Historians ignore and discredit primary sources all the time. Consider ancient Carthage: after the Romans defeated Carthage in what was basically the classical

Historians ignore and discredit primary sources all the time. Consider ancient Carthage: after the Romans defeated Carthage in what was basically the classical world's equivalent* of WWII, Roman historians wrote that Carthage had been practicing ritual infant sacrifice --- which horrified the Romans as much as it horrifies us. In the 20th century, the "pots not people" crowd spent decades dismissing these ancient reports as mere wartime propaganda. Well, guess what archaeologists uncovered under the ruins of Carthage [1] --- pits full of hundreds of charred infant skeletons. From the article: "evidence for child sacrifice is overwhelming and that instead of dismissing it out of hand, we should try to understand it." A lot of recent historical revisionism really is shockingly wrong. I know that it's really hard to accept, but it's true, and it's the product of motivated reasoning and willful misinterpretation. Everyone is predisposed to imagine the past as a time of stupidity and ignorance and to imagine today as the height of enlightenment. Tragically, it's frequently the other way around. We have unlearned truths. [1] http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-really-did-sacrifice-their-children# http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-re... * in a surprising number of ways, actually