Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to a type of historical revisionism, often involving sensational claims whose acceptance would require rewriting a significant amount of commonly accepted history, and based on methods that depart from standard historiographical conventions. Cryptohistory is a related term, applied to pseudo-historical publications based on occult notions.

Definition and etymology[link]

The term pseudo-history was coined in the early 19th century, which makes it somewhat older than pseudo-scholarship, and somewhat younger than pseudo-science (although New Latin pseudo-historia had been in use since at least the 1650s). It is attested in 1823 as referring to an early example of a historical novel.^[1] Similarly, in a 1815 attestation, it is used to refer to Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, a fictional contest between two historical poets.^[2] The current pejorative sense, referring to a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation.^[3]

Pseudohistory can be compared with pseudoscience in that they both consist of a methodology, belief, or practice that is claimed to be historic, but which does not adhere to an appropriate historic methodology, and lacks supporting evidence or plausibility.^[4]

The definition of pseudohistory can be extended to varying contexts. Historian Douglas Allchin^[5] contends that history in science education can not only be false or anecdotal, but misleading ideologically, and that this constitutes pseudohistory.

According to writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, pseudohistory is "the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes".^[6]

Description[link]

Philosopher Robert Todd Carroll suggests the following criteria for a topic to warrant the term pseudohistory:

• That the work uncritically accepts myths and anecdotal evidence without skepticism.
• That the work has a political, religious, or other ideological agenda.
• That a work is not published in an academic journal or is otherwise not adequately peer reviewed.
• That the evidence for key facts supporting the work's thesis is:
  • selective and ignores contrary evidence or explains it away; or
  • speculative; or
  • controversial; or
  • not correctly or adequately sourced; or
  • interpreted in an unjustifiable way; or
  • given undue weight; or
  • taken out of context; or
  • distorted, either innocently, accidentally, or fraudulently.
• That competing (and simpler) explanations or interpretations for the same set of facts, which have been peer reviewed and have been adequately sourced, have not been addressed.
• That the work relies on one or more conspiracy theories or hidden-hand explanations, when the principle of Occam's razor would recommend a simpler, more prosaic and more plausible explanation of the same fact pattern.^[7]

Goodrick-Clarke's description of cryptohistory[link]

One narrow description of 'cryptohistory' can be found in The Occult Roots of Nazism (1985) by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. This book examines the field of Ariosophy, an esoteric movement in Germany and Austria 1890-1930, that Goodrick-Clarke himself describes as occult. The doctrines of Ariosophy strongly resemble Nazism in important points (e.g. racism), however, the only cases of direct influences that Goodrick-Clarke could find were the ones of Rudolf von Sebottendorf (and the Thule Society) and Karl Maria Wiligut. While these cases did exist, they are often exaggerated strongly by the modern mythology of Nazi occultism. Goodrick-Clarke defines this genre as crypto-history, since its "final point of explanatory reference is an agent which has remained concealed to previous historians."^[8] When he debunks several crypto-historic books in Appendix E of The Occult Roots of Nazism, he states, that these "were typically sensational and under-researched. A complete ignorance of the primary sources was common to most authors and inaccuracies and wild claims were repeated by each newcomer to the genre until an abundant literature existed, based on wholly spurious 'facts' concerning the powerful Thule Society, the Nazi links with the East, and Hitler's occult initiation."^[9] Here Goodrick-Clarke brings down the description of cryptohistory to two elements: "A complete ignorance of the primary sources" and the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims". ^[10]

Examples[link]

The following are some commonly cited examples of pseudohistory:

• Catastrophism
  • Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision^[11]
• Alternative chronologies - revised sequences of events or other alterations to the timeline of ancient history.
  • Anatoly Fomenko's theory New Chronology^[12]
• Psychohistory The ill-fated attempt to merge psychology with history, replacing historical method.
• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
  • Gavin Menzies's book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America.^[13]
• Religious history (see also scientific foreknowledge in sacred texts)
  • Priory of Sion: works such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which conjecture that Jesus Christ may have married Mary Magdalene, who later moved to France and gave birth to the line of Merovingian Kings^[14]
  • The writings of author David Barton and others postulating that the United States of America was founded as an exclusively Christian nation.^{[15][16][17][18]}
  • See also Searches for Noah's Ark^[19]

• Ethnocentric pseudo-history (see also National mysticism)
  • Most Afrocentric (i.e. Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories, Black Egypt) ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical^[20][21]
  • The Indigenous Aryans theories published in Hindu nationalism during the 1990s and 2000s.^[22]
  • The "crypto-history" of Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism.^[23]
  • British-Israelism (Anglo-Israelism).
• Anti-semitism inspired (see also Blood libel)
  • The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fraudulent work purporting to show a historical conspiracy for world domination by Jews^[24]
  • Holocaust denial: claims of writers such as David Irving that the Holocaust did not occur or was exaggerated greatly.^[25]
• Ancient astronauts, Archaeoastronomy and Lost lands (see also Atlantis location hypotheses)
  • The theory of Lemuria and Kumari Kandam.^[26]
  • Chariots of the Gods? and other books by Erich von Däniken, which claim ancient visitors from outer space constructed the pyramids and other monuments.^[27]
  • Publications by Christopher Knight, such as Uriel's Machine (2000), claiming ancient technological civilizations.^[28][29]
• The Shakespeare authorship question, which claims that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works traditionally attributed to him.^{[30][31][32][33]}

See also[link]

• Historical Revisionism (negationism)
• Historiography and nationalism
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Pseudoscience
• Pseudoscientific metrology

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up pseudohistory in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "Pseudohistory and Pseudoscience" Program in the History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.
• Pseudohistory entry at Skeptic's Dictionary
• The Hall of Ma'at
• "The Restoration of History" from Skeptic (U.S. magazine).