History, as most of us learned it, arrived neatly packaged. Dates memorized. Heroes polished. Villains simplified. The problem is not that history was taught. It is that it was edited.
What survives in textbooks is often the most convenient version of events, shaped by politics, nationalism, religion, and the limits of earlier scholarship. Over time, repetition hardens stories into “facts,” even when they are only half true or entirely false.
One of the most enduring myths is that people in the Middle Ages believed the Earth was flat. In reality, educated Europeans had known the Earth was spherical since antiquity. Ancient Greek scholars calculated its circumference with remarkable accuracy. Medieval universities taught a round Earth as standard knowledge. The flat Earth myth was popularized centuries later to portray the past as ignorant and to elevate modernity as uniquely enlightened.
Another lie still taught is that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America. Indigenous civilizations had lived across the Americas for thousands of years before his arrival. Even within Europe, Norse explorers reached North America centuries earlier. Columbus did not discover a new world. He initiated a brutal chapter of colonization that reshaped continents through conquest, disease, and forced labor. Calling it discovery reframes violence as curiosity.
We are also taught that the fall of the Roman Empire was sudden, dramatic, and absolute. In truth, Rome did not collapse overnight. It transformed slowly over centuries. Laws, culture, and infrastructure continued in various forms long after emperors vanished. The idea of a sudden fall simplifies a complex transition into a convenient ending.
The idea that ancient people were primitive is another misconception. Civilizations across the world developed advanced engineering, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics long before modern technology. Some ancient surgical techniques rivaled 19th century practices. Complex water systems, urban planning, and scientific observation existed without electricity or machines. What we often mistake for primitiveness is simply difference.
