Often, the findings of new studies “demonstrate” something one could easily find somewhere in millennia’s worth of literary, philosophical, and religious work. Not in obscure corners of cultural history, but in foundational texts.
I’m mostly just bemused to see all that time and budget spent on something found and not really even lost in our collective cultural memories. Just one of those quirks of today’s cultural moment and ideas industry.
Is it a bad thing? Not really. A little wasteful, perhaps, but everything has its predecessors—including this post. Humans have seen and known there is nothing new under the sun for millennia. Maybe we have just forgotten we already knew that. Maybe we are still just waiting for the data.
