Zama: The Battle That Never Was?

[Macedon]

History is a very strange discipline... I doubt that anyone can claim to really know the absolute truth about anything. Hell... I am not even convinced that the UK really was among the winners of WW2! Arguing against the POSSIBILITY that the battle of Zama (or any other historical event) did not happen is futile because there will always be arguments that cannot be answered, arguments about the possibility of the sources being mistaken, biased, blackmailed, paid off to do a job, fabricated, lied to etc. The same applies to even material culture. Not even artifacts can be considered absolute proof of anything... So, in cases like that we cannot actually debate the possibility but the rate of probability and whether we can actually use some methodology that one may apply to reach conclusions not only of that but of any event. Why not use the same line of thinking about other battles? Or the existence of certain personas? Or places? And in the end, we do.. but in order to have something to call "history" we tend to call the more probable/supported "true" and go on from there. Some write books about the less probable and sometimes they sell more as the fringe along with some conspiracy theories are always more interesting to the common reader. In conclusion, I do not think that such a debate could actually produce useful results as these results will probably be used to support events which are even more improbable than it...

However, to the question "is it possible?" I answer "Yes!". It is also possible that the Gods existed in person, that Alexander the Great never did the exploits attributed to him, that the Persians really defeated the Greeks in the Persian Wars. To the question "How probable?" though, I answer "not much..."

P.S. The article that Dan linked to is proof of how easy it is to dispute anything, even with an obviously very weak argumentation...