Year: 2025

AI at World History Encyclopedia

Published by Jan van der Crabben

With the start of 2025, we have now firmly arrived in the era of artificial intelligence. When people search for information on Google, they are now presented with an AI-generated answer to their question for an increasing number of search queries. As a result, we have seen a noticeable drop in visitors to our website coming from Google – why visit a website when Google gives you the answer? Artificial intelligence puts in question the very  idea of an encyclopedia, and information-based publishing in general. Any publication that is not focused on entertainment or news, but rather evergreen informational content, is challenged by artificial intelligence. Certainly, AI frequently makes mistakes at the moment, but most answers are “correct enough” for the general public and AI companies are working hard to solve this issue. Since the start of the year, we have been working on developing our organisation’s strategy for 2025 and beyond. We have to adapt to this changing environment of technology and media – and embrace AI in one way or another. AI is …

Is the Ancient Alien Theory Racist?

Published by Jan van der Crabben

There is a theory that keeps reappearing in popular culture, each time with slight variations and different names, but the core remains the same: “Those ancient people couldn’t possibly have built this, so someone else must have.”  While the first part of the theory is pretty constant, the “someone else” part changes: In Erich von Däniken’s popular 1968 book Chariot of the Gods he points to extraterrestrials. So does the highly successful Ancient Aliens television series that has been running continuously since 2009 – now in its 19th season! Netflix was heavily criticised by historians and archaeologists for its 2022 docu-series Ancient Apocalypse featuring Graham Hancock and his belief in an Ice Age “Atlantean” civilisation.  It is rather straightforward for historians and archaeologists to discredit beliefs in aliens, Atlantean civilisations, and other supposed high-technology precursors. I will leave the debunking to the experts who have already done so at length. This article is about the other part of the hypothesis: “Those ancient people couldn’t possibly have built this.” While this may seem innocent at first …