Vol 5 No 4 | Jan-Mar 2026
The Artefact
Story by Mohd Salman | Art by Annada Menon
History is exciting. It is vast, complicated and often messy. It demands an open mind for ideas and perspectives different from our own. It requires dull things such as nuance and context, even from the casual reader. It asks us to leave our prejudices at the door, so that the unscrupulous do not use the shadows of the past to sow discord in the present.
Real histories, as well as folklore, are fascinating—and entertaining—enough without the added conspiracy theories sprinkled on top. There is enough intrigue about the Mughal Empire before you ask if the Taj Mahal is actually the Tejo Mahalaya. The pyramids of Egypt are an unbelievable feat of human labour and ingenuity—aliens did not build them. The Great Wall of China is not visible from space—it is the geographical features it runs over that are visible from that high in the sky.
We live in a time of unprecedented access to knowledge. Isn’t it astonishing, then, that this is also an era of unprecedented misinformation?
“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
-Terry Pratchett
How false news can spread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSKGa_7XJkg
Spotting fake history
Your phone lights up. It’s a message/video/graphic, “forwarded as received”, about a person/place/event in history that proves why you shouldn’t trust a certain group of your fellow citizens. Lots of people in the group chat seem to agree. How do you know if it is true or not? The following steps usually help.
• Study the headline. Is it sensationalist? Is it calling for suspicion/discrimination against a group of people?
• Search for information on that piece of history. (Skip the AI summary.)
• Send it to a credible fact-checking platform.
• If the information is proven to be fake, share proof (to those you safely can) to debunk the misinformation.
Here are a few online resources on simple ways to fact-check forwarded information.
How to fact-check images online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaJx8aFpvfQ
How to spot AI-modified images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0X3W1utdRQ
How to spot fake news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Pg-cD0ytg
