Which is why they claimed their city was founded by a couple brothers of divine origin, right? And calling Plinys Naturalis Historia respected by modern historiography is laughable, I'm sorry. Naturally it wasn't his fault, he was mainly compiling other primary sources of his time, but it is in no way something that should be simply taken at face value.

Regardless, my broader point was never to try to say that history began with the printing press or something. Clearly, if it were not for older records in everything from the knotwork language of ancient Peru to newly readable scrolls recovered from the Vesuvius eruption, we wouldn't have any clue what happened previous to the 15th century, now would we? Which, clearly we do.

Instead, I was making a point about the nature of information accuracy, and the importance of skepticism in approaching information. In the same way I wouldn't want to read Pliny and assume it's contents were 100% accurate, I also wouldn't want to just believe everything I see online. It's not new to have reason to doubt our information space, and thus the effects of AI misinformation are overblown imo. Appropriate skepticism and critical thinking skills are still a viable solution.

Lastly, please explain how this:

So I would say they did certainly have a significant understanding of how their culture fit into the broader scope of human history.

follows from this:

One of the papers I wrote for a class about the importance of comparing primary sources featured 3 different accounts of what Athens was like and the views people there held at a certain point in history from 3 different people of varying social and financial status, and there was absolutely awareness of that sort of dissonance between what their government claimed and what the reality was even among the more common folk.

I fail to see how three people disagreeing about Athenian history means they understood how Athenian history fit into global history.