As stewards of memory and culture, librarians and scholars preserve and tease out what they can from our historical artifacts. But over the span of 1,000 years, even some of the most important facets of a culture can become distorted, confused, or warped inadvertently by scholars a millennium later. What details have our anthropologists missed from the 11th century? What facts have been confused with others? What names have been distorted or conflated? What don’t we understand?

This mockumentary of the Beatles’ history viewed from the year 3126 provides some jarring and funny examples of just how far a history might stray from actual fact.

Happy Friday!

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Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

Discussion

3 Thoughts on "The Beatles 3000 — An Exercise in Historical Drift Based on Incomplete Records"

I love it! I’d like to see how the Rolling Stones fare in 3000. I can only imagine….

This is wonderful. Has several good applications for teaching. Thank you!

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