"History shattered. It was the only thing that could give. Very strange event. There were cracks left all over the place. The... oh, I can't remember the words... the fastenings that tell bits of the past which bits of the present they belong to, they were flapping all over the place. Some got lost for ever..." Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time.
This was, perhaps, the area of research which simultaneously offered the greatest challenges and most intriguing opportunities.
The deeper we dug, the further back we looked, the more we realised that a lot of what is considered "established historical fact" is so much guesswork, gossip, and what we might call 'fake news' in this age.
We all know the saying that "history is written by the victors" and we know this is true. The apocalypse of the Mayans, the holocaust of the Native Americans, the genocide of Columbus; history tried to hide those stories from us but failed in the end. Sooner or later, it seems, the Truth will turn up, mopping its brow and muttering something about the traffic.
Eventually.
A Hole in History
There is a great deal of History we know nothing about, that we make educated guesses, make educated stab in the dark (first establishing with what to attempt said stabbing and the correct intensity of darkness to attempt to at least wound), hold fingers of investigation to the wind, and so forth.
Up until quite recently, your average person want to school and was taught what we could call the consensus version which, obviously, they accepted without question. Then most people get on with their adult lives after school and leave history well alone. Those who maintain an interest or take history as a profession tend to not attract too wide an audience.
Those 'In the business' know which way the trench is dug (or better said, the budget granted) so keep their mouths shut about 'the secret', wouldn't you?
The simple fact is that a lot of the historical record was commited to perishable materials because that's all they had available at the time. Of the vast cache of documents recovered from Qumran in 1947, it is said that at least one third were used as fuel before someone told the shepherd those foreigners paid a fortune for that stuff.
So much could have been lost that way, or been sequestered away in private collections, locked away in the fabled Vatican Archives or similar hidden vault of Forbidden Knowledge.
We know that many Mayan books and scrolls were burned as "heresy", Aztec monuments defaced. Early Islamic expansion contributed to the destruction of 'haram' or unholy items such as stuff the priests didn't like or that disagrees with what kept them in nice clothes and palaces.
The library of Constantinople contained a lot of what was saved or recovered from the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria centuries before. In 1204 AD., the Library was burned to the ground by crusaders and, we hear, nothing survived.
How much history was lost due to ignorance, war, ideology, brazen stupidity and, perhaps, a bit of intent?
Stitching it Up
The possible irony of that heading is indeed intentional, thank you for noticing...
When it comes to studying the history I needed to in order to properly research both The Chronicles of Enoch and Hegemony, a lot of information was missing. The main source of material, The Bible (various versions), translations of the Torah and midrash, the Qur'an and other works, ancient codices, the Book of Enoch itself, and numerous works of 'uncertain canonicity' (apophryca etc).
I noticed a lot of missing information, contradictions, plot holes, and explanations lacking.
Now, I know Sir Terry's works are as fictional as ours are (we think) but we wonder sometimes...we've often heard of something called 'parallel creativity'; inspiration coming from...ah...somewhere else and fiction accidentally reporting reality. Sir Terry mentioned something called 'unwritten books' and has a magical library containing books that haven't yet been written, implying that information can, perhaps, persist and 'leak' as it were.
We wonder whether some of this information and history was intentionally repressed and hidden as The Chronicles of Enoch assert. Has history been filled with individuals or groups that do not want the truth reported; not just Lucifer (and through him, The Vatican and other Church organisations) but others too. In The Chronicles, we have the Unknown Men, the Illuminati, and others we'll stay quiet about for now.
Hidden History?
Each one of these organisations has an agenda and aims as well as being very keen to hide their existence from the world at large.
In The Chronicles, we have the example of The Hidden War of 79AD. The world's greatest Heroes gathered in Meggido valley to face down a horde of monstrous Nephilim led by Lucifer and his Horsemen. Sable, Conan, and Gilgamesh led the charge and, though countless heroes of legend were killed in the battle, Lucifer's forces were decisively broken; two Horsemen were defeated and the others fled.
The world, however, did not end and the forces of Heaven were conspicuously absent. Everyone, except for the dead, simply pretended that the battle never happened. Asmodeus erased even the vaguest of references regarding the battle from history. They existed, of course, there had been mortals present in the fifty-thousand strong Army of Heroes, there were witnesses, there were armaments and weapons as well as bodies left behind. A great many of those bodies did not look even close to human; there were giants, orcs and goblins, beast-men, and dragons among them and their bones decorated the Meggido valley.
The scale of the operation he mounted in the 1960's, the disinformation, the sequestration of both information and remains, the neutralisation of those that couldn't be 'financially convinced', and the practical rewriting of some history books is almost impossible to imagine but he did it.
Fragmented accounts remain in folklore, mythical accounts of Heroes, strange legends, they are even encoded in the "Approved Modern Version" of the Book of Revelation. It is odd to think that the great Battle of Armageddon there mentioned refers to an actual historical event rather than a future one or (as many today claim) a more allegorical struggle.
The account in Revelation is said to have been Asmodeus' greatest gamble and success simultaneously.
Conclusion
History is written by the victor and the most powerful; money and threats have made inconvenient pieces of the historic record disappear almost as well as accidental occuraces such as fire and misapplied zealotry can.
We know there are parts missing, we see repetions, fixes, and inventions applied over some of the holes and rarely do people question them. One has to be looking in order to spot the important ommissions and fabrications. One has to pay attention to the stories and folk tales for explanations at times, the evidence that should be there at others.
Sometimes the evidence or information is glaring in its absence.
We are not talking about those shows seen on a certain channel sharing a name with the field we keep mentioning. We are not talking conspiracy this time, we're making logical and educated forays into what is obviously there.
Or, of course, obviously not there but has left a hole like a missing jigsaw piece will...you can imply its shape in its absence.
Maybe not all of our fictional history is as fictional as we think it is...