ITT: Huge historical misconceptions you've heard or believed

>thought Berlin was in the middle of Germany so it was split in half
>when I was young I didn't know anybody lived in Greenland or Madagascar
>Wait, how old is Egypt?

>I thought that money was a very recent invention, and that until the modern age the armies all throughout history fought not for any sort of pay but purely out of loyalty to their kings.
That's not totally wrong. For most of history, armies were mostly "paid" by just allowing them to loot the places they conquered.

>>people in communist countries were starving, cold and miserable all the time other than the political class
Mostly true

>>people usually only lived until 35, aged rapidly, and could die of an infected paper cut before the advent of antibiotics
Also not totally wrong. An infected paper cut COULD kill you. It wasn't very likely, but it was more likely than it is today.

When I was young I thought the Berlin Wall was the literal Iron Curtin and ran through all of Germany. Like there was a massive singular wall diving all of the Communists and Capitalists that ran right through Berlin.

>>people in communist countries were starving, cold and miserable all the time other than the political class
maybe not all the time, but look at shit like the holodomor and the great famine in china

actually alexander happened after rome was already a thing. As alexander is conquering persia, the romans have been around for at least 200 years and were a thing, just not a superpower

For some reason, when I was really little, I thought that Hitler was a cowboy villain in the Wild West. The name just sounded very cowboy-like.

I know that an infected paper cut could possibly be fatal, but I doubt people were dropping dead left and right from infected paper cuts.
As bad as those two famines were, the USSR after 1947 and the Eastern Bloc didn't have starvation/famine, and some older people actually miss the old days there. I don't know about China though.

I thought the Roman empire was still a thing for a few months because my friend's parents paid two actors to pose as Roman legionnaires for his 7th birthday.

I also thought that the batch of cherry trees in Washington DC were the same trees from the story about George Washington, and for some reason I thought they were a gift after WWII. So basically I thought that the second world war predated the founding of the US.

>american education

t. american only reason i wasnt this dumb was because i had an autistic interest in history at a young age

i thought there was an obi "one" kinobi and obi "two" kinobi because of McDonalds toys that had the old and young versions of him.

I thought that Timbuktu and Waterloo was somewhere in America until the 4th grade.

>Used to believe that the HRE was a whole.
>Used to believe Ethiopians still used stone-tipped spears in the XIXth century.
>Used to believe the Serbs were the only ones genociding in the Yugoslavian Wars.
>I have heard of somebody convinced that the Atzecs didn't use iron weapons "because it was dishonourable."
>I have heard of somebody saying that Scandinavian countries have been socially progressive from the High Middle Ages onward.

>Used to believe Ethiopians still used stone-tipped spears in the XIXth century.
>Used to believe the Serbs were the only ones genociding in the Yugoslavian Wars
Pretty sure a lot of people still believe this

I use to think that all Africans were of the Zulu variety.

It was sustainable under constant militaristic expansion, colonization and displacement and enslavement of the native population.
>Germany was called "Germany"
It had and has a dozen different names, but Dutchland or Germany were common coverall terms for East Francia, the HRE and subsequent states.
>>thought Berlin was in the middle of Germany so it was split in half
It roughly in the middle before the World Wars
lol

> Hungary is the country of the Huns.

In reality they call it Magyarország.

> Hungary
> Magyarország

How the hell do we conflate this two words together?

>In reality they call it Magyarország.
Lots of different countries and ethnocities have vastly different endonyms and exonyms.
Hungary and Magyarorszóg aren't related to each other. Hungary shares an etymology with the word Huns. They were barbarian horsemen and conquerors from the Eurasian steppes, so they got the same name as the Huns in Europe.

...

I thought Jesus existed, and actually thought Messiah meant some sort of spiritual savior.

My French colleague who comes from some town in the Alps mentioned the famous story of how Alexander the Great crossed the Alps with his elephants.

I've asked him who Alexander was fighting but he couldn't remember.

I believed that one when younger. I think I remember reading some knucklehead say something like
>We were historically never supposed to live past 40 what if old age is just your body being surprised that it somehow managed to live that long
I thought that was insightful at the age of 9.

I grew up Protestant and was proud of the Turkish defeat at Vienna, which to me represented united Christianity (Catholic and Protestant Germans and Orthodox Poles) defeating the Islamic menace.

Then I learned the Poles were Catholic, Protestants either refused to join the fighting or outright joined the Turks, and even held masses praying for Turkish victory.

>I thought Jesus existed

But he did.

IIRC he did read a lot of westerns in his youth and sympathised with the Indians to the point that he hoped they would rise up against the white Americans.

While we're on Hitler, my brother thought there were two Hitlers: Adult Hitler and Kid Hitler. He misheard Adolf as adult.

I thought Greenland was an independent country. I feel less bad knowing some adults still think this.
I didn't understand the concept of an unrecognized state. I was mad that my teacher marked me wrong for saying Sealand was the smallest country instead of Vatican City.
I didn't know that France still owned part of South America.
I thought that the Netherlands has been a republic since the 16th century and still is.

>Turns out that the popes were mostly bitches of French and German monarchs.
It was like 50/50 sometimes. They weren't God but they did have considerably influence.

Same with Allemagne/Alemania/Alemanha (from the Alamans) being the name for Germany in some countries.

>Pius XII blessed Nazi weapons

I've heard it so many times by anticlericals who took it literally, that I, as a good sheep I am, took it literally too.

When I was like 4 or 5 years old, I though America was South Africa. Like I would point to a map and say "this is America". I also made no distinction between the continent and the country (USA).

Even as I grew up I still mixed up the two sometimes. Took me a while to realize the USA just doesn't have a real name that nobody else can claim.

>Hitler was born Caholic, the church were nazis!

I'll go one step beyond that. I thought the US was Eurasia. I only saw maps of the US on cartoons and the map I had as a child had no borders. Everyone talked about how big America was so I thought it was huge. Pic related shows how I compared some of the features together and I thought that the maps I saw in cartoons were just oversimplified like a lot of things in cartoons.

Didn't know Austria still existed until a few years ago.

tfw this is actually the redpill.

Where did you think Mexico was? Because I knew Mexico was somewhere in Latin America/South America.

I always confused Mother Theresa with Maria Theresa

Hey, I remember you!
There are about two dozen Waterloos in America, actually.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo

>the new world doesn't exist

This fucked me up.

I can't remember, I was under 7 at the time.

>The holocaust happened

Believed this like a gullible retard for years

I thought Romes heyday was during Augustus' reign.

I thought Romans/Europeans were above proskynesis.

I thought all medieval nobles were sociopathic monsters who killed/raped/assaulted people at will and always had the 'law' on their side.

I thought English peasants had short dreary lives when really they (often) had it pretty good.

I thought countries still hated eachother for things that happened hundreds of years ago. ie; I thought America and England were a hair trigger away from going to war.

>the Gulf War was a naval engagement against an Iraqi fleet in the Gulf of Mexico

I believed this until the 5th grade because there couldn't be more than one place named "Gulf," that would be retarded.

I used to think--like apparently plenty of other people still do--that the Pope really was infallible in all things he said, wasn't until I had to take a church history class in high school to understand the concept of "ex cathedra".

Also just to note, when I say "plenty of other people still do" I don't mean to say that tons of people I've met truly believe the Pope is infallible, just that they think that's what the official doctrine of the Church is.

>The US Army was the most Allied effective fighting force in WW1 because they refused to dig trenches and fought smarter than the dumb Euros, who were amazed by our clever troops using maneuver tactics.
>The American revolutionaries won because they were the first people who thought of firing from cover.
>The Falklands War was fought over Hawaii (I honestly think this was a defensible confusion for a 12yo because of Sandwich Islands -> South Sandwich Islands and the fact that Hawaii's flag as the Union Jack on it)

...

you mean you give a shit about human history more than planet history?

there goes another one.

Julius Caesar conquered Britain (even worse as I knew the 43 AD date, by which time he'd been dead for the best part of a century)

Alfred the Great was King of England

Anglo-Saxons killed all of the Britons, apart from those living the other side of the modern borders between England and Wales/Scotland

The Scots are native to Britain (they arrived roughly contemporary with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes)

The Aztecs and Inca lived thousands of years ago

Captain Cook discovered Australia

Apollo 11 was the only Moon landing

I never knew Cleopatra was a member of an alien dynasty, not a native Egyptian

The Egyptian pyramids were built for human sacrifice, like those from Mesoamerica

Attila the Hun was Chinese

Genghis Khan was Chinese

Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan were different names for the same person

Prussia was part of Russia

What convinced you that it didn't, redpilled gentleman?

> Boudicca was a freedom fighter who only killed romans

> romans had emperors since the beginning

>conquistadors took over Incan and Aztec empires by themselves

>Thought Islam was some super cool religion that was uber pacifist and respected women heavily

But that's true though

Thought that New York City was a supercity that covered the better part of the American eastern coast, including dividing NYC into a few big blocks; Boston, Washington, and Manhattan. Manhattan being the big bay east of Washington

Good joke.

>Prussia was a part of Russia.
It is now.

I thought for a long time every country was stuck with victorian era societal norms, clothes, and technology, besides America and Japan.
I thought this because of children's books, disney, and various other media. 9/11 happened when I was rather young so it got beat into my head every day how great America is so I just assumed all modern stuff was American in origin and our entire culture was producing technology, then I got a nintendo and assumed japan must be roughly the same standard of living as us, and this made sense to me because we had to nuke them at one point to stop a war.

I fucking despise Islam, but there was indeed a period in which women were heavily respected and treated as equals. I am too lazy to look up the specific period.

That reminds me, my brother told me that this area of land was unclaimed. The map we had didn't label it.

the chinese actually claim Genghis Khan was chinese, they have been pushing that line officially since 2004.

You're not that far off. You just forgot America invaded Germany and helped rebuilt France (basically the two biggest countries in Europe) as well.

It is mandate of heaven autism.

> and some older people actually miss the old days there.
Some older people also miss the Nazis, does that mean Nazi Germany was good?

Yes?

...

This. I was born in 95 so I was still to young to really understand where it took place but I always thought it was this epic battle/war that America fought against some countries from the middle East but it took place in the gulf of mexico.

Did you forget the part where Mohammed married and raped underaged girls?

>used to think that the Holy Roman Empire was the absolute successor of Rome (wasn't entirely wrong, but I believed byzantines and the HRE were the same)
>thought that France and England were the same thing
>thought that Mexico was still apart of Spain because they spoke spanish
>thought that christopher columbus was still alive

No one talks about that in Islam.

Was part of the curriculum for our gateway middle school history course. Watched a cherry picked documentary

I thought Holy Roman Empire was just another name for the Roman Empire that they started using when they became Christian.

I can believe the Rome part but you have to be a whole new level of delusional to think the rest of that

Rude

That the Mediterranean was in the Middle of Europe and that countries like Switzerland were on the south end, not Africa

Don't talk shit about Louisiana you cunt. Bet'mon'chu, neg.

This. Louisiana had nothing to do with niggers appropriating Egyptian culture/history.

Also hello fellow Loozy poster.

Used to think that all native Africans were black, tribal people. Then I learned about that North Africans are fairly light skinned, and Ethiopia is even Christian.

Never understood how the HRE worked until recently. Thought it was a loosely federated representative democracy where the states just had too much power to get anything done, like the United States under the Articles of Confederation.

t. American

I used to think black Africans only used spears and wore loin cloth. I also used to think all mud huts came in the standard circular form.

>Thought modern Italy, Germany, Spain, China and other unified countries were always like this
>Middle East was absolutely barren, just sand and cactuses
>Australia is one of the smallest countries
>Japan is really small
>Ainu are still relevant
>Mesoamerican and South American empires (Mayan, Aztec, Inca and others) were just one hella big empire with different names for kingdoms
>Alladin's story was on the Middle East
>Paraguay and Uruguay were provinces of the same country
>Brazil was exploited since its discovery on 1500
>Portugal was irrelevant
>Columbus discovered America
>Jamaicans, Haitians and other blacks living around there are native people
>All of Africa was inhabited by blacks, except for Egypt
>Romans never interacted with Asia
>Kuril Islands were Japanese territory
>Islam is peaceful
>Buddhism's god is Siddharta Gautama
>Horse archers still exist on Mongolia

Pretty dumb I was, right? I'm sure there are more, but I won't remember.

I grew up in a none religious household and didn't learn that Christianity was a thing until 6th grade.
I live in the United States.
I new jesus was a person who lived but I never understood the significance of him.
For some reason I new being jewish was a thing and that they believed in god so I thought that anybody who believed in god was a jew.

>Alladin's story was on the Middle East
I learned something new today, had no idea this was untrue

I used to think it was in India.

Really grinds the gears, right? I think I learnt it from a book around 2012. It had [spoiler] Chinese [/spoiler] artwork of Alladin and the Djinn.
I had no idea of the Islamic influence until ~2014. Who in the world would think they had "colonies" on [spoiler] China and SE Asia [/spoiler] ? That's one of the motives I like History.

>I thought they'd blown up a massive boots the chemist on 9/11, still have a memory of seeing the sign in the rubble

I thought Austria was taken over by Germany in one of the world wars and didn't exist anymore.
I thought Phoenicia, Portugal, and Polynesia were all descended from the same civilization.
I thought Prussia and Russia were the same country, and that they just changed the spelling after a certain date.
I thought the D-Day landings took place on the southern coast of France.

There are probably more, but those are the most embarrassing.

the lack of any primary sources from his lifetime making a single mention of him says otherwise

>Alfred the Great was King of England
I mean, he basically was.

>Kuril Islands were Japanese territory
They rightfully are.

I thought Columbus was Polish because Polish historiography is terrible at consistent name translation (e.g. KRZYSZTOF Kolumb, JERZY Waszyngton, but GEORGE Bush - if you say Christopher Columbus or Grzegorz Bush, for some unknown reason, no one will know who are you talking about because there's no rule deciding whether to translate names or not)

>when I was a kid, my mom told me that moats were effective because people in the middle ages didn't know how to swim properly
>somehow I didn't question it until I was around 18

>He can't even read the post

t.itsuki nobunga