Interesting and enlightening fact about academia, is that while many in the industry promote and rely on accounts of rape, pillage, and “blood running in the streets” that they accept on face value, they are skeptical of other accounts of the siege without hard evidence.
Another good-sized but still minority opinion is that civilizations never get wiped out due to conquest or plagues, but rather due to vsrious imaginary modern ideas, like "over-specialization".