I think you can split historical revisionists into two broad camps: (a) desperate mainstream historians looking outwards to fringe subjects for a reputation-making cash-cow book; and (b) clever writers on the fringes who appropriate the tropes and tools of history to construct a kind of literary outsider art that is (almost) indistinguishable from history. That is, revisionism is a church broad enough to cover both historians posing as outsiders and outsiders posing as historians. 🙂
Yet probably the most dispiriting thing about nearly all the novel freethinking theories thus constructed (by either camp) is how boringly similar they tend to be, oxymoronifying the phrase “free thinker”. Did Alberti really write the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili? [Hint: no.] Was Leonardo da Vinci really a Grand Master of the [insert made-up name] Secret Society? [Hint: also no.] Read (as I have done) a fair few of these and you’d rapidly come to the conclusion that most trains of thought out there run along well-oiled rails, with nary a point in sight. Point-less stuff, indeed.
Of course, if you try to revisit something / someone particularly well-documented, you face a dauntingly uphill challenge from the start: which is why oddly nebulous objects and obscure people attract the most attention (from both revisionist camps) – because for these, there’s that much less that needs to be explained away from the start before you can really go to town & have some fun.
In this general vein, here’s a nice (2000) article by Mark Newbrook from The Skeptic magazine (it’s on pp.42-47), which brings together literally dozens of fringe historical revisionist communities (Velikovskyists, Saturnists, Afrocentrists, Dravidian- / Mayan- / Latvian- / Hungarian- / Basque-/ Etruscan-centred histories of language, Dogon, etc) to highlight their common traits – most of which seem to centre on a misplaced faith in the fallacies of eighteenth-century linguistic / etymological thought. It has to be admitted that the devotion shown to following through these mad ideas is sometimes quite extraordinary. Did Jesus on the Cross really cry out in Mayan? [Hint: don’t even go there.]
It’s no great secret that most hypotheses floated to explain the Voynich Manuscript, the Rohonc Codex, and the Phaistos Disc match this overall template (i.e. of a simple linguistic misunderstanding taken to massive lengths). Even when top-drawer outsiders (David Icke, Dan Burisch, Terence McKenna etc) throw their lizard-skin top hats into the ring, the same tired old rabbits limp out… ‘Roger Bacon‘, ‘it’s the aliens wot dunnit‘, ‘hoax!’ and so forth.
Of all these , though, it is the “hoax” theorists that are stupendously annoying – not because they happen to be right or wrong (which is another question entirely), but because for the most part they use the idea as a kind of intellectual trick to sidestep the entire evidence corpus, preferring instead to revel in schadenfreude, poking fun at other researchers as they lock intellectual horns with the mute rhinoceros of meaninglessness (and lose the battle, of course).
In all these cases, the correct question to be asking is simply what kind of material, physical evidence would amply demonstrate the presence of a hoax – merely proving the possibility of a hoax (as Gordon Rugg famously tried to do for the Voynich Manuscript in 2004) is both hard work and vacuous. Or, if you prefer to stick with Popperian falsification, how can we actively disprove the notion that artefact X is ancient?
And so it all swings round to a resoundingly 19th century hoax, the Frisian Oera Linda Book (which I picked up on from Lady Goodman’s blog page). This describes all kinds of odd things (such as “Atland”, a 17th century revisionist Atlantis), and claims to have been written in 1256, but copied from texts some of which dated back as early as 2194 BC. Errrrm… “zeker niet, mevrouw“, methinks.
If you absolutely have to sample its purple faux historical prose, there’s an English translation here. To me, it all reads like a ‘worst-of‘ compilation of creative writing courses’ historical modules: but perhaps you’ll find some hidden depths there to which I’m blind. But is this a hoax? [Hint: for sure!]
Very interesting dating… It is sure made by prophet which lived at these ancient times. What a beautyful ancient prophecy 🙂
Don’t inhale! Don’t inhale! Don’t inhale! =:-o
I’m not so sure that “oddly nebulous objects and obscure people” attract the most attention. Are the Knights Templar really so obscure? Or the Priory of Sion (anymore, at least)? It’s more like everyone takes the same hackneyed themes (no pun intended, of course) and then applies the same template – all of which shows a distressing lack of imagination.
It’s not so hard to disprove the notion that something is ancient, if you can prove that it is modern. However, would-be Voynich debunkers simply haven’t been able to do it.
It’s a Dogon shame that we’ve such a veritable Hey Phaistos plague of Fell scribblers wishing to Basque in glory Marr our amusement. 🙂
I think that “obscure” secret societies and the like become familiar as soon as someone picks up on them(or claims to), because people are fascinated with that kind of thing. For instance, it’s practically common knowledge(and not just among tin-hatted conspiracy theorists) that there are Masonic symbols on the US dollar bill. But just what that’s supposed to mean is usually kept pretty vague, left up to the reader’s imagination or paranoia.
I’m not so sure culture is transmitted quite as instantaneously as you seem to suggest here. A lot of things do enjoy a long and undistinguished life in obscurity before suddenly tipping over into mainstream thought, for no particular reason – I suspect the Voynich Manuscript is undergoing that kind of transformation at the moment, which is one of those reasons why I do this blog. 🙂
Regarding the falsifiability of a hoax, I don’t think that this is possible, strictly speaking — it seems equivalent to prove that a string of digits is really random.
Assume for example an extreme mix of steganography and codebook technique used for the VM. Assume that only the very first character in the book carries meaning, the rest are all fillers, and if the first letter is “q”, this is to mean “Attack at dawn”, while any other letter will amount to “Retire at midnight”.
While this would qualify for the VM not to be a hoax, there would be no way to detect the meaning. And you can gradually move from this extreme example to more plausible algorithms, like using every tenth, every fifth, every other letter to mean a sentence, a word, a syllable… Since it is possible for the author to add an arbitrary amount of enciphering frills (looking like random) around the core message, I think one can come up with neither a hardcore proof for a hoax, nor a falsification.
The only possible definite outcome would be a successful decipherment. Which in turn requires that the VM is not a hoax. I think.
One thing that annoys me is that most other claims of fake artefacts tend to be supported by some kind of physical / codicological evidence – but for the VMs, we have abundant physical evidence that suggests a complex, multi-owner early history.
In fact, only two things are generally appropriated to try to support ‘VMs hoax’ claims: (1) the supposed Dee/Kelley ownership evidence (which is not only extremely tenuous, but also fails to suggest a hoax in any detail); and (2) the inability of people to crack the VMs’ cipher (which is also very weak evidence).
Call me old-fashioned, but when I see 15th century quire numbers added to misbound gatherings, I think “genuine 15th century object, probably added by an owner who was (like us) unable to read a word”, not “codicologically sophisticated 16th century hoax”. As with ‘alien artefact’ and ‘Cathar suicide manual’, ‘hoax’ is a possibility: but without evidence, it’s not really much of a probability, wouldn’t you say? =:-o
While it is probable that I won’t die tomorrow, I’ll still check for traffic before I cross the street.
As ye olde Sherlock Holmes has already told us, probability is not the same as proof. 😉
You are all FOOLS! FOOLS I TELL YOU!
You social studies junkies rock! Thanks for the comment! 🙂
The Oera Linda Book has been written in 1858 by Eeltje and Joast Halbertsma. See prescommunication on http://www.rodinbook.nl. (website in Dutch)
Your definition of historical revisionism is inadequate and in general your writing is self-indulgent, superficial, show-off, and designed to show how clever you are. You say it is difficult to prove a hoax , yet you find it easy to dismiss the Oera Linda Book. You picked a bad example there, because the more you read the Oera Linda Book the more you realise that it is a genuine history with dates, separate from and starting earlier than the Classical tradition, which begins with mythology . It is just the earliest European written history and should be compulsory in schools throughout Europe.Let me guess: you haven’t read it, or, if you tried, you found it difficult to judge because you don’t have enough knowledge of the Classical tradition, so , ignorance being bliss, you blithely dismiss it with a sneer.
Presumably you would sneer at Schliemann as revisionist, as did the scholars and historians in their libraries whose descendants in modern times have rejected the common sense of Tim Severin on Odysseus and James Mavor on Atlantis. You obviously go along with Hilaire Belloc’s” Oh let us never doubt what nobody is sure about”, but in the end if you are at all interested in history you will have to look hard and with common sense, at evidence.And beware of insulting revisionists: Arthur Evans got it badly wrong at Knossos by imposing Victorian monarchist values onto his archaeology of a gloomy burial ground and mausoleum.Revisionism is a necessary process.
Alan: ok, this particular post was too showy – I plainly had too much fun writing it. But I did take the time to read plenty (and think plenty) about the Oera Linda Book before I put a single finger to key, and I stand by every damn word I wrote. Revisionism is necessary, sure – but that doesn’t mean you have to accept every foolish thing written as true. And the OLB is – plain as day – not true.
Ah, Nick, I can’t convince you, can I? I feel like Whistler when he told the judge he could never convince him of the artistic merit of any work of art.I notice that those dismissing this book don’t want to look at the detail in it, whereas those who see it as genuine do look, and find a lot of evidence which is inescapable, especially the parts which were later proved true by archaeology(eg Troy, and the Lake Dwellers, which were unknown in 1850.) I get the impression that the book has been used ( by Himmler and co, athe neo-nasties), and abused ( by the Dutch , who find it easy to belittle the Friesians whom they regard as country bumpkins and inferior), but is it read for what it is? The devil is in the detail, unfortunately, and it is the detail in it that remains and can be corroborated, provided modern religion and politics take a back seat. What is difficult to swallow, I admit, is the idea that continuous prose narrative was written by individuals so long ago,at a time when all other civilisations relied on ancestor worship, deification of leaders, and speaking to gods to guide their decisions and had no prose writing.In Greek history some time later , rational thought took over from “hearing voices “and led to Thucydides in a dramatically short time.But the Friesians had Runic script and did not rely on revealed truth, only their own realism and simple democratic rules, which were written in stone at first.(Have you read Julian Jaynes book,The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind?) For me the important question is not whether the Friesians wrote rationally ,but what led them to it so early?
Alan: you have to understand I’m continuously exposed to a dizzying array of speculative cipher mystery theories, and that after a while their underlying conspiratorial ur-narrative starts to grate. What I find particularly glorious about the Oera Linda book is the sheer scale of its ambition, the historical sweep of its pen: such a shame it’s all made up, but there you go, it is what it is. 😉
Nick, I know you’re after entertainment rather than establishing any truth, but please at least keep an open mind, and don’t let your readers be be swayed by our Dutch expert above.His blog date is 8th Nov, 12 days BEFORE his theory of forgery by the Habertsmas is aired in a respectable Dutch paper.But his brief grab at the limelight is rather spoiled by the editor’s reluctance to back him up. So yet another muddying of the waters fails to convince as much as the book itself!
Alan: as I understand it, at least ten possible mid-19th century authors have been suggested for the Oera Linda book – but I’m honestly not endorsing any of them. Even so, it’s still a load of vaguely syncretic nonsense, regardless of whoever was foolish enough to write it. Oh well!
Nick, perhaps you should have a look at the book reviews on “Survivors of the Great Tsunami” on Amazon.com. The book is an in-depth Scientific and Historical investigation into the Oera Linda Book.
One reviewer labeled the investigation as: “The Most Important Contemporary Contribution to Our Understanding of History”.
You may also wish to look at Jacques Fermaut’s Website (French). He translated the Oera Linda Book into French and has this to say (Google Translation):
“The Oera Linda Boek experienced a turning point in 2010. The South African Alewyn J. Raubenheimer has indeed published a remarkable book which surpasses everything that preceded it: SURVIVORS OF THE GREAT TSUNAMI.”
And
“Raubenheimer paints a convincing and well illustrated (picture) with various maps of the Frisian confederation to which humanity owes so much, and the disasters, including natural, which led to its decline. It thus adds to the history of Europe and makes a remarkable chapter in the Oera Linda Book’s legitimacy”
http://home.nordnet.fr/~jacfermaut/pointdevueheemstra02.html
I have no doubt that the OLB is authentic.
Every adult human on this planet needs some extensive time off. Enough to get really bored and start thinking for themselves critically and questioning everything. For me it was being laid off and jobless for six months in my 30s. I finally started thinking for myself and realized that things are not right. People know that politicians and the media are liars, but they still take them at their word, even I did. Why? That’s nothing compared to the deceptive tactics uses by literally everybody in a position of power, especially academics.
The whole thing is run by group-thinking sociopaths who are biased toward certain POVs and use manipulative rhetoric and sophistry to deceive us into believing them. Or all the politically-motivated junk scientists who are paid to research dead ends. Consensus-based theoretical science doesn’t use the scientific method. It uses a closed system of half-truths based on alternative literal definitions of words like a lawyer or a commission salesman (think back to Bill Clinton’s “I did not have *sexual relations” comment which interpreted *sexual relations to exclude head. Those are their tricks.). You can’t prove them wrong but you can’t prove them right. If you disagree with the group, your career is over. What does that have to do with the Oera Linda Book? These sociopaths call any discoveries that challenge their established consensus a hoax. Just keep in mind who these people work for. Ever since the 17th century, bankers have used revolution and warfare to take control of the world and they remain in control today using manipulative tactics and the power that comes along with being the money supply to keep things that way.
Pre-Columbian European artifacts in America? A hoax they say. Everything is a hoax they don’t like. On the surface, the OLB is harmless. Just like the underwater Yonaguni complex. The latter is an excellent example of their deception. Mainstream archaeology wants Yonaguni to be a natural structure. One of the only reknowned archeologists to study the site said it was definitely carved by man from a natural structure. The wikipedia article quotes him out of context as proof that it’s natural and that’s not what he said. What is the harm in it being man-made and underwater? It makes no sense to shun this. Nobody would care, which to me indicates these people are threatened by it being artificial. They wouldn’t lie otherwise.
So back to the OLB, if you do your homework you’ll see that Frisians had a colony long abandoned on the Faroe Islands. You got the Zeno brothers Frisland on Mercator’s map that doesn’t exist (flooded?). The Frisians/Jutes/Anglos/Saxons all have mysterious and disputed origins. There are myths and facts in books like the Irish book of invasions that are also similar to the OLB. Contrary to sociopathic consensus, the Atlantis myth is older than Plato and in Egyptian sources as the Western Land with similar mythology.
If I said the bible was a hoax with almost no archeological evidence to support it, a hoax used as a control method, some rational folks would probably support me. But bible believers would get offended. Why this irrational drive to make the OLB a hoax based on no evidence? Is the sociopathic establishment afraid of something? Why is anti-white racism exceptable if the whole idea is to eliminate racism? Why are all these kooks spreading lies about RH – blood as ‘reptillian’? Why are Nordic people and Vikings being demonized as historic Barbarians? Why is European history being re-written all the time to talk down our memory?
That they want the OLB to be a hoax is all the proof you need to realize it isn’t one. It’s important. It deserves attention. They’re talking down our history and our memory in favor of a lie used for who-knows-what. We need to snap out of this collective amnesia. Remember who we are and where we came from. And how did we let this merchant caste/class come to rule us and re-write our history? Even in the mid 20th century our knowledge of history was so much greater than it is today.
Think for yourself, ask rational and critical questions. Avoid their rhetorical and emotive tricks and smears.
If you tried to read it by itself, it will make NO SENSE and is quite easy to dismiss. However, if you read it with Alewyn Raubenheimer’s “Chronicles from Pre-Celtic Europe”, and have a descent grounding in both mainstream and “alternative” ancient history, it is a lot harder to claim so boldly that it’s a hoax.
I’ve been a voracious reader all my life, especially concerning history, mythology, and cosmology. I’ve studied “The Oera Linda” intensely for more than a decade. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on pertaining to the subject. I have yet to see one, even remotely credible, proof that it’s a hoax. Most people simply look it up on Wikipedia(their bible) and stop there.