Which historical/legendary/mythological accounts turned out to be true?
Upvote:13
I'll start with the archetypical story of the type: Troy.
Up till 19th century, people believed that Homer's and Virgil's troy was a legend, not a real city (unlike Greeks and Romans).
In 1865/1868, Calvert and especially Heinrich Schliemann have found what they believed to be real Troy (though later archaeology, fully detailed on Wikipedia, showed that Schliemann actually found earlier Troy II, whereas Homeric Troy is usually though not conclusively placed as Troy VIIa).
Upvote:17
I think the Norse discovery of the Americas fit. Around year 1000, an expedition led by Norseman Leiv Eiriksson winter camped on Newfoundland.
From the Wikipedia article:
For some centuries after Christopher Columbus' voyages opened the Americas to large-scale colonization by Europeans, it was unclear whether these stories [of Leiv Eiriksson's discovery of Vinland, my remark] represented real voyages by the Norse to North America. The sagas were first taken seriously when in 1837 the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn pointed out the possibility for a Norse settlement in or voyages to North America. North America, by the name Winland, was first mentioned in written sources in a work by Adam of Bremen from approximately 1075. It was not until the 13th and 14th centuries that the most important works about North America and the early Norse activities there, namely the Sagas of Icelanders, were put into writing.
The question was definitively settled in the 1960s when a Norse settlement was excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland by archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad and her husband, outdoorsman and author Helge Ingstad.
Icelanders (and Norwegians from the 1800s onwards) might have been "certain" all along that the stories of discovery were true, but I do not think it was accepted by everyone in the rest of Europe / North America until the archeological discoveries. There are several other, unconfirmed stories of trans-Atlantic contact, so it would have been feasible to group the Nors*m*n with these as long as no "hard evidence" was found.
More post
- 📝 Why did Chinese use high tin bronze for swords?
- 📝 How harmful was the Tea Act of 1773 to the American colonies?
- 📝 Why didn't cheese spoil when it was given as rations to soldiers?
- 📝 Were Kayanian and Pishdadian actually a thing?
- 📝 How did the Allies achieve air superiority on Sicily?
- 📝 What does a slitterman do?
- 📝 How were provincial Roman accounting and taxes handled under Hadrian?
- 📝 What is the earliest archaeological evidence of silk presence in Ancient Rome?
- 📝 What are the origins of the "News Reel Voice"?
- 📝 What is the first documented eating disorder?
- 📝 Given their reputation for fighting to the last man in the Pacific, why did 700,000 Japanese troops surrender in Manchuria?
- 📝 When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
- 📝 Why did the Spanish take the island of Annobon in the Treaty of El Pardo in 1778?
- 📝 Why didn't Syria operate the Panzerkampfwagen V Panther tank?
- 📝 To what degree has the historical effectiveness of non-violent resistance movements been impacted by parallel violent resistance movements?
- 📝 How long might the campaigning season in the Caucasus have lasted for the Germans?
- 📝 How well were the African soldiers equipped in the civil war?
- 📝 What are the chances that my ancestor from Massachusetts in 1670 was a Russian Jew?
- 📝 What was the efficiency of the "Gadget" bomb in the Trinity Test?
- 📝 What was the strategic importance of Judea?
- 📝 What does "new royal power centers" mean?
- 📝 Are quantitative or mathematical methods becoming more dominant in the 21st century historical research?
- 📝 Who of the British military had access to the ULTRA messages of the Enigma in September 1944?
- 📝 How were heavier objects weighed in antiquity/middle ages?
- 📝 Were there regionalist/independentist movements or feelings in mid-19th century Spain?
- 📝 How much protection did Fort Warren afford Boston?
- 📝 How exactly did most nobles gain wealth?
- 📝 Why did the delgates show up on different balconies after they signed the Austrian State Treaty?
- 📝 When did navies stop giving out a drink ration to their sailors?
- 📝 How is this pattern from Pompeii also in Cappella Sansevero?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Which historical/legendary/mythological accounts turned out to be true?
- 📝 When did the use of fabricated speeches in historical works go out of fashion?
- 📝 Which lost historical documents, when uncovered, led to the most substantial revisions in historiography?
- 📝 Are there ancient historical sources which have been permanently lost?
- 📝 References or accounts in historical Egyptian literature about the Exodus
- 📝 How can we be sure that a certain historical claim is true and accurate?
- 📝 Are there any historical accounts of Aisha (the wife of Muhammad) giving public speeches?
- 📝 Which SF author was unable to check his own work out of the library due to insufficient security clearance?
- 📝 Which historical figures are remembered for actions contradictory to their intentions?
- 📝 What evidence do we have that historical accounts we've found of ancient civilizations weren't fictional?
- 📝 Know of any historical tales in which a man kills the woman he loves as a sacrifice in the name of duty, religion, etc.?
- 📝 In which modern-day location did the historical battles of Bagrevand happen?
- 📝 Does Historiography have a usual technical term for historical writing which makes factual claims without giving references for them?
- 📝 Which historical developments led to mankind becoming ingenious towards todays exponential growth?
- 📝 Which ancient cults would cut out the hearts of live animals and offer them as sacrifices?
- 📝 Do we know of any course of action chosen based on historical precedents which was successful?
- 📝 Which astronomical events have been the most important in dating historical events?
- 📝 Which historical figure is attributed with the most death of his people?
- 📝 Is there a historical reason for a pattern of worse technological standards beating out better ones?
- 📝 When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 Which culture used no personal names?
- 📝 Is it true that "All spicy food is from Latin America"?
- 📝 Have there been any countries that voted themselves out of existence?
- 📝 Is it true that slavery was endemic in Sub-Saharan Africa previous to the establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade?
- 📝 Which came first: polytheism or monotheism?
- 📝 What was the historical context of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution?
- 📝 Are there historical examples of audiences drawn to a work that was "so bad it's good"?
- 📝 Which European Languages are not Indo-European?
- 📝 What is a major historical event historians are deeply divided over?