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The Santander region (department) of Colombia, where Socorro is located, is beautiful. Incidentally, Santandereans are very prideful of their region, so it's no surprise they'd have knee-jerk reactions against these findings.
We have exactly the same kind of icon in American history: Sybil Ludington. Wikipedia has typically had a difficult time admitting that she never did any such thing as was claimed and was invented out of whole cloth, over 100 years after the Revolution.
Revolutionary heroes have tendency to be nonexistent.
Soviet historiography has invented a whole Russian revolutionary worker movement (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party), which contains surprisingly few people who were either ethnically Russian or were employed as workers for more than a few months. No shortage of revolutionaries in it, though.
I have not seen a HN thread this filled with grey and flagged comments before.
Really? I only see two
Sign of the times.
Judith the Iconoclast
As an American, the legends of the "founding fathers" are so embellished and whitewashed that they may as well be complete fabrications.
It's the kind of thing that seems inevitable with such events. I highly doubt Romulus and Remus were actually children raisedby wolves that founded Rome, but that's what the history books will say.
> I highly doubt Romulus and Remus were actually children raised by wolves that founded Rome, but that's what the history books will say.
This is a weird example to prove your point. There are absolutely no current historians seriously claiming Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, and even contemporary Romans didn't really believe the story (sort of: Roman beliefs about their own history were a delicate balance of keeping a few different, mutually contradictory, ideas in mind simultaneously, but it's safe to say that a lot of them didn't think the story of Romulus and Remus was literally true).
Every history of Rome I've seen details the story, though they usually do call it a "legend." And presumably in centuries closer to the founding, it wasn't called a legend but passed off as the actual founding of Rome.
My point is that over the centuries every founding story becomes a "legend" that basically can't be considered true, like the founding of Rome. Eventually people should look back on it and say "that's highly mythologized nonsense."
What's nonsense is equating stories that are obviously mythological with factual, historical record.
Yes, there are obviously some mythological stories about the US founding fathers (George Washington's cherry tree, for example). But there are also reams and reams of historical evidence for their true activities and true natures, and it's absurd to claim that they are somehow "complete fabrications".
The stories of the founding fathers have been heavily mythologized. Yes, we can refer back to the original sources, but we also have two centuries of historiography using those original sources to spin a variety of narratives. To the point where you can use their actions to tell basically any story you want.
An example of this is "Hamilton." The musical and the book that inspired it tell a version of events different enough to what other sources say that it may as well be complete fiction.
>and the book that inspired it
Genuinely wondering - Where do those other sources differ, and why are they authoritative enough to mean the book Alexander Hamilton may as well be complete fiction? Looking online, I can't really find much contemporary criticism of its accuracy from the time of its release or afterwards, just general acclaim from book reviewers. I can't find much academic opinion of it either way, save for one review I don't have library access to but seems to have a positive first page.[0]
I'm not really familiar with the musical, but I did find a few articles noting Ron Chernow consulted on its historical accuracy. I wouldn't really hold a musical theater production to the same standard of historic accuracy as a biography, though, so I am more curious why you describe the biography as "complete fiction."
I will admit "complete fiction" was hyperbole. Events in it did happen, but it ignored many other events and his true rationale behind it. This is either what I read or inspired what I read about the issue, https://web.archive.org/web/20170313043444/http://bostonrevi...
Obviously? Growing up, the "cherry tree" story was related to me as gospel truth and absolute fact. I do not know the point at which I discovered it was a legend/myth only, but it was far later than finding out about Santa Claus, I can tell you that.
Is the legend of the founding of Rome really comparable to the founding of America, though? I feel as if one is relatively well recorded and historically agreed upon, save the minor details, while the other is quite literally a legend from ancient times.
I don't think there will ever, or should ever, be a time when people look back and doubt the rough narrative behind the founding of the US.
There's a ton of stuff about the founding of the US that isn't generally known.
The original genesis of the constitutional convention was a trade problem, although I read at one point it started as a navigation/fishing dispute between the Mid-Atlantic states.
In any case, it was interesting that the new constitution was essentially the second american revolution, in that the new government essentially (and potentially illegally) superseded the old government lock stock and barrel.
Remove a few minor details and the story of Romulus and Remus becomes one of two brother founding a new settlement before having a disagreement that results in one being killed by the other. Add a few more details and who knows what the history of the founding of America will become, it's already acceptable for politicians to appeal to the founding fathers to justify their decisions and policies to the public.
There are lots of legends of this sort.
How the Hawaiian islands were “created”. How the Japanese archipelago came to be…
All quite unrealistic even more so than children raised by wolves, but people repeat it as a suspended belief and mystic flair without literally believing them.
You don't need to read the "legends", because their lives and writings exist and are still extant.
You can go and read the Federalist Papers, the notes and minutes of the various conventions, the letters, articles, and books that they've written. Did George Washington chop down a cherry tree? Probably not. Did he thwart a coup attempt? Yes, he most certainly did.
Same with the other guys.
As Revolutionaries go they're the most successful band of revolutionaries by far, in that their work is still going and hasn't failed miserably like the work of those "other" revolutionaries.
I find it strange that your comment on the embellishment of history (an incredibly common phenomenon of the past AND the present) is being downvoted.
I don't find it strange that a comment that acts like legends and history books are the same thing would get downvoted.
Most of my school history books may as well have told legends given the amount of mythologizing they did.
Can you give an example of such a history book and how much mythologizing you think it contains?
No, I don't remember the names of my text books. They were usually something like "American History I."
Some easy examples are being taught things like Betsy Ross creating the first flag or Paul Revere's ride, but in general most of it said the founding fathers were great men who could basically do no wrong, except slavery which was a necessary evil. Not flawed politicians mostly looking out for themselves first, which is more of what they were
Well, all I know about Simón Bolívar is that the book _The general in The labyrinth_ is about him.
I am guessing he is of Spanish descent, which nowadays would make any stores about him BIPOC-washed right?
Are were you talking about the founding fathers of some other country in America?
He definitely wore Spaniard mimicking clothes with flourished collars, sleeves and a Spanish sword at his hip.
And his name? Was it Inigo?