I knew it -- "Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient Greeks"

[Blue_Tires]

WASHINGTON—A group of leading historians held a press conference Monday at the National Geographic Society to announce they had "entirely fabricated" ancient Greece, a culture long thought to be the intellectual basis of Western civilization.

The group acknowledged that the idea of a sophisticated, flourishing society existing in Greece more than two millennia ago was a complete fiction created by a team of some two dozen historians, anthropologists, and classicists who worked nonstop between 1971 and 1974 to forge "Greek" documents and artifacts.

"Honestly, we never meant for things to go this far," said Professor Gene Haddlebury, who has offered to resign his position as chair of Hellenic Studies at Georgetown University. "We were young and trying to advance our careers, so we just started making things up: Homer, Aristotle, Socrates, Hippocrates, the lever and fulcrum, rhetoric, ethics, all the different kinds of columns—everything."

"Way more stuff than any one civilization could have come up with, obviously," he added.

According to Haddlebury, the idea of inventing a wholly fraudulent ancient culture came about when he and other scholars realized they had no idea what had actually happened in Europe during the 800-year period before the Christian era.

Frustrated by the gap in the record, and finding archaeologists to be "not much help at all," they took the problem to colleagues who were then scrambling to find a way to explain where things such as astronomy, cartography, and democracy had come from.

Within hours the greatest and most influential civilization of all time was born.

"One night someone made a joke about just taking all these ideas, lumping them together, and saying the Greeks had done it all 2,000 years ago," Haddlebury said. "One thing led to another, and before you know it, we're coming up with everything from the golden ratio to the Iliad."

"That was a bitch to write, by the way," he continued, referring to the epic poem believed to have laid the foundation for the Western literary tradition. "But it seemed to catch on."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/historians-admit-to-inventing-ancient-greeks,18209/?utm_souce=popbox

With this breaking news story in mind, I'm off to join Sarah Palin's campaign for "Supreme Ruler of the American Empire"

[Richardo]

1. !!

:rofl:

[In_The_Wind]

2. nice

try :silly:

[Old Troop]

3. I knew it! When I was in high school in the '60s, the "Ancient Greece"

portion of our world history book was just 40 pages of blank paper.

[Bucky]

5. Yes, that's because the chapter on the invention of the printing press was a lie too

Actual printing presses are grown in Sicily and harvested in the spring time

[Old Troop]

7. Well played, sir!

[RandomThoughts]

4. Guess you had to be there.

shrug.


Side note, I have been watching the History Channel invent history for years. So not that worried about such articles.


On a side note, Spartans are one wing, Athens the other, in metaphor.

[triguy46]

6. You just can't make this stuff up. Er, you can make this stuff up.

[nolabear]

8. I knew it. Fossils are planted too, aren't they?

God's little jokes, as NatLamp used to say.

[frogmarch]

9. The Onion is great!

Love it! :-)

Thanks for posting.