The 20 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies Ever

[Moonwalk]

181. How do we know anyone existed? Well, usually there is corroborating evidence from several sources...

...like with Julius Caesar. His friends write about him, his enemies, his relations. And there are statues with his name on them from different places, by different artists that seem to be of the same face. And there are stories of him from people he conquered--and there are documents that he wrote that correlate to the stories of the people he conquered showing that both agree he conquered them.

And sometimes, if we're really lucky, we also get coffins and bones. It's really wonderful when we can find a skull, reconstruct the face, and match it to all those paintings or statues of said historical person. That's great proof that they existed. So we can say there's a lot of evidence that certain people existed especially if they were famous enough to be written about, drawn, given a burial spot, etc. It may still be hard to prove what was said about them (what they were like, what they did) was true**--but we can at least verify that they existed.

The existence of those who are part of an oral rather than written tradition are harder to prove--and this includes oral storytelling that may not have been written down for several years after the fact. Especially if it was written by those who were not there to witness the events and/or did not personally know anyone who was there. Likewise, even if the historian DID know someone who was there, said witness/historian may not be all that reliable. The farther back in history you get, the less diligent the historians were--they'd believe what they heard and write it down without searching for corroborating evidence. Like, for example, they'd write down that someone raised the dead--told to them by a friend of a friend or maybe one "witness"--without finding other witnesses to the event or the dead person himself (the legend is that Lazarus and his sisters moved to France--shouldn't historians have looked him up? Or maybe the progeny from him or his sister to confirm the story?). Thus, it is *much* harder to prove the people in such stories existed, and even harder to prove that they did what the stories say they did. So maybe Pontius Pilot didn't exist.

But Julius Caesar did; we CAN be reasonable assured of that. Of course, the closer to the now we get, the better evidence we have--and the better the historians are at documenting their evidence of that person's existence. Official documents, diaries, letters, photographs, newsreels, radio recordings and finally internet videos. All these allow us to "know" that someone we never met existed (unless you want to get very philosophical and question how we know anything).

**Special note: There is a recent biography of Anne Boleyn that argues, convincingly, that most of what we know about her is from unreliable and outright lying gossip from one of her worst enemies (Spanish ambassador who worshiped Queen Katherine). Said enemy not only wrote a lot of nasty stories about Anne--and passed on any that were going around at court--but his letters are still in tact and among the few that offer any documentation on Boleyn. So past historians have relied on just them, thus perpetuating a lot of misinformation about her. Letters that might have told us more of the truth were deliberately burned (hers, the kings letters to her, etc.). And there are no accurate paintings (these, too, were erased by Henry VIII). What this historian has found out from the scraps (letters from less bias sources, etc.) demolishes a lot of false stories we have (she didn't have a sixth finger, for example). However, the author continually makes sure in this book to distinguish what can be "known" by way of real evidence vs. what can only be pieced together and surmised. Like exactly what color Anne Boleyn's hair was (from descriptions, the author deduces that was reddish-brown, but she admits that is a deduction--without a good painting or actual hair, there is no proof).

This is the difference between a good historian who tries to pin down what can be known, vs. a bad one who just repeats stories without trying to find out if they were true.