Indulging The Left’s Historical Revisionism Has Consequences

[Kamaji]

Indulging The Left’s Historical Revisionism Has Consequences

By promoting these false histories, we move from unpacking our flawed past to politicizing it to beat our ideological opponents.

BY: CASEY CHALK
OCTOBER 12, 2023

A controversial Oct. 5 article in Science Magazine claims to confirm a 2021 study of human footprints in White Sands National Park in New Mexico that suggested humans were in North America about 23,000 to 21,000 years ago, and thus several thousand years earlier than archaeologists have typically believed. Among the many responses to this news, the most bizarre take from the research must surely go to Kim Pasqual-Charlie, a member of the Pueblo of Acoma.

“For many Indigenous people, the study is simply a confirmation of things they already knew from knowledge passed down over generations” reports The Washington Post. “These are our ancestral footprints,” Pasqual-Charlie explained.

It’s certainly possible that the footprints are those of local indigenous peoples’ ancient ancestors — whose else would they be, given they were fossilized in New Mexico? But her claim that the research confirms the oral history of her indigenous tribe is remarkable, apparently indicating her belief that the Pueblo have retained an oral tradition that their ancestors have been traversing the Southwest for some time earlier than the typical historical assessments, which put the number at about 16,000 years ago.

Indeed, later in the same WaPo article, she demands: “How much more evidence do you need to say: We did exist back then. We’ve been in the Southwest region for a very long time.” Pasqual-Charlie’s evidenceless assertion is as absurd as it is entirely unverifiable. But that a major U.S. newspaper would even approvingly cite it demonstrates how willingly our elite cultural institutions indulge the most ridiculous claims in the name of “woke” ideology.

Patronizing People’s Delusions
To put the Pasqual-Charlie claim in perspective, consider the fact that humans have only had written language for about 5,500 years. Alternatively, cultures that lack written languages, instead relying on oral traditions to communicate their folklore, mythology, and socio-cultural rites, are capable of verbally passing down information for many generations. Perhaps, some historians and anthropologists have surmised, these oral traditions may be related to real ancient events that happened thousands of years ago. However, these arguments are usually based on the most specious of speculation, given the obvious difficulty in effectively verifying some folk tale with a specific event like, say, a natural disaster or a human migration.

In other words, the likelihood that a particular culture, even one with strong oral traditions, would maintain stories that could reasonably date how long they have lived in a particular place, or how they got there in the first place, is about as likely as you and your mother simultaneously winning the lottery.

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/12/indulging-the-lefts-historical-revisionism-has-consequences/