When Galileo built a telescope and found the earth rotated around the sun instead of visa versa things started getting rough. He ridiculed a pope who argued with him. The Pope and government were mostly one and the same so Galileo was placed under house arrest for years.
In recent decades the Vatican undertook a study of the Galileo period in an attempt to resolve the dilemma. The dilemma, of course, was that a pope was absolutely wrong while preaching all popes have a pipeline to God and the ultimate truth. At the end of the study the Vatican did not find the Pope wrong, only that "mistakes were made."
Over centuries we've had Darwin, unsuccessful searches for the Moses story and other Christian myths debunked. Now technology means searches for the past are moving even faster. By finding teeth which don't disappear like other parts of the body scientists now can find DNA. That allows them to track where people migrated from and about when. This, in turn, narrows the areas investigated by archaeologists looking for clues of where people might have traveled or lived.
This opens the door of discovering humans of the past. It also closes the door of other myths or theories. Religions all have stories of where humans came from and fought against but some of these, like the Moses story, are falling into the category of myth.
Galileo considered himself a devout Catholic. But the clergy then, as now, were mostly interesting in protecting their own skin. They could not look through his telescope and say, "Gosh, I guess we were wrong."
Today, clergy blame the secularization of society for the sex abuse by priests. Back then they blamed the guy who built a telescope for a mistake by a pope.
Merry Christmas to all.
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