The truth of history is in the lives of innumerable people, some of whom left no written records. The truth about history isn't the summary you learned in school, or that you see on some two hour movie, or even a potentially biased documentary. Historians spend their whole careers often just researching one person, and after 20+ years of working with museum artifacts, I'm still learning new things about life in the past. With some real exceptions, take all 'historical' movies with a grain of salt (maybe a whole pallet of salt-blocks, in some cases.) History is a VERY complex subject. All of this is a simplified, 5th-grade understanding of history.

(This can be heartbreaking, and also incredibly dangerous.)ģ) That people in the past had the same world-views that we have today, OR that life in the past was somehow easy or romantic OR that history can be divided into the 'good' people and the 'bad' people.

1) That anyone can jump up on almost any horse (including a completely unbroken stallion) and be riding around like an expert in a few minutes.rather than being dumped on the ground, which is sometimes what happens in real life even to the experts.Ģ) That animals think and reason like humans, and that if you just show enough 'love' to an animal, that animal will always 'love' you back.