# Historical myths that reallly get on your tits **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 16, 2014, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744 "2014-11-16T02:14:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/201 "2014-11-20T18:55:01Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > When you think about it, the Bystander Effect is just an extension of learning behavior through observation. If everyone else is hiding from the stampeding aurochs, maybe you should too. If no one else is concerned about someone behaving oddly, maybe you don’t need to be-- and that is often true. If you are new in town, and you walk through the downtown area where everyone is ignoring a homeless guy shouting a bunch of weird stuff, chances are he’s a fixture, and isn’t hurting himself or anyone, so you should ignore him too. > > That doesn’t mean the Bystander Effect doesn’t occasionally lead to disaster, but it usually takes training to be the kind of person who can sort out a genuine crisis being ignored from people correctly gauging an odd situation as not a problem. The Bystander Effect appears to be a specific example of [social proof.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof) > [@Wikipedia](#): > > Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/202 "2014-11-20T22:02:22Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > Sliding has two purposes: to be evasive, and to get to a base quickly without going past it. Actually, I remember a specific instance of a runner sliding into first when he couldn’t overrun it. In a high school game I saw, the runner took off when the ball was hit, because it looked like it was going over the shortstop’s head, but the shortstop managed to jump and catch it-- it was pretty amazing. Anyway, the runner on his way to second had to turn around and hightail it for first. He slid in just as the first base player caught the ball, and because the player had to step off the bag (the shortstop’s throw was understandably a little off), and couldn’t tag the runner who was on the ground, he was safe. It could have been a double play, but the slide kept the runner safe. IIRC, that runner eventually crossed the plate, but I don’t remember whether his team won. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/203 "2014-11-20T22:06:33Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > . . . that Ben Franklin discovered electricity, Wasn’t he the first to demonstrate that lightning was the same as laboratory electricity? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/204 "2014-11-20T22:08:51Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > The Bystander Effect appears to be a specific example of [social proof.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof) Thanks. I don’t remember “social proof” from my college psych classes, but it’s not on the whole a bad thing. We hear about it only when it produces bad results, not the other 1,000 times it doesn’t. However, the Kitty Genovese murder is not an example of it. That would have required the majority of the witnesses to be fully aware of what was happening to her, and to be aware that others were as well. Neither was true. Also, a lot of people who tell the story, I think are not aware that 911 didn’t exist at the time she was murdered. Calling the police could be an ordeal. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/205 "2014-11-20T22:10:55Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Wasn’t he the first to demonstrate that lightning was the same as laboratory electricity? I think that is pretty much the extent of his experiments. He demonstrated that lightning consisted of electricity. That may not sound like a big deal to us, but it was. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/206 "2014-11-20T22:13:16Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Wasn’t he the first to demonstrate that lightning was the same as laboratory electricity? That, and a lot of other things about it. He’s the reason we consider electrons to be ‘negative’ despite them powering all of our cool stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/207 "2014-11-20T22:14:20Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > And that Ben Franklin discovered electricity, Sure, and Newton didn’t discover gravity. That doesn’t really diminish from their achievements, though. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/208 "2014-11-20T22:15:13Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > She was 79 when it happend, and died at age 91. Sounds like she had a pretty good run. And regardless of the coffee temp, it was a dumb idea to put a flimsy coffee cup between your legs, as she had done. And it was even dumber to lie under oath, and ignore the safety warnings of the coffee machine manufacture, which McD had done. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/209 "2014-11-20T22:50:22Z")
> [@Mr.Miskatonic](#): > > That, and a lot of other things about it. He’s the reason we consider electrons to be ‘negative’ despite them powering all of our cool stuff. Actually, he got the “positive” and “negative” wrong. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Nema98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d2c977/32.png) [@Nema98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nema98)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/210 "2014-11-20T23:14:12Z")
Plenty of myths get on my nerves, especially if there is absolutely no evidence for them. Now mine are pretty odd, but they scream B.S so here it goes. 1. Turkish people come from Central Asia: Is there is any evidence of that? Turkic and Turkish are two different terms, and Turks I have seen do not look like they came from Central Asia. Mostly Middle Eastern and Balkan, some maybe of Greek origin. Never heard of any evidence that most Turks are descendants of Central Asians. 2. Any blond haired individual, say in UK or Ireland, or any place is the result of Viking invasions: Seriously the Vikings had different hair colors, and being blond(e) is no evidence of having “Viking” blood or such nonsense. Blonde is common in Scandinavia, but having this feature means nothing. 3. I know a lot of Iranian people, and some are among the worst historical revisionists ever. Common ones I have heard, are that women had powerful positions in the ancient Persian history, and some even served as Empress. I have never heard any Empress that ruled Persia or any female monarch in terms of name or evidence. Not all but some Iranians also believed that Persians were originally blond and blue eyed people, I actually read some articles around the time when the Jake Gyllenhaal movie came out a few years ago where he played an Iranian or something along those lines, even the director said it. To me this seems far fetched, is there any evidence of this? I had never heard it before prior to this. I doubt blond hair was common in that part of the world at any time in history. So those are some I thought of, maybe Dopers can touch on it. Maybe I am wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/211 "2014-11-20T23:25:04Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > **The McDonald’s coffee lawsuit.** People always bring this up as an example of a frivolous lawsuit, and what an idiot this woman was, suing for millions because her coffee was hot!!1?? > > Well actually, the coffee was 190 degrees, she suffered third degree burns What was McDonald’s supposed to do, serve lukewarm coffee? Doesn’t every restaurant that serves coffee, serve it hot? ---
**Author:** ![Nema98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d2c977/32.png) [@Nema98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nema98)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/212 "2014-11-20T23:30:10Z")
Not a widespread myth, more like some people are ignorant about it. And that is that all pre historic extinct species lived during the same time. This is not true, evolution occurred over millions of years. Some thought that smilodons or saber tooth cats went extinct along with the dinosaurs, when in facts dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. Those wild cats died off about 10,000 years ago. These are the same people who think that the early humans quickly followed soon after, but if I am not mistaken, our earliest humans started out about 3 million years ago. Dinosaurs long died by then. So not all species before us lived during the same time period. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/213 "2014-11-20T23:38:00Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > What was McDonald’s supposed to do, serve lukewarm coffee? > Doesn’t every restaurant that serves coffee, serve it hot? Yes, they serve it at a SAFE hot temp, which is about 155- 175F. Not 180-205F as McD’s ordered it served. > **[What is the correct temperature for serving coffee?](https://www.coffeedetective.com/what-is-the-correct-temperature-for-serving-coffee.html)** > > QUESTION: Can you tell me what is the proper temperature to serve coffee? Thanks! ANSWER: Coffee is best served at a temperature between 155ºF and 175ºF ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/214 "2014-11-20T23:49:45Z")
> [@Nema98](#): > > Not a widespread myth, more like some people are ignorant about it. And that is that all pre historic extinct species lived during the same time. This is not true, evolution occurred over millions of years. Some thought that smilodons or saber tooth cats went extinct along with the dinosaurs, when in facts dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. Those wild cats died off about 10,000 years ago. These are the same people who think that the early humans quickly followed soon after, but if I am not mistaken, our earliest humans started out about 3 million years ago. Dinosaurs long died by then. So not all species before us lived during the same time period. Hell, not even all the Dinosaurs or even the Giant Mammals lived at the same time. Example is the _Paraceratherium_ aka _Baluchitherium_ (largest land mammal to even live) which lived 34–23 million years ago. The Smilodon lived 2.5MM–10,000 years ago, so there was 20 Million years after the “Baluchitherium\*” went extinct before the first “Saber-toothed Tiger\*” came into being. The earliest Homo spp never saw a _Paraceratherium_- and depending on how you define “Man” or Human" no human ever saw one either. - neither term is currently accurate. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/215 "2014-11-21T00:08:58Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Sure, and Newton didn’t discover gravity. That doesn’t really diminish from their achievements, though. Actually, in a very significant sense, Newton really _did_ discover gravity. It is quite wrong to imagine that, before Newton, everybody knew that there was a force pulling heavy bodies towards the Earth, but just did not know the quantitative laws that governed it (or that the same force also applied to the Sun and planets). That itself is a historical myth. Of course, Newton was not the first to notice that heavy things fall downwards, but he was the first to conceive of this as being the result of a _force_ acting between these things and the Earth, pulling them down. Before Newton, the word “gravity” was just a synonym for “heaviness”, and theories about why things fall down did _not_ involve the notion of a force that pulled on them. According to Aristotle, for instance, earthy (solid) things fall downwards because the center of the universe is the natural place for earthy material to be (the Earth itself being a large mass of earthy material at and around this center). The source of the motion, in this theory, is not in the Earth but in the falling object itself, which, in a sense, wants and strives to be as close as possible to the center of the universe, where it will be most comfortable. According to Descartes, in the generation just before Newton (and whose theories Newton devoted about a third of the _Principia_ to refuting), things fall towards the Earth because of differential pressure in the aether above and below then, so they are pushed down by aether pressure. (The pressure differential itself was supposedly produced by the vortex-like motion of the aether swirling around the rotating Earth.) Descartes also preceded Newton in ascribing both the falling of objects to Earth and the orbiting of the planets around the Sun to, broadly speaking, the same sorts of of causes: aether vortices and the pressures produced by them, according to Descartes, and the attractive force of gravity according to Newton. (In both cases, the notion that motion has a natural tendency to continue in a straight line unless forced out of the straight in some way, also plays an important role in their explanations. What we now know as Newton’s first law, was actually taken, by him, directly from Descartes’ work.) As for Franklin, no, he did not discover electricity, which was known to (and named by) the pre-classical Greeks, and was extensively experimented upon by numerous 18th century scientists before Franklin. However, his contribution to our understanding of electricity went far beyond his famous experiment with the kite (which he was very lucky not be killed by). He introduced the notion that electricity was a single “fluid” (he and most others at the time thought of it as a fluid, or several fluids) existing normally in all objects, with negative and positive charges being produced either by a lack or an excess of the fluid, relative to the “normal” amount, and that like charges would attract and unlike ones would repel as a consequence of things tending to revert to their equilibrium, uncharged condition. This was a major theoretical advance, and made the phenomena of electricity much more understandable. Before Franklin, electrical theorists had often postulated that two or more quite different kinds of fluid had to be involved to produce both the attractive and repulsive effects that they observed, and the whole theory of electricity, and explanations as to why charges sometimes attracted and sometimes repelled one another, and sometimes attracted uncharged things, was quite a mess. Unfortunately, Franklin (having no real evidence to go on) guessed wrong as to which charges were positive and which negative, which is why, now, we are stuck with electrons (or modern version of “electrical fluid”) being negatively charged. However, it turns out that this does not cause any very serious confusion. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/216 "2014-11-21T00:19:12Z")
> [@Nema98](#): > > Plenty of myths get on my nerves, especially if there is absolutely no evidence for them. Now mine are pretty odd, but they scream B.S so here it goes. > > 1. Turkish people come from Central Asia: Is there is any evidence of that? Turkic and Turkish are two different terms, and Turks I have seen do not look like they came from Central Asia. Mostly Middle Eastern and Balkan, some maybe of Greek origin. Never heard of any evidence that most Turks are descendants of Central Asians. Have you looked? From Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > [Although the ancient Turks were nomadic, they traded wool, leather, carpets, and horses for wood, silk, vegetables and grain, as well as having large ironworking stations in the south of the Altai Mountains during the 600s CE.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people#Prehistory.2C_Ancient_era_and_Early_Middle_Ages) > [The Altai Mountains (Altay Mountains) are a mountain range in East-Central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together, and are where the rivers Irtysh and Ob have their headwaters.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_Mountains) > > … > > [The Turks began converting to Islam after Muslim conquest of Transoxiana through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian and Central Asian culture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people#Prehistory.2C_Ancient_era_and_Early_Middle_Ages) > > [Transoxiana (also spelled Transoxania), known in Arabic and Persian sources as Mawarannahr (Arabic: ماوراء النهر‎ mā warāʔa an-nahr “what (is) beyond the (Oxus) river”), is the ancient name used for the portion of Central Asia corresponding approximately with modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, southern Kyrgyzstan and southwest Kazakhstan.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transoxiana) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/217 "2014-11-21T00:29:49Z")
> [@Nema98](#): > > Not a widespread myth, more like some people are ignorant about it. And that is that all pre historic extinct species lived during the same time. This is not true, evolution occurred over millions of years. Some thought that smilodons or saber tooth cats went extinct along with the dinosaurs, when in facts dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago. Those wild cats died off about 10,000 years ago. These are the same people who think that the early humans quickly followed soon after, but if I am not mistaken, our earliest humans started out about 3 million years ago. Dinosaurs long died by then. So not all species before us lived during the same time period. Even if we just restrict it to dinosaurs, most people have a wrong picture in their mind. There wasn’t a single “age of dinosaurs” where all of them lived together. [This](http://0.static.wix.com/media/d7751d0e5cb1e89afccc481980f064fe.wix_mp_1024), for example, never happened. Stegosauruses had gone extinct eighty million years before the first Tyrannosauruses appeared. But even [people](http://www.creationism.org/images/DenverMuseum/DMNS42L_T-RexVsStegosaurus.jpg) who should know better put them together. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/218 "2014-11-21T01:39:37Z")
> [@Nema98](#): > > 1. Turkish people come from Central Asia: Is there is any evidence of that? Turkic and Turkish are two different terms, and Turks I have seen do not look like they came from Central Asia. Mostly Middle Eastern and Balkan, some maybe of Greek origin. Never heard of any evidence that most Turks are descendants of Central Asians. True, Turks have Caucasian features and Turkic people _can_ look Asian. But maybe think about how humans are are not descended from monkeys but share a common ancestor so do Turks and Turkic people share a distant relation and related languages. > [@](#): > > 1. Any blond haired individual, say in UK or Ireland, or any place is the result of Viking invasions: Seriously the Vikings had different hair colors, and being blond(e) is no evidence of having “Viking” blood or such nonsense. Blonde is common in Scandinavia, but having this feature means nothing. Similar to saying [Irish and dark features (“black Irish”) = Spanish blood](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1094/who-are-the-black-irish). Or: red hair = Irish. They are actually the second largest percentage of red hair, after the Scottish. It even is not uncommon in the Middle East. > [@](#): > > 1. I know a lot of Iranian people, and some are among the worst historical revisionists ever. Common ones I have heard, are that women had powerful positions in the ancient Persian history, and some even served as Empress. I have never heard any Empress that ruled Persia or any female monarch in terms of name or evidence. > > Not all but some Iranians also believed that Persians were originally blond and blue eyed people, I actually read some articles around the time when the Jake Gyllenhaal movie came out a few years ago where he played an Iranian or something along those lines, even the director said it. Some Persian-don’t-you-dare-call-me-Iranian-and-especially-not-Arab people who may have preferred the Shah days and have weird ethnic beliefs. A minority of Lebanese people also believe in [Phoenicianism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicianism)and that they’re not Arabs. I don’t think it’s terribly widespread, although as I understand it Levantine people (which might include e.g. Syrians) have a different ethnic history than say Saudis. I don’t know of any female rulers but wouldn’t be surprised. Keep in mind that “Persian” can mean one of several empires over centuries. Also a queen can de facto be in power. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Even if we just restrict it to dinosaurs, most people have a wrong picture in their mind. There wasn’t a single “age of dinosaurs” where all of them lived together. > > [This](http://0.static.wix.com/media/d7751d0e5cb1e89afccc481980f064fe.wix_mp_1024), for example, never happened. Stegosauruses had gone extinct eighty million years before the first Tyrannosauruses appeared. But even [people](http://www.creationism.org/images/DenverMuseum/DMNS42L_T-RexVsStegosaurus.jpg) who should know better put them together. Quoting myself, [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17568712&postcount=106): > [@me](#): > > Fun fact: you know the popular depiction of Tyrannosaurs chowing down on Apatosaurus (or “Brontosaurus”) or Stegosaurus? Chronologically Tyrannosaurus is closer to us than it is those others species (about 60 million vs. 80 million). Some species are still around since the “dinosaur times,” especially “primitive” plants. Cockroaches are from the Tyrannosaurus era or even older, depending on how you fudge the definition. 😃 at your second link. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/219 "2014-11-21T03:02:36Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Actually, he got the “positive” and “negative” wrong. 🙂 That was my poi…never mind. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744/220 "2014-11-21T04:13:46Z")
> [@Nema98](#): > > 1. I know a lot of Iranian people, and some are among the worst historical revisionists ever. Common ones I have heard, are that women had powerful positions in the ancient Persian history, and some even served as Empress. I have never heard any Empress that ruled Persia or any female monarch in terms of name or evidence. Well, it’s not \*absolutely \*wrong - queen Atossa for example, second wife of Darius I, had a lot of influence over him (and later on her son Xerxes, whom she managed to have inherit the whole shebang despite not being Darius’ first son) and took care of the Empire while both were away getting bitchslapped up and down Greece. That being said, it’s not like queens consort were lightweights elsewhere in the world ; and it’s not like queen consort is a “powerful position” per se. On paper she had zero power, she was just a skilful orator/manipulator. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-myths-that-reallly-get-on-your-tits/704744.md?page=12)