A classics and history student writes posts debunking popular myths about antiquity, such as Sagan's history errors and Gilgamesh.
HN commenters cite its debunkings of Sagan and Pinker, though one finds some of the Sagan critique nitpicky.
The interactions between the Indian and Greek civilizations during the fourth century BCE and later have been quite well studied, and what the article describes is not surprising.
For some context, the emperor Ashoka, scion of the Maurya empire, consolidated various smaller republics into an empire that covered most of Afghanistan and North-West Pakistan of today. These areas bordered the regions that were controlled by the Greeks at the time. Ashoka's time was one of consolidation and relative peace, people were more mobile, trade and cultural exchange flourished.
This article [1] sheds a little more light on the story. In fact, the visual image & depictions of the Buddha had significant Greek influence, the first images of the Buddha apparently surfaced outside India centuries after his death. The common depiction with curly hair was most probably not what the historical Buddha looked like [2].
[1] https://archive.is/eNYCm
[2] https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/05/15/what-did-the-buddha-really-look-like/
Carl Sagan was also incredibly wrong almost every time he talked about history.
In many ways he was vanguard of the kind of hubris we commonly see today on social media, self assured of his own knowledge.
Just to give you an example. He repeated common misconception about Library of Alexandria being something unique and it's burning being the break between high civilization and barbarism. But it was nothing of the sort.[1] The very fact that the library has been ransacked, burned or otherwise damaged both before and after the "pivotal event" Sagan describes, is a strong indicator of his ignorance.
And doesn't stop there. Whenever Sagan talked about "Dark ages" or anything remotely related he was wrong. The very term has been considered inaccurate at the time, and it is even more so today.[2]
[1]https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/02/05/carl-sagan-was-really-bad-at-history/
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
>Eh, hard to say what is magic and what is not.
I don't think it is?
I had to look up what specifically Sagan's errors about history were and yes it looks like he popularized a lot of bad mythology (I referenced this site[0]). I have to admit I believed a lot of this myself at one time. But I think there's a difference between the plausible but wrong and the impossible. If he'd said he thought Atlantis was real, or gone on about Tartaria or the great Ice Wall, that would be a lot closer to magical thinking.
Although it is a lot easier to be led astray by plausible lies than implausible ones. It seems like Sagan is certainly guilty of not being critical about narratives that reinforced his worldview.
[0]https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/02/05/carl-sagan-was-really-bad-at-history/
There have been criticisms of this "model" for many years, but it has entered the public consciousness, so people assume it to be true. There was even a Simpsons episode where Homer goes thru the 5 stages in 5 minutes. "Everyone talks about it so iut must be true!" school of science.
I have a similar problem with the Heroes Journey, which if you are in fiction/screenplay writing, is considered the Bible, and criticising it is like being a heretic. So much so, many books on writing assume it to be true an starting point. But I always found it to be silly, and recently found a great article that points out its a nonsense made up list of common fantasy tropes:
https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/31/the-heros-journey-is-nonsense/
This could eventually completely transform our understanding of Antiquity. It is estimated that only around 1% of the ancient works in Greek and Latin have survived to the present day, much less in other languages such as Punic [0]. Some works and some authors we only know by name because they were alluded to in later texts.
It's also well known that surviving texts survived because they were copied again and again on costly animal skin during the Middle Ages, by monks who had to make a choice and naturally favored topics that were of most interest to them.
This could quite literally change everything.
[0] https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2021/09/25/are-there-more-surviving-ancient-writings-in-greek-or-latin/
Interesting that the story of cats being persecuted in the middle ages is false. This article doesn't try to trace the origin of the story. This one : https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/11/05/were-cats-really-killed-en-masse-during-the-middle-ages/
Traces it to a book by Donald Engels, but that was only written in 2001 and I've definitely heard the story before that. I think I recall it being in 'Catwatching' by Desmond Morris which was published in 93 (but it may have been some other book from that time period). I doubt if Morris originated the story either, as he's a naturalist, not a historian. So I wonder where it came from.