Is Rome real?
The short answer is yes, Rome both the culture and city is real. But if you happen to have been following a dark section of TikTok you might have been led to believe differently.
This little piece is not really to debunk or disprove this. Others have been doing that already quite successfully. I would recommend Cinzia Dubois (known as lady of the library) and Sara Heed (Archeological fantasies) rebuttal if you are more interested in that. There’s more but these two don’t use the TikTokers name or handle and to be honest. This individual doesn't need more attention. We’re not hiding anything, but the idea is just ludicrous.
So what’s all this really about? So a person on TikTok started to make videos claiming that Ancient Rome never existed. Rome is just the imagination of the Spanish Inquisition (or just inquisition, I’m not sure why we need to whitewash the inquisition but that would be another subject), to further the Catholic Church. Everything that we assume to be Roman is in reality just Greek.
The TikToker claim that the Latin language was not invented until 1500 by monks and nuns. They claim for some reason that there are no primary sources for Latin.
Allt the Roman emperors were Greek who spoke Greek. Therefore all architecture and culture is Greek, not Roman.
Furthermore Rome was the ancient version of Disney world. It was a circus where you had fun and ate bread.
Even the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE was faked and Pompei was created by victorians much later.
It doesn’t take a lot of thought and effort to realize that this is just bunk. But again why am I talking about this? Well mostly because this person is using basically the same methods as the Ancient Alienists. The TikToker is using low resolution images, images without a source or worse a reconstruction that they claim is the original.
We have dropping studies that in reality doesn’t prove their argument. We have misinterpreted ancient texts and claimes that Latin texts are written in fenician but with backwards letters.
But you might say “what’s the harm? People can’t really believe these things”. Well, before I got blocked (the user blocks anyone who asks tough questions) the user had something like 90 000+ followers. Sure it’s not a huge amount of numbers but there’s 90 000+ people who are getting misinformed. Both in what would constitute as a good piece of evidence and how it’s best communicated, but also a bad understanding on how science works and operates.
At the point of writing we’ve done two episodes of Ancient Aliens. The show makes many of these errors. My hope is to arm you against claims presented in this way and provide resources and knowledge that makes it easier if you encounter them in the wild.
Let’s put an end to pseudoscience and alternative history. Let’s keep an open mind, but the brain should not be able to fall out. Let’s do science, learn and grow together.
That’s all, thank you for listening. Keep your Occam's razors sharp and true.
/Fredrik