Commentary
If you have any sense of history (and that commodity is becoming rarer as fantasy takes its place), you’ll know how difficult it was for most human generations to acquire knowledge.
For millennia personal observation and hearsay were all we had. Then writing was invented, but books were staggeringly expensive until printing came along, and even then, only the smallest part of the literate population could afford them. Just a few generations ago, mass printing kicked in, then electronic media. Now we have instant access to unimaginable and inexhaustible sources of information, sources that are mushrooming daily.
Once upon a time, humans had to glean our knowledge from as many (or as few) sources as we could lay our hands on. We depended entirely on what we could find from our own books (if we were lucky enough to own any) or those we borrowed from our friends or stole from some hapless monastic library. We weren’t well placed for critical analysis, and alternative explanations weren’t available, so we were inclined to accept fantastic tales and myths as if they were literally true….