I think most people probably suffer from this weird condition whereby our brains produce an explanation for why something is as it is and, regardless of plausibility, our brains then accept this explanation, even without any kind of supporting evidence, as true.
Take flat earthers as an example:
- Child looks at the horizon, it looks flat; ergo the earth is flat.
- Child looks at the horizon, they can't see the city they visited last week with grandma; ergo the earth is at very least curved.
- Child overhears the expression "all corners of the world"; ergo the world is a CUBE.
Most of our more improbable assumptions are quickly corrected by schooling or other information we are exposed to. Which is why we point and laugh at adult flat earthers who've somehow managed to miss or ignore the memo. But there are many other things we believe we know, often without realising we have only assumed them.
The 'today years old' meme is an example of this: things that were out there being obvious but people never thought about because we tend to accept things as they are. https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/x-mind-blowing-facts-people-learned-when-they-were-today
Part of the point of these things is that they don't actually MATTER to most of us either way. I mean, what DIFFERENCE would it make to your personal life if the earth is flat, round or oblong (yes, I was watching the repeat of the Midsomer Murders episode 'The Oblong Murders' a few nights ago)? Unless you're an astrophysicist or something the truthful answer is probably 'none at all'. Similarly the bit in Sherlock where it doesn't matter to him if the earth goes round the sun or 'round and round the garden like a teddy bear'.
It is because of this that articles are written debunking urban myths and explaining commonly held but misinformed beliefs...and I don't have a problem with that, only the assumption that I the reader am as dumb as the writer thinks!
And the reason I'm thinking of this was stumbling across this 'Cats in Ancient Egypt didn't look the way you think' article from Forbes:
And the reason I'm thinking of this was stumbling across this 'Cats in Ancient Egypt didn't look the way you think' article from Forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidanderson/2019/01/29/cats-in-ancient-egypt-didnt-look-the-way-you-think/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
From the title I thought it would be something about the evolution of domesticated cats - even in my lifetime Siamese cats, for example, have changed appearance quite dramatically due to the way they are bred. I assumed (there's that word again) that it would be about Ancient Egyptian cats more closely resembling their wild ancestors than modern moggies.
But no.
I'm not sure who the writer was talking about but apparently there are people who assume Ancient Egyptian cats were exclusively BLACK. Why? Because most statuettes of cats are rendered in black stone or dark bronze. *FACEPALM* As the article sites paintings of cats in tabby colouring a similarly wrong hypothesis that all Ancient Egyptian cats were black or tabby could be proposed!
This in turn reminded me of my Open University studies where the course books would prattle on for several pages about some wholly absurd hypothesis - which would invariably enrage me to all caps comments and angry face doodles in the margins about how bloody stupid and utterly wrong it all was - before belatedly debunking it. Those detours along assumptions I had never made drove me loopy.
It just seemed such an odd premise for an article to start with... By all means write an article explaining how it might be assumed...but honestly, it's not an assumption I would have imagined anyone could make! Maybe it's because I have an interest in Egyptology and learned at primary school how Egyptian art (excluding the Amarna period aka Akhenaton's reign) is stylised and unified by convention, not realistic. Or perhaps because this is something I had previously shared on Facebook:
There's another one I have come across in a similar vein. There are those who assume Ancient Egyptian people were red-skinned because of artistic conventions and those who assume Ancient Egyptians were black-skinned because Egypt is in Africa... *sigh* What's more, I've encountered people who accuse the discipline of Egyptology of 'whitewashing' and who do things like assert (on no evidence) that all pharaohs (including Cleopatra VII who as a Ptolemy might be reasonably supposed to be of largely Greek ancestry) were in fact black.
Where do I even begin with that?! First off there's basic geography. Yes, Egypt is on the African continent but depending on how old the Sahara Desert is there has long been a barrier separating north and sub-Saharan Africans; meanwhile, even in antiquity Egypt had thriving ports on the Mediterranean coast meaning contact with paler skinned Europeans would be common.
The Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in art as paler skinned than their Nubian neighbours. Was this merely a convention to differentiate themselves? Was this an ancient form of colourism (where paler skin is perceived as more attractive)? Or was it FACT - just as modern Egyptians are lighter skinned north Africans, not all historic Africans were darker skinned sub-Saharans.
There have of course been DNA studies on mummies...and so far these have found that the Ancient Egyptians tested were less black African than the modern population.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530115141.htm
So Ancient Egyptian art conventions can be taken to be both fact-based and differentiating themselves from other populations...and yet clearly not realistic because, regardless of familial resemblance, not all pharaohs could have looked so alike. That, and the fact female pharaoh Hatshepsut was represented with a symbolic beard!
Obviously, for people not well versed in Egyptian art this might well be counter-intuitive but the phrasing of an explanatory article makes a world of difference. Put it in terms of "Did you know...?" rather than "You know how you always thought...?" Quit dumbing things down to the lowest possible level and assuming your readers are as daft as a box of frogs. In my humble opinion anyone who assumes a thing must actually look the way it is drawn / painted / sculpted is pretty damn daft. Just look at the trouble Henry VIII had over Anne of Cleves!
I'm not the brightest spark and I've assumed I've known all sorts of things I didn't but I'm not about to assume other people have made the exact same mistakes either. By all means admit your failings if you feel the need but please stop short of assuming others did the same.
From the title I thought it would be something about the evolution of domesticated cats - even in my lifetime Siamese cats, for example, have changed appearance quite dramatically due to the way they are bred. I assumed (there's that word again) that it would be about Ancient Egyptian cats more closely resembling their wild ancestors than modern moggies.
But no.
I'm not sure who the writer was talking about but apparently there are people who assume Ancient Egyptian cats were exclusively BLACK. Why? Because most statuettes of cats are rendered in black stone or dark bronze. *FACEPALM* As the article sites paintings of cats in tabby colouring a similarly wrong hypothesis that all Ancient Egyptian cats were black or tabby could be proposed!
This in turn reminded me of my Open University studies where the course books would prattle on for several pages about some wholly absurd hypothesis - which would invariably enrage me to all caps comments and angry face doodles in the margins about how bloody stupid and utterly wrong it all was - before belatedly debunking it. Those detours along assumptions I had never made drove me loopy.
It just seemed such an odd premise for an article to start with... By all means write an article explaining how it might be assumed...but honestly, it's not an assumption I would have imagined anyone could make! Maybe it's because I have an interest in Egyptology and learned at primary school how Egyptian art (excluding the Amarna period aka Akhenaton's reign) is stylised and unified by convention, not realistic. Or perhaps because this is something I had previously shared on Facebook:
There's another one I have come across in a similar vein. There are those who assume Ancient Egyptian people were red-skinned because of artistic conventions and those who assume Ancient Egyptians were black-skinned because Egypt is in Africa... *sigh* What's more, I've encountered people who accuse the discipline of Egyptology of 'whitewashing' and who do things like assert (on no evidence) that all pharaohs (including Cleopatra VII who as a Ptolemy might be reasonably supposed to be of largely Greek ancestry) were in fact black.
Where do I even begin with that?! First off there's basic geography. Yes, Egypt is on the African continent but depending on how old the Sahara Desert is there has long been a barrier separating north and sub-Saharan Africans; meanwhile, even in antiquity Egypt had thriving ports on the Mediterranean coast meaning contact with paler skinned Europeans would be common.
The Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in art as paler skinned than their Nubian neighbours. Was this merely a convention to differentiate themselves? Was this an ancient form of colourism (where paler skin is perceived as more attractive)? Or was it FACT - just as modern Egyptians are lighter skinned north Africans, not all historic Africans were darker skinned sub-Saharans.
There have of course been DNA studies on mummies...and so far these have found that the Ancient Egyptians tested were less black African than the modern population.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530115141.htm
So Ancient Egyptian art conventions can be taken to be both fact-based and differentiating themselves from other populations...and yet clearly not realistic because, regardless of familial resemblance, not all pharaohs could have looked so alike. That, and the fact female pharaoh Hatshepsut was represented with a symbolic beard!
Obviously, for people not well versed in Egyptian art this might well be counter-intuitive but the phrasing of an explanatory article makes a world of difference. Put it in terms of "Did you know...?" rather than "You know how you always thought...?" Quit dumbing things down to the lowest possible level and assuming your readers are as daft as a box of frogs. In my humble opinion anyone who assumes a thing must actually look the way it is drawn / painted / sculpted is pretty damn daft. Just look at the trouble Henry VIII had over Anne of Cleves!
I'm not the brightest spark and I've assumed I've known all sorts of things I didn't but I'm not about to assume other people have made the exact same mistakes either. By all means admit your failings if you feel the need but please stop short of assuming others did the same.
