Many academics will tell you that when archaeological discoveries are made that don’t fit the contemporary narrative they are either ignored, sh*tcanned or ridiculed. The Chinese have been quite good at standing up to the ridicule and positing some interesting discoveries that question our understanding of the past.
If there was gun control this peaceful creature would be alive today. /s
I read most of Velikovsky's stuff in my misspent youth... :)
or stored forever in some museum basement ...
I might add that an excellent example of hiding something which does not fit the meme are optical lenses. These are usually displayed (if displayed at all) in some obscure museum corner as ‘jewelry’.
In point of fact lenses were in common use prior to the Old Kingdom Egypt (at whatever date that really was). They were used as a reading aid (a sort of pince-nez arrangement or in a hand held arrangement as a magnifying glass. Still others were apparently used as telescopes for battlefield intel and for astronomy.
There was also a separate class of colored hollow glass balls used as mood alterers. Sometimes these glass balls were used to focus sun light and burn something combustible like incense.
Then there is Gobeki-Tepi which does not fit, but is too big to hide - as well as the wealth of large pyramid structures predating the ones at Giza, one by as much as 20,000 years (really whacking the meme upside the head).
I heard about a book about that. I think it is called “Forbidden Archaeology”.
That’s why I really like Stephen Lekson.
he thrives on poking the academics with a pointy stick to inform us of the likely reality