I'm not the least bit surprised you're such a fan of StJ..

I do appreciate his work, and he's done a great deal of value as is far more right than *not*, imho.. but where he and I differ, as is the case with you, is that he seems to adopt a very modern framework and approach with little to no question as to it's validity, or the potential motives behind it's night-and-day difference with those of a few decades ago. It's not as if recent knowledge as completely and utterly revamped our understanding here - in fact, many of the most recent works on these topics seem to show lesser broader understanding than those written decades ago, as if a backsliding is occurring. What *has* crept in, so obviously, are politically correct sensibilities.. and if you can't recognize their ability to shape and formulate the frameworks you so implicitly trust, I don't even know what to tell you.

Sepehr is far from perfect (as is the case with all of us), but I suspect he's wrong nowhere near as often as you're insinuating.. and often when he takes stances that differ with the wikipedia-article conventional theories, I think he has a far better point and a better handle on the overall context picture.

Sincerely, you seem to approach these fields without the slightest shred of skepticism or hesitation or curiosity as to motives.. I'm not sure you're aware, but most of those involved in these fields (nearly without a single exception, in fact, esp with regard to archaeology) are so wildly far leftist and anti-'Eurocentrism' in their belief structure that it can't help but taint their approach..

their approach creates their frameworks of thought and their structure and labels, and if/when *these* are polluted, everything created atop them is equally so.

For what its worth, I'd strongly recommend balancing out the chatGPT/Wikipedia with older 'root' historical works written by men much closer to the periods in which much of this occurred - or at least far less tainted by political prejudice. I sense little to no *balance* in your takes.. and hearing the exact points of view that so frustrated and annoyed me and set me on my deep dives and research journey read back to me as if they're somehow definitive proofs that I'm wrong is hard to stomach.

You're wrong about so much, and yet you speak it with *total* confidence, as if undeniable and definitive fact - and it's precisely this approach that spurred me to speak on these topics.