The first page or two was promising, I'll try to get through it later.

> it doesn't seem to be Eco's intent, and I assume most people who share this article these days are mainly trying to broaden out our understanding of history

Yeah, I agree with this. One way I've been starting to look at it is that anthropologists/sociologist will study this stuff academically, observationally, but then some distortions can happen:

- In an attempt to provide a tidy narrative, various shades of gray get lumped into the black and white columns

- The results of the research get weaponized. Guilt by association.