Beyond the 500-year hindsight, you mean?
Yes. 500 years of hindsight doesn't make it incorrect or invalidate anything about it. Hindsight is not a critique of the theory, but rather sociological theory in general because the past is all anyone can study. Help me out here. This is the only conversation this place has going for it right now.
OK. What I'm trying to say is that it's nowhere near an objective study, it cannot be, because history as sampling material is already rigged. We don't have the objective facts, we have weighted samples. History is already presented through a number of lenses and, depending on what we are looking for in time or place, different ones. For any scientifically valid study, this spells disaster.
My background is in physics and for pretty much any experiment in physics, this sort of thing is basic stuff. It's about getting your lab settings right. This is how cold fusion happened in physics, a couple of years ago.
Add to the rigged samples the human brain's propensity for pattern-matching, we have a very high risk for what I'd label as wishful thinking.