I haven’t watched more of her videos than this one, they do not seem to be exactly what would interest me. But this one did interest me and it was informative. Until recently, I did not know there are conspiracists who deny the existence of well-documented and researched history (apart from Nazi Holocaust deniers that is, I knew about those). Apparently historians – just like climate scientists, physicians, physicists and biologists – are engaging in yuuge conspiracies all the time.
It makes me despair, really. The world seems to have no shortage of proud, loud, outspoken, and self-confident ignoramuses.
I have a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theorists: They are probably encouraged to some degree by agents of authoritarian regimes who want try to destabilize more liberal societies by abusing the freedoms in egregious ways. The more pessimistic side of me, however, thinks that not much encouragement is needed.
I’ve seen the quip: “Conspiracy theorists have never been project managers, their optimism is admirable.”
So… This theory seems to be stating that Roman city and empire did exist but the city was actually a Greek colony and the empire ended up using Greek as common language? The crank in question seems to be very single-mindedly focused on denying the existence of just old Latin language sources and the validity of any archaeological research relating to them. It’s very half-arsed single issue contrarianism without any curiosity for further implications.
This theory would imply that a) Romance languages evolved from some unwritten Proto-Romance that became widespread for unknown reasons b) medieval monks perhaps developed Medieval Latin as some sort of “Compromise Romance” to facilitate communication between Catholic provinces once Greek had been forgotten in western Europe c) in 1500s the Spanish Inquisition decided to falsify earlier European history, for unknown reasons, to present a pseudo-archaic “classical” version of Latin as the language of ancient Romans d) the entire religious and later secular scholarship of Catholic Europe played along with this, for unknown reasons.
What remains unclear is a) how much actual ancient and medieval history supposedly needed to be fabricated vs. just recast in fake Latin sources b) how much of late Medieval Latin sources are genuine and when exactly Latin was invented c) how literate the southwestern European society was in Roman and medieval times (and in which languages) since very few sources in languages other than fake Latin have survived d) how much of those non-Latin sources are genuine and how did the Latin alphabet actually originate?
I’ve certainly heard the joke that ancient Roman ruins are not actually ruins but rather ancient construction sites that were left unfinished for some reason or other. Sounds far more plausible than any conspiracy theory.