First, you do not have memories of every experience - that is not how brains works. Not to mention split nature of brains, which involves synchronization of information halves available space for everything, including memories.
The rest... well, they exist only because of media. When you see a movie or read a book or hear the story - the "experiences" that you go through are "real".
Look, outside of your corner, a world is much much bigger and every nation and every political leaning has rights to have their own POV(for better or worse), as quite frankly this style of thinking on enforcing what others should do is really irritating.
Wikipedia for a time being had already different POVs and it was great for that time period, but as someone that does not have English as first language, I don't dream of a world, where everybody uniformly think the same - because that place already exists where that is a case and that is a graveyard.
So, if you are living in London and not paying taxes(to Ireland), you are not Irish? Dude, you are clearly mixing ethnicity and nationality. Plenty of Irish in UK, that does not know Gaelic - same situation in Ireland. There are in fact more Irish Gaelic speakers living in USA/Canada than in Ireland.
And Americans are claiming ethnic ancestry - not national ancestry. And many Irish migrated out of Ireland, when it was not a country - and paying taxes is irrelevant in this gatekeeping of identities.
That is your right to not claim your German ancestry, as generally it is a viable solution to just not stand out and blend in with crowd, but frankly that is also your right to claim your ancestry and seek refuge in German speaking countries, if things go south in Sweden and Caliphate is established there or some Finns invade and makes your life impossible, so generally - this is not your gate to keep, as these can be considered as an open choices. And I would think that current age of open borders that we have now might end and claiming different identity might be the only viable option to migrate somewhere else.
It seems, that people do not know that in USA there exists American ethnicity of relatively small population(for USA) - about 20 million that identifies themselves as Americans, so the quote is not correct.
However large majority of Americans have background of immigrants and they have right to claim their ancestry(though DNA companies are selling them as ancestry lineage their relatedness, which is not the same). You and other people that wants to gatekeep this have no right to decide for them what they want to identify as, just as Europeans nowadays are mixing up national identity and ethnic identity, which are not exact match even in Europe.
There were raids done against Saami as well, though it is right - more profitable raids were better down south. In much later times there were also slavery raids done that included Saami people, though this cross over into times that were past viking Age as well by cultures that evolved from vikings, where there are different opinions what can be defined as vikings.
Saami were sparsely populating large areas - so they did not exactly live side by side with other people. And the more people came to live where Saami were herding their reindeers, the less space they had left to herd them. Throw in to that climate change into that as well. But to the contrary to what you are claiming here, Saami did assimilate into Norwegians and Norwegians also put a lot of effort in assimilation of Saami - mainly during the times, when religion was dominant form of identity, so it was done with good intentions - like all the major crimes against humanity.
Vikings were a product of mixing people of different origins. And that is a consistent result across whole Europe. The same thing applies in Western Europe, just as in Eastern Europe. And that applies to Norwegian vikings, even if they had a chance to colonize some empty lands - they still also took wives from other places than just Norway.
UFO phenomenon peaked with TV and Movies of 1950s. There is no other better explanation for UFO than influence of mass media on human minds, where some of them could not distinguish reality and what they saw on screen.
I think you are very close to explanation. Ideas in human minds can be presented as facts. If you decide that you are happy by some setting - that becomes a fact to you, while in reality that is a belief. The same about depression and sadness - you can get impacted by information you did not knew and would not be impacted if you were in blissful ignorance and some people choose exactly that choice. Some people get psychosis and their mind is hallucinating that they are on fire - that is real to them as what are your experiences, though those also are not based on facts, but serve as an information delivery to your brain.
The whole issue with human minds is that it is not built to deal with scientific facts, but with socium of other people. You can't use facts when operating with society - you have to use symbols, that they will associate with. And I think that the issue is with you(as it is my experience as well) - I can guarantee, that there are people, that will explain to your family members EXACTLY the same ideas, that you are trying to explain to them... and they will agree to that person - and not to you, because you are clearly doing it wrong.
Interestingly enough, but as a teenager, I classified his stories as sci-fi. And I was absolutely into sci-fi(that was the genre I kept reading right after Fairy tales... yes, Ive read Bible in my early teens as well - nobody asked me to do so) - it made me learn English, as I have read all the ~100 sci-fi books in my language and there was nothing else to read for me.
I think, that the people that are criticizing Erich von Däniken are doing so from modern viewpoint. People in his time had very limited POV, mostly because there was not much data, compared to how it is now, but modern people also forget that science is not a religion and it can't be based on beliefs only - it requires evidence and without any such evidence all the ideas has to be thrown out. Also, if there are better explanations - old ones are thrown out as well, because that is how it is in science. Unfortunately, no matter how good and exiting his ideas were as a read, but as a science theory they simply did not pass test of time, however IMO he has earned his place as someone as an example to have wider horizons to look around.
>>>I do wonder if there was a completely normal bloke in the middle east at the relevant time who suggested it might be good to stop being complete shits to each other
There wasn't any such bloke. I mean there was such bloke, but his qualities were completely opposite(Jesus was a violent man) to what he actually was and by various redactions and fusion of stories of initially opposing factions that were fighting over the actual seat of Jesus.
Jesus was a leader of militants(his power was spread not with peaceful words, but with sword and quite violent words - just like modern terrorists do - one of such passage has been slipped through redaction and left in the Bible) of a very violent sect(which itself was lead by John the Baptist), that were terrorizing everyone else(not in open, but when blended among other people, exactly like cult of assassins in Assassin's Creed games) and his capture was a shock and possibly betrayal and apparently those militants for some reasons(Roman military might - obviously) were unable to mount a rescue mission and because of that all the magic stories and Fairy tales, that we know as Bible were invented. You can see development of same myths to failures of modern religious fanatics - the same "magical" explanations why they have failed over and over again.
PS I do not hate Christianity, but I like cold hard Truth more than sweetest and softest Lies.
I have been diagnosed with Aspergers not long before it became part of ASD. I don't really understand why you are disassociating yourself with Aspergers which was another word for "high-function" autism and is still used interchangeably.
Reading from what you have written - that is part of my experience, though I don't think that it has anything to do with being Aspergers or even being on a spectrum, but being alone a lot and educating myself a lot - that basically is what "smart people" in general are doing - including NT. Yes, there are a lot of people that do not actively learn, but that can apply to Aspergers as well as NT. That is not the reason for differences.
Just to save space and not to create another comment - "four phenotypes" are not new attempt to classify. To me it looks like rewording - before there was already quite clear distinction between Aspergers and Aspergers&ADHD combination - both of them are part of "high functioning autism", and they behave wildly differently(people with Aspergers&ADHD part might not be recognized as "weird" but even as NT - by other people). They were all part of spectrum anyway. And from reading the paper it seems, that they have made 2 other types for what was "low functioning" autism.
Apparently putting them all in ASD was not helping for bureaucracy - especially when it comes down to finances - it is quite important in Trumps USA and might be also for other countries.
You are obviously a male - when it comes to providing best genes from rich individuals, there seems to have been no shortage of females that wanted to have babies from Elon Musk with his autistic genes...
I am forgetting how serious ASD people can be without having able to make any jokes. Relax, dude - by the time when government will be able to provide such services, all the humans will have autistic genes - there clearly are some natural advantages to people, that are multiplying with those genes and spreading them around. And unfortunately to say this, but natural selection is the only thing that will weed out those so called "heavy autistic cases" and they will cease to be a problem in time.
To me autism is defined by how some of our genes work(or doesn't work). I'm not into analogies, but the difference between normal Aspie and nonverbal person is not that big - by using your analogy both of them have stomach pain, but the result seems to be wildly different - one of them is able to communicate almost like other normal humans and they can't even tell that Aspie has a stomach pain.
As for different medical conditions - imagine, that previously mentioned Aspie in different environment can have stomach pain, because it is caused by environment and not by stomach pain. Yes - there are some medical conditions, that also comes from genetical conditions and those just happen to be in neighbourhood to autism for no other reason than just general damage to DNA. And the issue here is that we actually do not fully know how DNA functions - only some of the bits.
I'm pretty sure, that parents, that have autistic kids have not only autistic genes, but also some autistic behaviour. My mother is not diagnosed and she is quite unhinged female and sometimes also very logical. And she also have been talking about me crap with other people, so it perfectly describes autistic parent.
Unfortunately, but the main issue is that people, that are trying to take control of talking space are acting like humans do and in autistic circles they are most efficient at taking over... also, the obsession levels in activity is quite high, as that is topic that they are interested in.
It is because how system works. You might be upset about label, but this is least worry for me but even people with great ability to perform as part of work team and no ability to form relationships need that help to get back into workforce and figure out what is actually going on with them.
To be fair, I have a bit different impression from specialists, where ASD as spectrum overlapps with other conditions, like ADHD, OCD, BP and I have a bit of linguistical background to extend and call it spectrum spectrum... also, I'm too lazy for that.
The rest... well, they exist only because of media. When you see a movie or read a book or hear the story - the "experiences" that you go through are "real".