(The Epic History Vibe) Archeologists dug beneath the Buddha's alleged birthplace (Lumbini): This is what they found, Buddhist Emperor Ashoka's pillar (usually topped with a lion capital). Dr. Ranajit Pal convincingly explains that Nepal had next to nothing to do with Buddhism. The Buddha came from Shakya Land (Gandhara, Saka Land, Indo-Scythia, Central Asia, modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, the northwest frontier of India (Maha Bharat, an empire pieced together by King Asoka, centuries after the Buddha lived and taught on the subcontinent that was not a country but territories, maha-janapadas, disputed "footholds of family clans" like the Sakas/Shakyas from Kapilavastu/Kabul, Bamiyan (with the world's oldest and largest Buddhist statues), Tillya Tepe, Mes Aynak, and other sites of Early Buddhism).
Why forger Dr. Fuhrer lied and deceived the world is obvious, for fame and academic advancement. Why India or Buddhists continue to believe and promote his fiction seems to have more to do with politics and foolishness, ignorance about the truth with the Buddha's actual homeland being a little farther to the west in ancient Gandhara, Afghanistan, and places like formerly Buddhist Pakistan that were ransacked and ruined by Muslim invasions during the rise of Islam. Dr. Pal failed to make a sufficiently convincing argument to his colleagues in the fields of history and archeology to settle the question. All he showed was that Dr. Fuhrer was a fraud and many British archeologists were taken in or continue to act as if what Fuhrer asserted were true. See the documentary Bones of Buddha to see what these mistakes have led to with the loss of priceless Buddhist treasures, now sitting in someone's house, under his bed, in England because archeologists say the stupa (Buddhist reliquary mound) they were pulled from during an unscientific excavation (at Piprahwa) probably wasn't one of the eight or nine stupasthe historical Buddha's relics (relics associated with the Buddha) were first deposited, as the ancient texts tell us.
African Mansa Musa (died in 1337), Emperor of Mali, the richest man in history and the richest country, a place of wisdom with books and scholarship to rival any European university: ignored and hidden in colonial history
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