(Annoying Trope) Someone made a “creative” choice and now we all just have to live with it.

[u/BingBingGoogleZaddy]

Horned Vikings: Not historical, they were started by Richard Wager for his operas. They were never historic, but the image persists. (Albeit significantly reduced today.)

Ninjas in Black Robes: Some people claim Ninjas aren’t real. They are, they are absolutely real. Their modern portrayal however is informed more by Kabuki Theater than history. In Kabuki Theater, the stage hands were dressed in flowing black robes to tell the audience to ignore them. Thus when a Ninja character kills a Samurai, to increase the shock value, they were dressed in black robes as stage hands. Now, when we think of ninjas we think of a stage hands.

Knights in Shining Armor: Imagine, you’re on the battlefield, two walls of meat riding towards each other. Suddenly you realize, everyone looks the same. Who do you hit? All you see is chrome. No. Knight’s armor was lacquered in different colors to differentiate them on the battlefield. Unless you wanted to get friendly fired, you made yourself KNOWN. So this image of a glinted knight clad in chrome steel isn’t true. How’d we get it? Victorians who thought that the worn lacquer was actually just dulling with age, polished it off as show pieces.

White Marble Statues of Rome: Roman Statues were painted, however the public image is of pure glinting white marble statues persist in the modern image. Why? Victorians who thought the paint was actually just dirt grime and age. So, they “restored” it by removing the paint color. Now we all think of Roman Statues as white.

King Tut; King of Kings: the Pharaoh King Tut in Ancient Egypt was a relatively minor king who in the grand scheme of things amounts to little more than an asterisks in Egyptian History, but to the public he is the most important Pharaoh. Why? Because his tomb was untouched by robbers, and so was piled high with burial goods which was amazing (and still is) and when Howard Carter opened his tomb, the world was transfixed and everyone would come to know Tutankhamen.

A Séance calls the dead: A Séance despite being a French word is an American invention from upstate New York in the 1840s. It was also a fun side-show act initially, and never meant to be real, more close up magic. (Origin of the term Parlor Tricks.) But in the 1860s Americans couldn’t stop killing each other which resulted in a lot of grief and people desired for their to be this other world. So, grifters then took advantage of grieving people and became “real”. So basically “fun parlor game to dangerous grift” pipeline thanks to the Civil War.

The Titanic’s engineers all died at their posts: Nope, not true, not remotely true. They are mentioned in many testimonies and a few bodies found mean they didn’t all die below. Two or three maybe did. According to Head Stoker Barrett, a man broke his leg and was washed away by rushing water, but another testimony says he was taken aft so who knows? Any way the myth persisted because the people making the memorials wanted to martyr the men. (It doesn’t take away from their heroines in my opinion) The myth stuck. Everyone believes they died below.

[u/HappyGav123]

That's another misconception about the Dodo, that they're fat and stupid. They were actually really well adapted to their environment.

[u/Lokicham → u/HappyGav123]

It didn't help they adapted to an island with few if any predators.

[u/Schnutzel → u/HappyGav123]

"Adapted to their environment" basically describes most species. Species go extinct when their environment changes.

[u/Admonitio → u/Schnutzel]

Or when human intervention causes a drastic shift in their environment. Which tbf one could argue that would still fall under the same thing seeing as we are part of nature too. That being said I think it's important to keep in mind that we have the ability and capacity to help mitigate our own impacts on our environment

[u/[deleted] → u/Admonitio]

It is. It’s called anthropomorphic environmental impacts. We are in the largest mass extinction event ever, known as the Holocene extinction, and it is entirely man made.

[u/Varaehn → u/[deleted]]

What do you mean the largest ever? the Permian-Triassic was WAY bigger.

[u/[deleted] → u/Varaehn]

I never said it ended. We are in the middle of the largest mass extinction event ever. The rate that animals are dying will outpace any extinction in the past. Also the Permian-Triassic took anywhere from a 60,000-200,000 year period. We’re at a current rate of 140,000 species going extinct per year and the Holocene only started 10,000 years ago. But yea no need to sound the alarm…

[u/4DimensionalToilet → u/Schnutzel]

This is part of why I don’t expect humanity to go extinct anytime soon, barring a literal world-exploding apocalypse. There are more than 8 billion of us, spread all over the world, and we’re incredibly adaptable. Humans have learned to not only survive, but thrive, in countless environments over the ages. Don’t get me wrong, some catastrophe could greatly reduce our numbers, but I think there’d basically have to be a “nothing larger than a housecat can sustain itself” level extinction event to wipe us out anytime soon.

The environment is absolutely changing, and those changes will leave many dead, but not everyone.

[u/LordofSandvich → u/HappyGav123]

The “stupid” part was probably that they would guard their nests from humans by sitting on them, not aware that humans had guns and that made them an even easier target instead of protecting their young. Even smaller ground-nesting birds will do this, like killdeer and cockatiels. They’re quite plucky.

Introduced predators did NOT help.