion of Adolf Eichmann as nothing more than an average desk worker who had no interest in doing any of the terrible actions he engaged in, one that was popularized by the 1963 book ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil'', has been more or less dismissed by modern historians. Bettina Stangneth's 2011 work ''Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer'' is considered to have debunked the idea, proving that Eichmann was motivated by antisemitism and allegiance to Nazi ideology and not, as was once thought, a man who was simply doing what he thought his job was.
* The ''Sonderweg'' theory of German historiography claims that Germany followed a course from aristocratic to democratic government unlike any other in Europe, one that made the rise of something like Nazism almost inevitable. Once accepted nearly universally, it has been the subject of serious criticism since the 1980s, with some historians pointing to the experiences of Britain and France in the 19th century as the exception rather than the norm, and others claiming that the liberal German middle class held more influence than previously thought. While the idea of the ''Sonderweg'' isn't exactly discredited and still has its adherents, it's no longer considered the gospel truth it once was.
* In the aftermath of World War II, it was alleged that an underground, clandestine organization known as ODESSA (from the German: ''Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen'', meaning: Organization of Former SS Members) was set up by SS officers in either the war's last days or its immediate aftermath to help Nazis escape to [[ArgentinaIsNaziland South America]] or the Middle East. Today, however, it is generally believed no organization by that name actually existed.
* Dr. Charles R. Drew[[note]]An African American physician who pioneered new techniques of storing blood for transfusions, which is credited with saving the lives of countless soldiers during World War II[[/note]] dying after being denied admittance to a whites-only hospital because of his skin colour when he was injured in a car crash, and thus ([[DeathByIrony ironically]]) not receiving a blood transfusion. This gets a mention in an episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}''. He was actually admitted to the Alamance Greater Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina, and was pronounced dead half an hour after receiving medical attention. One of the passengers in Dr. Drew's car, John Ford, stated that his injuries were so severe -- mostly in his leg due to his foot being caught under the brake pedal when the car rolled three times -- that there was virtually nothing that could have saved him and a blood transfusion might have killed him sooner due to shock.
* Creator/EdWood is often called "the worst director of all time"; however, some film historians now dispute that. His movies were bad, there's still no doubt about it, but they were closer to ''averagely'' bad for BMovie standards of his time. Wood's reputation as one of the worst directors originally came from some critics of later eras who by chance saw some of his movies (most notably ''Film/Plan9FromOuterSpace'') and judged them based on the standards of their own time rather than those of when they were made, granting him the title. In reality, Wood's movies would be considered bad but by far not ''the'' worst of the time, specially compare with such stinkers as ''Film/RobotMonster'' or ''Film/MonsterAGoGo''. To put it in perspective, his movies would be for the time kind of Creator/TheAsylum or Film/SyFyChannelOriginalMovie levels of "bad", not Creator/VideoBrinquedo levels of bad.
** Due to this, his reputation has largely shifted from being the "worst director" to the "best worst director" in that his films were often able to at least entertain his audience--albeit through bizarre choices made by Wood (his work was fairly creative, especially given science fiction movies were a dime a dozen at the time) as opposed to because they were actually good films.
* For Western historians, the interpretation of the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_note Stalin Note]]" went through this twice before ending about where it began. The first view was that UsefulNotes/JosephStalin was not serious about wanting a united neutral Germany, and sent the note to sour relations between Germans and the West. But in the early '80s declassified documents indicated that the western powers had not always acted in good faith about the offer, leading to a shift towards viewing Stalin as more serious about it... which lasted until the end of the Cold War, when declassified ''Soviet'' documents indicated that the Soviet goal had been to sour German-Western Allied relations.
* The debate over whether [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg Julius and Ethel Rosenberg]] really were guilty of providing top secret information (most famously nuclear weapon designs) to the Soviet Union raged for decades, and they had many defenders who believed their conviction was a MiscarriageOfJustice. Some even accused the case against them of being based in antisemitism, comparing it to the infamous Dreyfus affair. However, when many documents decoded by the Venona project were declassified, it became clear that Julius definitely spied for the USSR, and it seems likely that Ethel was at the very least complicit in her husband's crimes.
* For many years it was taken as obvious that Israel was heavily outnumbered and outgunned in the 1948 [[UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict Arab-Israeli War]]. However, after a generation of "New Historians" working in the 1980s and 90s examined newly declassified documents, it became widely acknowledged that Israel enjoyed considerable military advantages over its Arab enemies, with more than twice the manpower and a steady stream of state-of-the-art weapons from abroad.
* When the Soviet space dog Laika died aboard Sputnik 2, it was initially reported that she was euthanized by poisoned food shortly before she ran out of oxygen. Then in 2002, Dimitri Malashenkov revealed that she actually died from overheating on the fourth circuit of the satellite's orbit.
* Quebec's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Revolution Quiet Revolution]] was once characterized as a great upheaval in Quebecois society. However, re-examination of prior economic and political developments in Quebec has shown that the events of the revolution appear to have been foreshadowed by things like the expansion of Quebec's manufacturing sector that had already begun decades earlier and the previous popularity of Quebec Liberalism (particularly the 1940s reforms of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad%C3%A9lard_Godbout Adélard Godbout]]). Because of this, the Quiet Revolution is now seen not as a sudden u-turn in Quebec's Francophone society, but as a natural continuation of pre-existing trends.
* The claim regarding the murder of Kitty Genovese, based on a ''New York Times'' article that came out shortly after Genovese's death, saying that [[BystanderSyndrome 38 people watched her being killed in plain view and did nothing]]. This was, for years, the only narrative about what happened, even being referenced in Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' by Rorschach. However, later researchers found that the ''Times'' story lacked evidence: nobody saw the attack in its entirety, and those that did see it only saw parts of it. Some people heard her cries for help but assumed it was a lover's quarrel or just people leaving a bar. One man did open his window and yell "Leave that girl alone!", whereupon the killer left. He returned again to attack her a second time, but disguised himself, so people who might have seen him didn't realize it was the same guy. The second attack took place out of view of any witnesses. Two of Genovese's neighbours called the police and another, a 70-year-old woman, cradled her while she was dying. So while Genovese's murder was undoubtedly horrible, it was no more awful than most murders: the story that people "stood and watched" it happen right in front of them and didn't lift a finger is entirely without foundation and seems to have been made up by the original reporter, as the ''Times'' itself acknowledged in a [[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/nyregion/winston-moseley-81-killer-of-kitty-genovese-dies-in-prison.html 2016 article]].
* Dimitri Tsafendas, the assassin of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, was once seen as an apolitical schizophrenic who was motivated by an irrational belief that Verwoerd was to blame for his tapeworm infestation. This was disproven by a 2018 investigation which revealed that Tsafendas was mentally healthy and motivated by anger at [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]]. The prosecution at his trial set the false narrative in an attempt to prevent others from following in his footsteps, bribing a psychiatrist to falsely diagnose him as insane and deliberately withholding any evidence that would contradict the story they made up.
* Some widely-held ideas about the 1960s counterculture are now considered myths:
** The stereotypical protesters against the Vietnam War are generally hippies and other countercultural strains. However, the anti-war movement and the counterculture weren't as intertwined as often thought; indeed, new distinctions have been made between cultural movements and activist movements (though of course, there was overlap, and some movements were both). While some groups combined anti-war politics with the hippie lifestyle, hippies generally prioritized spiritual enlightenment and community building over conventional political organizing. In fact, many hippies were indifferent towards or even opposed to political activism and instead hoped to change America by effectively abandoning established institutions and mainstream society to build what they thought would be better alternatives.
** No, American hippies didn't just live in rural {{commune}}s and large coastal cities. They could be found all over the United States, even in small Southern and Midwestern cities.
* UsefulNotes/AntonLaVey once claimed to have ritualistically shaved his head "in the tradition of ancient executioners". It's now known that he shaved his head because he lost a bet with his wife and made up the "ancient executioners" story to add to his mystique.
* There are now known to be no confirmed reports of second-wave feminists burning bras. The myth probably stems from a protest organized by New York Radical Women at the Miss America 1969 contest, where protestors threw feminine products into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the Atlantic City boardwalk. While they did initially plan to burn them, the police advised them not to (since doing so on a boardwalk posed a fire hazard), and evidence suggests that they probably acquiesced. Some local news stories claimed these items were burned at least briefly, but these claims are heavily disputed. Nevertheless, the idea caught on among both supporters and opponents of second-wave feminism, probably due to parallels with men burning their draft cards to protest UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar.
* While it was once widely believed that [[GangBangers the Crips]] were an offshoot of the Black Panther Party, it's now generally accepted that the group got its start from a merger of pre-existing street gangs. Nor did it start out with any political or community agenda; co-founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams went on record refuting this idea, writing in his memoir that it was just a fighting alliance.
* Even though the Lin Biao incident remains shrouded in mystery to this day and the Chinese government's official account is viewed with considerable skepticism abroad (in large part due to the lack of corroborating evidence aside from testimony that may have been coerced), some once-popular foreign theories about what happened have since been discredited by examination of evidence. For example, it was once widely suspected that Lin wasn't actually aboard the plane that crashed and that he was actually secretly murdered in Beijing. However, unknown to most people at the time, a Soviet medical team had secretly dug up and examined the bodies found at the crash site, confirming in a classified report to UsefulNotes/LeonidBrezhnev and UsefulNotes/YuriAndropov that one of the corpses was Lin's. The report was only made public in the early 1990s. Similarly, theories that the plane had actually been shot down were contradicted by accounts from eyewitnesses in Mongolia, which made no mention of any shoot-down.
* Chilean President Salvador Allende died of gunshot wounds during a 1973 MilitaryCoup against him. It was suspected for decades that he had been assassinated, but a 2011 autopsy conclusively proved that Allende [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled killed himself]], putting those theories to bed.
* The identity of Deep Throat, the principal informant of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who helped unravel the [[UsefulNotes/RichardNixon Watergate scandal]], was a mystery for thirty years. In ''Film/AllThePresidentsMen'' (1976), he's portrayed as an anonymous figure in a trenchcoat, with some speculating that [[CompositeCharacter he was actually a combination of different people from Nixon's inner circle]]; in ''Film/{{Dick}}'' (1999), "he" is actually two teenage girls. In 2005, Deep Throat was revealed as former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, whose motives were likely revenge against Nixon for not promoting him to replace J. Edgar Hoover. In retrospect, it was never that much of a mystery; Nixon's tapes show that the administration figured it out almost immediately and it killed his career.
* The sectarian aspects of the Lebanese Civil War are now believed by most historians to have not been as prominent as once thought. While many of the people and factions involved used religious rhetoric, it's currently understood that the secular reasons underlying the conflict were more important than previously believed and many of the participants weren't particularly motivated by religion. Indeed, there were conflicts between factions that were largely the same religion, such as Sunni Muslims (the Palestine Liberation Organization vs. the Syrian Army), Shia Muslims (Amal vs. Hezbollah), and Maronite Christians (Forces Libanaises vs. the Marada Movement).
* It was once generally assumed that the Soviet Union had a hand in the Saur Revolution, a 1978 [[TheCoup coup]] which saw the overthrow and murder of Afghanistan's president Mohammed Daoud Khan and the establishment of a communist dictatorship. However, examination of archives following the fall of the Soviet Union revealed that [[NotMeThisTime the Soviets were just as surprised by the Saur Revolution as everyone else]].
* UsefulNotes/JimmyHoffa was long thought to be buried under the west end zone of Giants Stadium. This was seemingly put to rest when the stadium was demolished in 2010 and no human remains were found.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_the_Jackal Carlos the Jackal]] is the BigBad of ''Literature/TheBourneSeries'', written while he was at large, which presents him as a DiabolicalMastermind and attributes a number of assassinations to him, including that of [[WhoShotJFK JFK]]. The actual Carlos was captured in 1994 and is now viewed as more of a bumbling SmugSnake whose past reputation was highly exaggerated. This also accounts for most of the differences between the books and the movies (he had been caught by that time).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:21st century]]
* ''Film/United93'' was produced before the cockpit voice recorder tape or accurate transcripts were released to the public. As a result, the words and actions of Jarrah and Ghamdi while in the cockpit are now known to have been slightly different in reality, and it is possible that the pilots Dahl and Homer were wounded but alive up to the crash instead of killed immediately. There is also no evidence whatsoever that [[AcceptableTargets German]] passenger Christian Adams panicked or promoted collaboration with the terrorists. That was a complete invention for the film.
* When Palestinian militant Abu Nidal died of a gunshot wound in his Baghdad apartment in 2002, many (especially Palestinians) rejected the official verdict of suicide and insisted he was murdered on the orders of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein out of fear that he might collaborate with invaders. However, in 2008, journalist Robert Fisk obtained a report by Iraq's Special Intelligence Unit M4 indicating that Abu Nidal likely really did shoot himself.
[[/folder]]

!Examples:

!! Prehistory

[[folder:Early hominids]]
* ScienceMarchesOn has a subpage for the ''[[ScienceMarchesOn/WalkingWith Walking with...]]'' series, including some changes related to our understanding of human evolution.
* The infamous [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_man Piltdown man]], despite being correctly guessed as a fake the year after its "discovery" and several times afterwards, wasn't completely discredited until four decades later for several reasons. A big one was that many early 20th century people of European descent, including respected scientists, simply couldn't palate that humanity's ancestor could have originated some place other than Europe or its near vicinity, much less DarkestAfrica[[note]]For example, Roy Chapman Andrews, an alleged inspiration for Franchise/IndianaJones, discovered the Gobi dinosaur fossil fields while looking for hominids under the spurious reasoning that mankind must have evolved in a high place with fresh air, and expressly dismissed Africa as a swampy lowland that 'only grows vermin'[[/note]]. Some who knew better were supporters of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolith eolith theory]], and the Piltdown Man was the only thing to support it, so they kept silent. Finally, the examining methods were still very crude when Piltdown Man was "discovered" but had become far more refined forty years later, and the Piltdown cranial and jaw specimens were kept locked away for decades to preserve them, with virtually no follow-up examination that might have exposed their discrepancies. Believers considered them too priceless to be handled, and any curators with private doubts may not have wanted their origin debunked on ''their'' watch.
** The original model of human evolution, that the brain became advanced first and the body shifted to serve it (e.g. bipedalism as a consequence of using the hands to manipulate objects), was being systematically torn down with every new human ancestor discovered ''except'' Piltdown Man. After its "discovery" it was considered a clinching counter-example, but the reason it was finally re-examined decades later was that by then it was the only one. The theory is supported, along with Piltdown Man, in the BMovie ''Film/TheNeanderthalMan'', released just five months before Piltdown Man was definitely exposed as a hoax. It is also the apparent basis of the prologue to ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' (though WordOfGod is that they intended to depict the man-apes as bipedal, but made them quadrupedal in order to avoid MaleFrontalNudity).
* ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' also references Raymond Dart's theory that ''Australopithecus'' made weapons from bones and used them to hunt big game ("osteodontokeratic industry"). In the following decades, C.K. Brain and others showed that the bone accumulations this idea was based on were actually caused by leopards, and that australopithecines were there as unlucky prey, not hunters.
* The discovery of "Ardi" in 2009, the most complete ''Ardipithecus'' skeleton to date, threw into question many established theories regarding human evolution. The prevailing theory on why humans began walking upright had been that ''Australopithecus'', the first truly bipedal hominid, evolved on the savanna, and being bipedal enabled its ancestors to see further across open landscape, finding food and shelter and spotting predators more easily. However, analysis of Ardi's skeleton indicated that the thick forest-dwelling and one million years older ''Ardipithecus'' was capable of walking upright to at least some degree. The current theory is that bipedalism arose in ''Ardipithecus'' as a means to better navigate dense jungle and underbrush. ''Series/WalkingWithBeasts'', ''Series/WalkingWithCavemen'', and ''A Species Odyssey'' all make reference to the older theory.
* It is a cliché of popular culture to show primitive hominids with hunched backs, [[EvolutionaryLevels intermediate between]] quadrupedal apes and bipedal humans (just see any ParodyOfEvolution), but it's been known since Dart's time that hominids from at least ''Australopithecus'' were completely bipedal, with their neck and back aligned under their head. Nevertheless, both ''Walking with Beasts'' and ''Walking with Cavemen'' show australopithecines attempting to walk on all fours before rising dramatically to show that they are actually bipedal. WordOfGod is that ''Beasts'' [[WhatCouldHaveBeen actually tried to make their]] ''[[WhatCouldHaveBeen Australopithecus]]'' [[WhatCouldHaveBeen less bipedal]], but found impossible to animate their skeletons in such way. Dishonorable mentions go to ''A Species Odyssey'', which actually coached mo-cap actors into walking "imperfectly" to play australopithecines (which paleoartist Mauricio Antón likened to Music/MichaelJackson's dancers in the music video ''Music/{{Thriller}}''), and ''Before we ruled the Earth'' and ''Film/TimeTrap'' for showing even more advanced hominids walking (semi)quadrupedally.
* More than a dozen pre-modern human varieties (Java man, Peking man, etc.) are now believed to have been local breeds of ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus#Descendants_and_subspecies Homo erectus]]'' (which may or may not be the ancestors of modern humans) and not actually separate species at all.

[[folder:''Homo neanderthalensis'']]
* One of the first complete Neanderthal skeletons discovered is that of a male with a twisted, bent spine, a wasted lower jaw, and a pronounced hunchback. Archaeologists assumed this was a typical Neanderthal skeleton, which led to the popular view of [[AllCavemenWereNeanderthals Neanderthals as hunchbacked, chinless knuckle-draggers]], or outright [[BeastMan beast-men]]. Later analysis indicated, however, that the individual in question was probably well over sixty years old and suffered from severe arthritis and bone wastage (so much for Social Darwinists' pet notion that ancient humans did not take care of the elderly, infirm and sickly but simply left them to die). Most skeletons found since suggest that a Neanderthal would look very similar to a modern human as long as they didn't enter a ''Homo sapiens'' beauty contest. Works referencing the old trope include ''[[Creator/LesterDelRey The Day is Done]]'', ''Literature/TheUglyLittleBoy'', ''The Neanderthal Man'', ''Film/MyScienceProject'', and numerous cartoons from ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide''.
* ''[[Literature/EarthsChildren The Clan of the Cave Bear]]'' based Ayla's leaving flowers on Iza's tomb (and [[BeenThereShapedHistory inventing the custom in the process]]) on a Neanderthal tomb found in Shanidar, Iraq in the 1960s, where clusters of pollen were found around the skeleton (this body, a male who lived to old age despite having an arm amputated in his youth, [[DecompositeCharacter inspired the character of Creb]]). Thirty years later, this pollen was attributed to contamination by archaeologists, or rodents who had nested inside the skeleton after burial. And thirty further years on, more pollen clusters were found that could be explained by an actual burial with flowers. [[AndTheAdventureContinues Allegedly]].
* It was also assumed that Neanderthals couldn't speak, or that their ability to articulate was very limited, because no hyoid bone was found in a Neanderthal skeleton until 1983 (e.g. ''The Day is Done''). Works that wanted to portray them as intelligent, like ''The Clan of the Cave Bear'', had them use [[HandSignals sign language]]. Now, it's even likely that the modern human's version of the FOX P2 gene came from Neanderthals. Studies of their ear canals have also shown that Neanderthals heard on the same frequency as us and unlike chimpanzees or more primitive hominids like ''Australopithecus'', which is also indicative of the use of speech as communication. In retrospect, the notion that Neanderthals could even have lacked a hyoid bone is, in itself, an antiquated one: all other primates and most other tetrapods have such a bone, just not always positioned to permit speech.
** ''The Ugly Little Boy'' was expanded into a novel where one of the doctors goes into a detailed lecture about the hyoid bone. The Neanderthals are portrayed as having a language with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant click consonants]]; Timmy learns to speak English, but it sounds a little blurry.
* Claims that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans couldn't interbreed -- or that if they did, their offspring would be short-lived and/or infertile, a source of {{angst}} in ''Literature/EarthsChildren'', ''Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax'', and ''Dance of the Tiger'' -- have been thoroughly disproven with the discovery that most modern humans have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA in them (and in the case of East Asians and Australoids, also Denisovan DNA). As of now, the saving grace of these works is that [[MaleGaze all]] deal with pairings of Neanderthal ''men'' and modern women; for one reason or another, all Neanderthal DNA in modern humans seems to have come from females.
* Fair-haired, light-eyed, and light-skinned ''H. sapiens'' meeting dark-haired, dark-eyed, sometimes dark-skinned ''H. neanderthalensis'', and their [[HumansAreWhite obvious]] UnfortunateImplications. The most notable example may be ''The Clan of the Cave Bear'', but it's not the only one. Even at the time of writing, this was questionable if not illogical, because Cro-Magnons were recent immigrants from Africa while Neanderthals had evolved for hundreds of thousands of years in Europe by that point (this is [[WordOfGod explicitly]] why it's the opposite in ''Dance of the Tiger'', from around the same time). We now have evidence that red hair and green and blue eyes were not uncommon among Neanderthals.
* The idea that Neanderthals disproportionally hunted cave bears and worshipped them in a "[[https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-cult-of-the-cave-bear/ cave bear cult]]" loosely similar to the "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_worship bear cults]]" of some northern Eurasian peoples became popular in the mid-20th century after findings of cave bear skull piles at the bottom of caves. Later research showed that the most impressive of such finds in the 1920s was improperly described, and that all supposed human-made piles were just natural accumulations as hibernating cave bears died on top of one another over millennia, but by then it had been referenced by ''The Clan of the Cave Bear'' and ''Literature/EatersOfTheDead''.
** Backlash against this led in part to Neanderthals being characterized as devoid of symbolism and abstraction abilities, making them [[LiteralMinded unable to handle sarcasm]] or [[OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions have a religion]], as seen in ''Walking with Cavemen'' and the 2005 Spanish prehistoric novel ''Tras las huellas del hombre rojo'' ("On the red man's track"). The other part of the reasoning was that there were no known examples of art associated with Neanderthals... but this changed. Though not without resistance, paleoanthropologists have slowly accepted that Neanderthals, at least in their last millennia, had music made with bone "flutes", decorated themselves with ochre, feathers, and sea shells; and made cave paintings (just fewer and less elaborate than modern humans - for now).

[[folder:''Homo sapiens'']]
* The ''Literature/{{Kull}}'' stories are canonically set around 100,000 BC. His homeland is {{Atlantis}} and its geopolitical rival is Lemuria - a sunken landmass first theorized in the mid-19th century to explain the presence of lemur fossils in both Madagascar and India, later assimilated by the UsefulNotes/TheosophicalSociety to the ''Kumari Kandam'' of Tamil legend and identified as the birthplace of the human race. Tales of continents that sunk catastrophically in historical times became definitive bunk when plate tectonics were confirmed in TheSixties.
* The indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman Islands and other isolated parts of South and Southeast Asia were once lumped together into a singular group called the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negrito Negritos.]] Genetic studies have put the kibosh on this idea, showing that they actually consist of several distinct groups.
** Up until 2011, it was generally assumed that the Andamanese peoples were descendants of participants in the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Dispersal Southern Dispersal]], aka the Great Costal Migration, the initial migration out of Africa along the southern coast of Asia between 70,000 and 50,000 BCE. However, genetic studies indicate that the islands remained uninhabited until around 26,000 BCE, and the ancestors of the Andamanese were not directly descended from the first migrants out of Africa.
* The main inspiration of ''Tras las huellas del hombre rojo'' is the "Ebro Frontier" theory of TheNineties, which claims that the Ebro River delayed the entry of ''H. sapiens'' in the rest of the Iberian Peninsula for about 5,000 years (c. 42,000-37,000 years ago), allowing Neanderthals to continue living there in isolation while disappearing from most of Europe. As of 2020, two archaeological sites from that period have been attributed to ''H. sapiens'', one in Portugal and another in Spain (though both being on the western coast, it is still possible that ''H. sapiens'' reached them by following the northern coast without crossing the river).
* As seen in ''[[WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois Once upon a time... the Americas]]'' and ''Series/MonstersWeMet'', the early peopling of the Americas was once thought to have happened in a single dispersal event from Asia when the Ice Age ended around 10,000 years ago, and a corridor appeared between the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets, allowing Clovis culture hunter-gatherers to walk between ice-free areas in Alaska and the lower 48, after which sea levels rose to cut the connection between Alaska and Siberia behind them. Later, evidence surfaced of people already living in the Americas 15, 20, or (more disputedly) 30 to 40 thousand years ago. It is now thought that there were at least two main dispersal events, one following the Pacific coast during the Last Glacial Maximum over 20,000 years ago, which may have been done by boat in some parts, and another by Clovis overland around 13,000 years ago that largely replaced the earlier migration leaving only residual genetics in South America. A third, coastal-maritime dispersal beginning around 5,000 years ago originated Arctic peoples like the Inuit, and an enigmatic fourth at some point in the middle may have originated the proposed Dené-Yenisean language family (if it is both correct and not a result of ''back''-migration from North America to Siberia, as some have suggested).
* It was widely believed that all sorts of civilizational developments happened in the Neolithic Revolution and were linked to the rise of agriculture and the transformation of roaming hunters into settled farmers. Weaving textiles or making ceramics are advanced skills and something humans only did when they settled down, right? [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/790569.stm Wrong.]] The fact that ceramics were older than the Neolithic has been known for some time, but the more recent discovery of the imprints of textiles in said ceramics upends traditional perceptions of the earlier eras of the Stone Age considerably.
* ''The Tribe of the Cliffs'' and ''Earth's Children'' depict dogs and horses being first domesticated around the same time. Later genetic studies firmly established that dogs were domesticated tens of thousands of years earlier than any other animal, and necessarily in a different context to livestock.
* Both ''[[Recap/FuturamaS6E8ThatDarnKatz Futurama]]'' and ''Series/CSICrimeSceneInvestigation'' (in [[Recap/CSIS2E20CatsInTheCradle an episode]] about the [[AlwaysMurder murder]] of a CrazyCatLady) reference the once CommonKnowledge that cats were first domesticated in UsefulNotes/AncientEgypt. However, in the mid-[=2000s=] archaeologists found evidence that cats had been domesticated in the Levant thousand of years before they were in Egypt.
* While it was once generally believed that Europe's Mesolithic "Western Hunter-Gatherers" were displaced by "Early European Farmers" in the Neolithic, genetic studies have painted a more complex picture. There does seem to have been an initial displacement, but the evidence says that after the initial expansion, the two groups co-existed side by side for centuries with ongoing gradual admixture.
* Marija Gimbutas's ''Goddess'' trilogy:
** Her interpretation of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurgan_hypothesis Kurgan hypothesis]] linguistically grouped together a number of cultures that were located at the Pontic steppes. This grouping is now considered overly broad, and the "Revised Steppe theory" that focuses specifically on the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamnaya_culture Yamnaya culture]] as the origin of the Indo-European dispersal is believed to be more credible.
** Her theory of a peaceful and egalitarian gynocentric Old Europe being replaced by the more warlike and hierarchical Indo-Europeans who made Europe significantly more patriarchal than it had been before has been contradicted by the discovery of Neolithic European hillforts, along with evidence that adult males were given preferential treatment in burial rites.
* Soviet historian and linguist Nikolai Marr developed the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japhetic_theory Japhetic theory]], claiming that the Kartvelian languages of the South Caucasus are related to Semitic languages, from which he extrapolated that the Caucasian and Afro-Asiatic languages (along with the Basque language) share a common root, also claiming that "Japhetic languages" had been spoken throughout Europe before the advent of the Indo-Europeans. While the Soviet government promoted this theory at first in an attempt to apply Marxist theories of class struggle to linguistics, they began rejecting it in the mid-twentieth century, and it is now considered deeply flawed both inside and outside the former Soviet Union.
* ''Literature/TheLightOfOtherDays'' has a researcher use the [[{{Chronoscope}} Wormcam]] to find that "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi Ötzi the Iceman]]" was a hunter who went too far into the mountains in pursuit of prey and died of hypothermia. The year after the novel was published, an arrowhead was found embedded in his shoulder. Later DNA of different men was found on him and his belongings, all but confirming that he was chased up there by a group that fought and killed him. Some old documentaries also depict him as a bald man purely because his mummy looks bald, but this is now known to be an artifact of decomposition. He actually had a full head of hair and a beard when he died.
* A popular belief in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries was that Europeans could be divided into two groups: "fair" Europeans from the north, known for rationality, intelligence, hard work, and integrity, and "swarthy" Europeans from the south, known for laziness, dishonesty, greed, and stupidity. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism Scientific racists]] later subdivided the swarthy Europeans into Mediterraneans and Alpines, the first of which was said to be creatively BrilliantButLazy and shiftless, and the second stupid, plodding peasants. Despite the skepticism of mainstream anthropologists and historians, the Nordic "master race" theory became a cornerstone of Nazism. Less horrifically, it also shows up in much of the fiction of the time: ''Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian'' might be the best-known example. Of course, we now know that Nordicism is bunk: not only do we now know that "Nordics" did not arise in Scandinavia (which was the last area of Continental Europe to be peopled), but also that the various "fair" Northern Europeans aren't particularly closely related to each other. Skin color and pigmentation variations are recent and can't be used to indicate relatedness. Case in point, black Africans were once all lumped together as being essentially the same, with the exception of obvious outliers like the Khoisan and African pygmies; genetic studies have since shown that they're far more heterogenous (biologically speaking) than previously thought, certainly moreso than Europeans.

!! Antiquity
[[folder:General]]
* The AncientAstronauts hypothesis popularized by Erich von Däniken's ''Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved mysteries of the past'' has been thoroughly disproven. The idea was that early civilizations were too primitive--and for "primitive" read "stupid"--to build anything sophisticated. However, evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt to all but the most dedicated conspiracy theorists and [=UFOlogists=] that ancient monuments were built by human hands with the technology of their time. In the case of the Ancient Egyptian pyramids, for example, blueprints have been found, along with graffiti on the stones indicating that the builders treated their work as a team sport. Additionally, pyramids are not really ''that'' complex to build, being effectively just a big pile of stone, with most of the weight in the bottom half. As long as you have a central authority to direct the masses, pyramids are not at all beyond the means of any society capable of quarrying and cutting stone, and that's why they were not just built in Egypt but also Mesopotamia or the Yucatan (and not because aliens talked them into it or did it for them).
** Though this trope goes [[OlderThanTheyThink as far back]] as the first extraterrestrial invasion story, ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' by Creator/HGWells (where it is said that the Sphinx and Pyramids were built by the Martians), critics have pointed that it is pretty much the older "theory" of ancient civilizations being influenced by advanced white "Aryans" (for example from Atlantis, like in the ''Kull'' and ''Conan'' stories), [[RecycledScript recycled]] for the post-World War II era when such discourse is only popular with neonazis. It is at least suspicious that non-white monuments dating just a few hundred years old like Easter Island's moais and Inca fortresses get this treatment, while in Europe only prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge get it, and suggesting that aliens helped build the Colosseum or Medieval cathedrals would be considered ridiculous.
* It's generally believed that the sizes of ancient military forces were frequently exaggerated. For example, ''Literature/TheHistories'' say that the Second Persian invasion of Greece had more than 2.5 million troops, but modern estimates say they numbered a fifth of that at most. Similarly, the ''Literature/CommentariesOnTheGallicWar'' say that the Gallic relief force at the Battle of Alesia numbered a quarter million, but estimates of 50,000 to 100,000 are considered more reasonable.
** Literature/TheBible appears to vastly exaggerate the population of Israel -- it has been noted that the census of the tribes of Israel add up to a far greater number than the region could reasonably have sustained at the time and, for a small nation surrounded by regional superpowers of the day who also kept records, is suspiciously high compared to what we know about the populations of Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon. Israel is also assigned a total of battle-chariots far in excess of that held by Egypt at the same time. When evidence from all sources is gathered in, the Biblical estimates should be scaled back by a factor of ten.
* The notion that Greco-Roman civilization was more "advanced and rational" than the "backward and superstitious" medieval Europe [[TropeCodifier codified]] by ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is now considered a gross oversimplification. For example, the Greeks and Romans both prosecuted people for witchcraft, while the medieval Catholic Church taught that the practice was not real and professed that claims of belief in it were a mark of either ignorance or malice. See the Middle Ages for more on this.
* All those marble pillars and facades in Greek and Roman ruins were once thought to have been as clean, white, and free of ornamentation when they were new as they are now. Tests on Roman ruins (and discovery of buried ruins at Pompeii, Palmyra, and Antioch) revealed that the Greeks and Romans painted almost all of their white marble in loud, garish colors using vegetable-based paints that decomposed and bleached out as the buildings fell to ruins. This trope affected not just fictional representations of the old days like ''Film/BenHur1959'', ''Film/{{Spartacus}}'', ''Film/TheFallOfTheRomanEmpire'', or ''Series/IClaudius'', but also architecture (notice how gleaming white UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC is?) and interior design. The evidence is more mixed when it comes to statues: some were fully painted, others only partially painted (or gilded), and others left white. The Greeks in particular favored Bronze statues over marble (which would not have been painted) but many were lost in later centuries as they were looted and melted for other purposes.
** Same mistake was made with other civilizations. ''Film/TheEgyptian'', ''Land of the Pharaohs'', ''[[Film/TheTenCommandments1956 The Ten Commandments]]'', ''Film/{{Cleopatra}}'' all were proudly shot on Ancient Egyptian locations or sets based on their presently ruined, sandy-colored condition instead of showing the brightly colored paintings they were covered in. For example, the Sphynx would have been mostly painted red.
** The bare gray and black stone appearance of Mesoamerican buildings was also taken at face value, until it was discovered that they were originally covered in plaster and painted bright colors like red and white. Thus the {{Mayincatec}} building set of ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresII'', released in 2000 and based on Palenque, is fully made of bare stone and even has some vines growing on it despite representing inhabited and functional buildings. For the ''Definitive Edition'' remake in 2019, the makers kept the original appearance, but [[DevelopmentGag acknowledged the mistake]] by giving faded painted colors to the Aztec and Mayan Wonders and the new Fortified Towers. The Aztecs in ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresIII'' (2006), on the other hand, received a brightly colored set based on Aztec codices from the beginning.
* There was a similar notion about all Greeks and Romans wearing "noble" white clothes. While ''some'' people actually dressed in white (e.g., Romans conducting in the forum), most people preferred garish, bright colors. This is equivalent to assuming that the three-piece business suit or the full tuxedo is everyday casual wear for today. Romans actually hated the toga (they were hot in the Italian summers, cumbersome, and you can't use your left arm while wearing one), so much that there had to be a law stating that togas must be worn to enter a forum in part to discourage anyone from trying anything funny while there. Romans would normally wear the tunic, a linen clothing that could be worn with anything else necessary, such as underwear, trousers, or knee-breaches. Roman women normally wore the stola. Per WordOfGod, ''Film/TheEagle2011'' showed its Roman characters using the toga only in official meetings and putting on more comfortable native clothes when not in them, but after test audiences had trouble telling the Roman and Britonnic characters apart, they reshot several scenes with the Romans wearing togas.
* Another clothing misconception is the depiction of Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc. wearing leather or metal wristbands. This arose in UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance when artists misunderstood Roman representations of segmented arm armor (''manica'') as wrist bands and put them in what seems like every depiction of Antiquity they made. Like in the above, the makers of ''Film/{{Gladiator}}'' knew that the wristbands were inaccurate but included them because they thought it would meet audience expectations. Villagers in ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresI'' (1997) wear a golden wristband, but not in the ''Definitive Edition'' remake from 2018.

[[folder:Carthage and Phoenicia]]
* References to Punic [[WouldHarmAChild Child]] [[HumanSacrifice Sacrifice]] in Literature/TheBible and Greco-Roman sources were considered propaganda until archaeologists unearthed extensive remains of young children and animals in ''tophets'' all around the Mediterranean, making the case that, if the animals were sacrificed, so must have been the children. The vast majority authors still reject it, however, defending that they might be stillbirths or children who died of natural causes, an hypothesis which has some merit due to 1) the architectural configuration of the tophet being more reminiscent of a necropolis rather than a sacrificial area and 2) these places were dedicated the the goddess Tanit, whose domains were fertility, births and growth, which would imply stillborn babies were offered to the goddess as a means of compensation and a way to cope with the loss for the parents.
* Mainstream scholars once held that the Berbers adopted the trappings of civilization from Phoenician colonists, but later archaeological evidence indicates that at least some Berbers were civilized long before the Phoenicians existed as a distinct people. In fact, it's believed that the Phoenicians themselves adopted customs from the Berbers, including eating pork, which was previously taboo for the Phoenicians.
* In ''Literature/TheHistories'', Herodotus expresses his skepticism about a Phoenician expedition said to have been commissioned by Pharaoh Necho to sail around Africa, because the Phoenicians claimed that "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right". Today this detail is the strongest evidence for the story being real, as this is indeed what would happen if they were in the Southern Hemisphere.
* Hanno the Navigator's description of a tribe of "hairy savages" called ''Gorillai'' somewhere down the African coast was assumed to be a misunderstanding or xenophobic tall tale. After Europeans learned of the largest African apes in 1847, they named them gorillas from Hanno's account, and identified a large mountain mentioned by him with Mount Cameroon. However, the behavior described doesn't match that of gorillas, and the account would have very little descriptions of the Guinea Gulf coast compared to northwest Africa if Hanno really made it there. It is possible that Hanno met chimpanzees instead (which live as far west as Senegal, unlike gorillas).
* Carthage was not salted after the Third Punic War, as its fertile lands were something the Roman elite were eager to get, and neither was Milan by Frederick Barbarossa over a thousand years later. The idea appears to come from confusion over a Medieval order calling for the city of Palestrina to be ploughed over "like Carthage", and ''also'' salted. Carthage itself was certainly ploughed over, but the idea of it being salted doesn't turn up until the 19th century.
** Historians and novelists have misunderstood what was meant by salting and ploughing a city. Ploughing and salting were merely symbolic gestures similar to running defeated soldiers under the yoke. There wasn't enough salt in the Republic to render barren the land underneath Carthage, nor enough manpower to completely flatten the city. Not to mention that salt was far too expensive to squander tons by dumping it on the ground. The Romans needed the infrastructure of Carthage intact and the land fertile, as Roman soldiers would be sent to live and farm there after they were demobilized.
** The legend may be partly based on the Biblical story of the salting of Shechem. Being near the Dead Sea, this was actually practical.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Celtic Europe]]
* In the 19th century, historians called megaliths "druidic stones" and attributed their erection to Celtic peoples. This belief persisted into The20thCentury, explaining why, in ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'' (created in 1959), Obélix is a menhir carver and delivery man. Later it was established that European megaliths were older, dating from the Bronze Age, Neolithic, or even earlier in a few cases.
* Traditionally, it was believed that the Celts invaded the British Isles, conquering and displacing the previous inhabitants. However, DNA evidence indicates that the British Celts have lived on the British Isles for roughly 3,000 years. The current theory is that the Celts of Continental Europe traded with the British Isles, and the natives were so impressed by these rich traders and their goods that they adopted Celtic culture.
** In Victorian Britain, a sub-theory of the aforementioned was that TheFairFolk had been inspired from tales of pre-Celtic people and their conquest/genocide, as Faeries are said to be shorter and darker than humans, [[HiddenElfVillage live hidden in remote places]], and fear ColdIron. Common folk even referred to prehistoric flint arrowheads as "elfshot". This idea is the inspiration of the Little Dark People in Creator/RosemarySutcliff's books (made explicit in ''Literature/SwordAtSunset''), and the Children of the Forest in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''.
* British Celts were said to paint or tattoo themselves with a blue pigment (as mentioned in ThisMeansWarpaint) which led to the naming of the Picts (from Latin ''Pictus'', "painted one"). {{UsefulNotes/Julius Caesar}}'s ''Commentaries on the Gallic War'' refers to this paint as ''vitrum'', which meant "glass" in Latin but was also a common term for the woad plant, leading to assumptions that the Celts used woad to paint or tattoo themselves. However, attempts to apply the plant for tattooing in 2004-2005 found that it is painfully caustic, causes scarring, and doesn't keep its color well; attempts to use it for body paint find that it dries up and flakes off too easily. This means that unless the Celts had a [[LostTechnology lost recipe]] for effective woad tattooing or body paint, woad was not used for their blue tattoos. Additionally, Caesar was writing about the southern Britons, not the Picts, who were a Northern British people and whose name is first attested about 350 years after his ''Commentaries''. Direct references to woad as the pigment include ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'', where the Celtic unique unit is a fast infantry called "Woad Raider", and ''Film/KingArthur'', where the Briton rebels are called "Woads" by the Romans.
* It was once assumed that ancient and early medieval Irish farming concentrated almost entirely on livestock, especially cattle. While it's true that cattle were greatly prized (to the point where cattle raiding constituted a large part of Irish warfare at the time), pollen studies and other evidence show that grain farming was increasingly important from about 200 CE onward.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:China]]
* The theory that Chinese civilization began at the Yellow River and radiated outwards from there was once prevalent. Modern Sinology generally considers it just one of three main centers of civilization (albeit the most important one), with the other two being the Yangtze and Liao rivers.
* Traditional Chinese historiography had the Xia dynasty as the first one, who were overthrown by the Shang dynasty. However, since there are no contemporaneous records of the Xia dynasty, its historicity is in doubt; one theory is that the Xia were an invention of the Zhou dynasty, who overthrew the Shang, in order to fabricate a precedent for their actions.
* While it was once a popular theory (mainly among Western historians, but some Chinese also adopted it) that the Shang dynasty was semi-legendary at best, the discovery and decipherment of oracle bones resulted in the development of a king list closely matching accounts of the dynasty collected in the ''Shiji'', leading to modern acceptance of Shang historicity.
* Sun Tzu's ''[[Literature/TheArtOfWarSunTzu The Art of War]]'' is considered ''the'' BigBookOfWar, but while the popular image is that its value was recognized from the start, evidence suggests it was just one of several military manuals and actually looked down upon as being for peasants [[note]]generals generally came from noble families and were expected to know how to lead and fight without any outside aid[[/note]]. Its popularity began during [[UsefulNotes/ThreeKingdomsShuWeiWu the waning days of the Han Dynasty]], when the warlord Cao Cao (a noted admirer of Sun Tzu) made it required reading for his generals and even provided annotated versions that included examples from his many campaigns. Some scholars suggest that the modern version of ''The Art of War'' is actually based on Cao Cao's simplified and annotated version.
* UsefulNotes/QinShihuangdi, the founder of the Qin dynasty, was undoubtedly a ruthless man who made some terrible mistakes. However, the traditional view of him as a corrupt, monstrous, tyrannical madman and the Qin dynasty as a crypto-totalitarian dystopia is now believed to have been the product of later exaggerations. Archaeological findings, such as the rediscovery of legal codes, show that the Qin were significantly more "mainstream" than previously thought.
* ''Series/KingsWar'': While Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian did indicate that Ziying was Fusu's son, modern historians have disputed this, arguing that if Ziying discussed with his sons the plan to assassinate Zhao Gao, him being Fusu's son would have made him too young for this scenario. Similarly, there is no consensus on whether Zhao Gao was truly a eunuch.
* Cao Cao, thanks to the cultural impact of the ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'', was generally just accepted as a DirtyCoward OpportunisticBastard. It wouldn't be until UsefulNotes/MaoZedong (an admirer of Cao Cao) began ordering more positive depictions of Cao that there was a real attempt to study the historical Cao. However, even now there is pushback due to how ingrained the idea of "Cao Cao the villain" is in popular culture. For example, the 2012 drama ''Cao Cao, the hero'' wasn't released in China until 2015 (and even then renamed to simply ''Cao Cao'') due to people refusing to see him as anything but a villainous figure. This is very notable because the series was explicitly based on historical records, rather than the ''Romance'' like most works.
[[/folder]]

* There was a similar notion about all Greeks and Romans wearing "noble" white clothes. While ''some'' people actually dressed in white (e.g., Romans conducting in the forum), most people preferred garish, bright colors. This is equivalent to assuming that the three-piece business suit or the full tuxedo is everyday casual wear for today. Romans actually hated the toga (they were hot in the Italian summers, cumbersome, and you can't use your left arm while wearing one), so much that there had to be a law stating that togas must be worn to enter a forum in part to discourage anyone from trying anything funny while there. Per WordOfGod, ''Film/TheEagle2011'' showed its Roman characters using the toga only in official meetings and putting on more comfortable native clothes when not in them, but after test audiences had trouble telling the Roman and Britonnic characters apart, they reshot several scenes with the Romans wearing togas.