Historical Figures You Assumed Were Alive At The Same Time, But Learned Otherwise

[jtur88]

I was a little bit surprised recently when I reflected on the fact that Galileo was persecuted for his astronomy more than a century after Magellan sailed around the world.

[bump]

Not really figures, exactly, but it’s kind of interesting to realize that Belgium, as an independent nation, isn’t significantly older than Texas. (1830 vs. 1836)

[jtur88]

@bump

Not really figures, exactly, but it’s kind of interesting to realize that Belgium, as an independent nation, isn’t significantly older than Texas. (1830 vs. 1836)

Italy (1861) and Germany (1871) are even more recent confederations than that.

[Little_Nemo]

@Malthus

Yeah, the great pyramids thing throws a lot of people off - they are waaay older than most people assume.

Another historical trivia note: Pharaohs didn’t build the pyramids. The title of Pharaoh was adopted centuries after the pyramids were built.

[Boyo_Jim]

Jesus and Donald Trump – I thought they were the same guy!

[CalMeacham]

@Boyo_Jim

Jesus and Donald Trump – I thought they were the same guy!

So does Trump

[Chihuahua]

Another side effect of people using “Ancient Egypt” as an umbrella term for a period that was, in reality, 3000 years long.

[Doctor_Jackson]

Fred Flintstone and Barney the dinosaur. It just seemed so logical.

[Boyo_Jim]

And Tarzan and George of the Jungle … weren’t they neighbors?

[Nema98]

@Malthus

Yeah, the great pyramids thing throws a lot of people off - they are waaay older than most people assume.

Another startling fact about Cleopatra that surprises people is that, of course, she was not ethnically Egyptian in the slightest - rather, the product of generations of Macedonian inbreeding. In fact, she was the first monarch of her dynasty to routinely speak Egyptian! (the others, of course, preferred Greek - then a higher status language, being the language of Alexander).

She’s usually depicted in popular culture as the typical Egyptian queen, in pharonic finery - but on surviving busts and coins, as a typical Greek lady, with her hair in ringlets and a headband of office:

Cleopatra - Wikipedia

Edit: interestingly, she was known for her brains as well as her allure: Plutarch writes that she could speak at least nine languages and rarely had need of an interpreter.

The woolly mammoths still existed when the pyramids were built.

By the way a slightly different yet similar thing that would fit with this thread has to do with the dinosaurs and that many dinosaurs actually did not exist at the same time despite popular misconception.