古史辨 / Doubting Antiquity

古史辨 / Doubting Antiquity is the historical-scholarship frame used by 75.故事新编：骷髅被复活后会感激庄子吗？ to explain the background of 《理水》. The episode presents 顾颉刚 and the ancient-history-doubt current as questioning inherited accounts of Yao, Shun, 大禹, and early Chinese antiquity.

The source treats this method ambivalently. Doubting ancient history can be an important break from unexamined tradition, but 鲁迅’s satire targets the moment when philological cleverness and evidential performance detach from living suffering. The “禹是一条虫” scene is therefore not only a joke about scholarship; it is a warning about interpretation losing contact with the flood below.

Connections

• 顾颉刚 - source’s main representative figure.
• 《理水》 - story where the ancient-history debate becomes satire.
• 大禹 - figure whose name and historicity become contested.
• 索隐式阅读 / Suo Yin Reading and Interpretation And Overinterpretation - adjacent confidence-boundary concepts for reading hidden allusion and evidence.
• Myth As Historical Evidence - broader wiki issue of when myth can and cannot support historical claims.