Posted on 07/13/2010 1:33:43 AM PDT by RightCenter
It's a running theme here at Cracked that a lot of what we think we know about history has been filtered through many centuries of utter bullshit. Our image of the past is largely made up of Hollywood inventions, propaganda and uneducated guesses.
So you will probably be surprised to find that...
The Perception:
We get so busy being amazed by the Pyramids, with their massive, meticulously layered sandy golden bricks, that we forget that what we're seeing are the broken-down remnants. If you could see them new, you'd barely recognize them. They were much more awesome back then.
The Reality:
What we think of today as the Pyramids are really just the exposed layers of the structural base. The original pyramids lit up like the Times Square of ancient Egypt. Egyptians were all about having the maximum amount of glittery goodness, especially when it came to death.
Pharaohs liked tacky shit? We would have never guessed.
And since the Pyramids were the tombs of the pharaohs, they made sure they were the biggest, most sparkly things of all. The original outside consisted of smooth, white limestone that hid the layers of brick, giving the effect that a pyramid was one giant solid piece. Don't take our word for it; you can still see bits of that decorative layer on some of them:
That outer crunchy candy shell was then polished until it was on the verge of blinding from all the light it would reflect from the sun or moon. It was said that they could be seen from miles away, even during the night.
Of course that wasn't enough, so the capstone was then plated in gold or electrum. Had the technology existed, we're sure the pharaohs would have stuck 24-inch chrome rims on them, too.
Why We Picture it Wrong:
What we're looking at today are the equivalent of sports cars that have been long forgotten in some junkyard.
Weather and time have been beating down the pyramids for four and a half thousand years. Well, partly it was time, but mostly it was assholes. Those shiny layers of white and gold? They were stripped off and used in the construction of Medieval Cairo, and there are cracks and holes where 19th century treasure hunters tried to get in with pickaxes and in one unfortunate case, dynamite.
Oh don't worry about it looters, those were only the greatest architectural accomplishments of the Ancient World. We're sure what you needed the stuff for was way more important.
The Perception:
Sure, the T-Rex may be the go-to killer dinosaur, but everyone who's anyone knows that Velociraptors were the real baddest asses of prehistoric times. Cracked Paleontologists theorize that if it wasn't for a giant boulder shot from outer space wiping them all out, Velociraptors would be ruling the planet today, only keeping humans around for food and sport.
"We'll give you a two minute head start."
These deadly beasts of yore looked like miniaturized Tyrannosaurs, but sleeker, quicker and more dangerous. The dinosaur Kobe to the T-Rex's Shaq, if you will. Anyone who's seen Jurassic Park has a pretty good idea of what Raptors looked like. Well... except for one minor detail.
"We hope it's not something that makes us look totally lame!"
The Reality:
They had feathers. Not just a few here and there either. But a full on, honest to goodness coat of teeth-to-tail FEATHERS.
Now, it would be awesome if this meant they could fly, but obviously if they could do that, you'd already damned well know about it. No, it turns out Velociraptors were just big fluffy looking lizards, who most likely used the feathers to show off to other raptors, or in mating rituals. Apparently Raptor ladies were impressed if you looked like the bastard offspring of a komodo dragon and Big Bird.
Velociraptors: Preening douchebags of the thunder lizard kingdom.
Why We Picture it Wrong:
We actually didn't know about this until 1998, when a bone proving the extent of quill knobs on Velociraptors was discovered, and many a childhood ruined.
Here's to hoping they do a Star Wars-style special edition for Jurassic Park, with updated, more accurate CGI dinosaurs. That should be goddamned hilarious.
The Perception:
Quick, what do you picture in your head when we say, "Ancient Greece"? If you're like most people you either picture lots of dudes standing around in togas, or white marble statues with no pupils in their eyes:
"Colorful clothes are for gangbangers and homosexuals."
Those ornate statues made of pure white marble, depicting the austere beauty and power of epic gods and heroes, have made quite an impression on history. Renaissance sculptors carved their own marble statues based on the belief that that's how the ever wise Greeks did things.
The Reality:
Ancient Greece looked more like someone crashed their LGBT pride parade into a Mardi Gras Festival.
Recent studies using the awesome powers of lasers and shit (no, seriously!) have found that once completing the iconic marble statues and buildings we know today, the Greeks covered them head to toe in bright primary colors. Greek sculptors worked together with painters to come up with psychedelic patterns and colors to make their statues and buildings pop.
So in the midst of all that theorizing and philosophizing, the Greeks were also really focused on making sure their day to day life looked like the album cover of Magical Mystery Tour. Oh, and you know the iconic Parthenon? Based on the way buildings were painted back then, it was most likely an eye-searing mash of bright yellow, red and blue.
Why We Picture it Wrong:
As years passed, like with the Pyramids, the primitive paint used on the statues chipped and wore off, so when they were rediscovered by later civilizations, they appeared in their all white form. And frankly people just liked the idea of the all white marble look.
Even so, archaeologists knew that the statues used to be painted, since there were ancient records showing people painting the damned things. However, people simply preferred to display the plain white statues, since they looked more like something made by the founders of Western civilization should look like, in the minds of many scholars. Pure, clean, capturing the shape and essence of scientific accuracy and artistic beauty--whereas the painted versions kinda looked like something you might have made during middle school art class.
The Perception:
So already it's pretty clear that if we don't have photos laying around of the historical period in question, we're basically just guessing. And that's interesting considering how many figures from the distant past we think we have a perfectly clear image of. For instance, ninjas looked like this:
Vikings looked like this:
And as anyone who's ever attended a Thanksgiving event at an American grade school knows, pilgrims looked like this:
The Reality:
The ninja outfit is ridiculous, if you think about it. If you're an assassin and your job is to blend in, you don't do that by dressing in a black bodysuit that screams "ninja" from a mile away. So, they dressed like normal people--workers, monks, merchants, basically anything that looked as un-ninja as humanly possible was the perfect disguise. This way, they could sneak around unnoticed, day or night.
Hidden inside those bushels are like a million katanas.
On rare occasions when they needed to move through the dark undetected, they still didn't wear black. Dark blue is the color you want if you want to blend in at night; someone in all black would stand out like a silhouette.
As for the Vikings, the one single thing we know them for--wearing huge horns on their helmets--isn't true. They just wore regular helmets, not anything fancy. Here's some advice: If you want a career in something that requires a lot of hand-to-hand combat, don't wear anything that's easy for people to grab onto. This is why when cops wear ties, they wear clip-ons. It's also why you don't want something on your hat that is essentially a giant set of handlebars.
Viking helmets: built for sensible pillaging.
As for the pilgrims, they were simple, farming folk, and as such wore clothes that made sense for the job. Do you really think someone would toil in the field or chop wood for hours on end dressed in a heavy coat and shiny shoes? If you're gonna have a long, hard day of stealing Indian land, you gotta at least have a shirt that breathes.
Therefore, it was more common to see guys in baggy shirts and pants, and gals in simple dresses. Hats were floppy and buckle-free, and boots were made of beat up leather and tied with bows. On top of that, the image of the demure, black and white puritan is also a myth, as people owned clothes in a range of colors including bright yellows, blues, reds and greens.
Why We Picture it Wrong:
The ninjas can thank the theater. In Edo period theater (which came about one hundred years after ninjas were around), playwrights needed a trick to show how sneaky ninjas were on stage, as well as a way to make them into "invisible" assassins. The stage hands already dressed in all black, so the audience had long been used to ignoring them since they weren't "part of the play." So, actors playing ninjas started dressing up in all black, too. Then the whole audience would jump when one of them would leap out of nowhere and kill a dude. Also, it looks totally badass.
As for the Vikings, Greek and Roman historians wrote about warriors from the North with horned helmets, which in and of itself was just an exaggeration used to make them sound like scarier bad guys for their stories. Also, it looks totally badass.
And the pilgrims, with their black hats and brass buckles on everything? Well, in the early 1600s, there were people who dressed that way, but those were the urban puritans back in England --precisely the people who decided not to become pilgrims and instead stay home in the first place. The reason we have the image of pilgrims dressing the same is because all the existing portraits of people from the era come from England. Also, it looks totally badass.
The Perception:
Occasionally someone will come forward having seen the face of Christ in, say, a hunk of wood, or a toasted sandwich.
And always you can immediately recognize the face because of the trademark long hair and beard. It's maybe the most recognizable face in the world.
White guy, usually even with light hair and eyes. It's not just some pop culture invention; check out this image of Jesus found in the Room of The Segnatura at the Vatican:
Please, no jokes about the naked little boys at the bottom.
The Reality:
As you can probably guess, Yeshua of Nazareth, the man Christians think of as "Jesus Christ" today, actually looked a lot more Middle Eastern seeing as he was... well... actually Middle Eastern.
That's just an artist rendering based on what the average person of the time and place Jesus actually came from looked like, but you get the idea.
Why We Picture it Wrong:
For the dominant image of Jesus as a whitey, we have artists like Leonardo and Michelangelo to thank. A lot of the paintings of Jesus they made during the Renaissance became the "definitive" versions of his image, and they were just portraying him as a handsome Italian man, like everyone else in their paintings.
But the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aren't the only ones to blame; European paintings from the Medieval ages did the same whitewashing, most likely because, in the age of the Crusades, the Church was better off not reminding people they were praying to a little, brown Jew.
"Wait is that the guy we're supposed to Kill or worship? We might need to change our mascot..."
Of course, this racial artistic license isn't exclusive to white people, either--Jesus has been portrayed as Black, Hispanic and Asian, depending on who painted the picture.
Chinesus!
The Perception:
You don't need an extensive education in astrophysics to guess what the Big Bang looked like. It's called the freaking Big Bang. It must have been some kind of big ass explosion, right? Hell, even Carl Sagan agrees--after all, that's how he shows it in one of his highly respected documentaries.
"Our Universe began with the mightiest explosion of all time."
- Actual quote from actual Documentary
The Reality:
Since nobody was around to observe it, there is still debate surrounding the exact details of the origins of the cosmos, but it most certainly did not look like an explosion as presented in the above freeze-frame. There are some who say the origin of the universe came in a moment of extremely rapid matter expansion, aka the "Big Bang Theory." But the other, most common, camp is the "steady state" theory, wherein the universe has been expanding at the same rate since day one, and continues to expand at the same pace even now. Either way, though, both sides agree there was no "explosion." Instead the universe expanded like a balloon full of dark matter and other cool sci-fi sounding sciencey stuff.
The main argument between the groups of physicists is basically how fast the balloon inflated, not whether the balloon inflated or exploded in a ball of fire.
Why We Picture it Wrong:
The whole problem comes back to that really misleading name. So, what kind of jerk would come up with the name "Big Bang" if they were a smart enough scientist to know it was more of a "gradual swelling"?
Turns out it was one more opposed to the idea of a Big Bang than most. Fred Hoyle was an astrophysicist firmly on the "steady state" side of the great debate of the birth of life, the universe, and everything. He came up with the phrase "Big Bang" as a way to simply explain the viewpoint he disagreed with, intending people to hear the name and think the idea of a giant explosion giving birth to existence was ridiculous.
This was a gross misjudgment of human nature. As soon as he suggested there was a huge explosion at the birth of the universe, we latched onto that idea and never let it go. Hoyle simply failed to grasp how profoundly our species loves big-ass explosions.
When not ruining dinosaurs for everybody else, Alexander L. Hoffman writes sketchy comedy for First, The TRANYA! and Ritchie Redd. You can contact Alexander here.
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LOL! I don’t think there has been a History Channel or Discovery Channel documentary about ancient Egypt where he hasn’t had camera time.
Also, I think the initial expansion, say until the universe was three feet in diameter, probably would have qualified as an explosion. The chemical forces unleashed in an explosion of a stick of dynamite would have been vanishingly small compared to the forces required to contain all the matter of the universe inside a three foot sphere.
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Thanks dware. And bravo on your tagline, btw. :') |
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well, this was a fun thread! thanks for ping
Jesus was no Arab. They got that totally wrong so how can anyone trust anything else in this article.
Since space is a vacuum, there would have been no sound. No bang at all.
Yeah, I think this is a nice tongue-in-cheek topic for another heavy week. :’)
Thank you. I do believe out of all the ping lists I belong to, I enjoy GGG the most. An excellent endeavor.
Detected this echo in what media? Vacuum? AEther? Something else?
I did miserably in physics, but...
“Jesus was no Arab. They got that totally wrong so how can anyone trust anything else in this article.”
Jew, Arab, who can tell the difference? Children of Abraham, remember?
That is one of the reasons Arab anti-Semitism is such a bad joke.
Had you put any thought into a seventh?
How do they know He didn’t get His looks from His Father’s side of the family?.....:)
From the article itself:
“the Church was better off not reminding people they were praying to a little, brown Jew.”
It does not say that Jesus was an Arab at all.
Genesis IS the account of the creation of the universe.
Go back and read chapter one again:
“14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”
Gee whiz everybody, it's a Maveri....er....John McCain.
For myself, I think a boatload of 3’ tall feathered killing machine V-raptors would be actually (if not visually) much more threatening than the same body mass in a few 6’ tall reptile looking U-raptors.
BUMP
Had an argument with a militant black I knew in the USAF who insisted Jesus wasn't white he was black. He cited “feet like ash” (blacks get ashy skin) and “hair like lambs wool” (kinky hair). I told him that was rather vague if, in fact, Jesus were noticeably darker in skin color than the predominant population which, was not white, but brown, like the Middle Eastern populations of Jews and Arabs and any other Semitic people.
After convincing him that Mary, at least, was neither white (European) nor black (African), but a Semite (Middle Eastern); he STILL insisted that Jesus was at least half black...... on his Father's side!
LOL!!!
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