I heard a lecture once by an archaeologist about a Hittite site in Syria or Turkey. The speaker described how they had found some sculptures and that they knew immediately that they had to be Hittite, because they were so ugly.
Can you give me a 'ballpark' date? I'll look and see what the tree ring record shows for that time. (We've had a number of 'Dark Ages.')
And Reagan is "generally regarded" as a moron. So what?
When Albert Einstein died the book by his bed was Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision. He was rereading it. This is the book that talks about the comet that became the planet Venus, so it would seem that you are suggesting that Einstein would spend his time with "scientific nonsense," and then return to it.
If you take a look at the correspondence between Einstein and Velikovsky I think you will find (I haven't looked at it in a long time.) that Einstein initially rejected Worlds in Collision and suggested to Velikovsky that he should have published Ages in Chaos first.
Ages in Chaos is where Velikovsky suggests that the Hittites never existed.
Will Durant was not an expert on this period of history either.
I'm sure you have great credentials, but I wonder why you resort to an ad hominem here. Do you have reason to object to the sentence I quoted from Durant's history. If so, bring it forward. If not, maybe you would be wiser to lurk when these matters are being discussed.
ML/NJ