The origin of the Error resides in these milieus. The curious result is that White and his colleagues ended by doing what they accused the fathers of, namely, creating a body of false knowledge by consulting one another instead of the evidence. They were convenient symbols to be used as weapons against the anti-Darwinists. Check sources and evidence yourself. Scholars, historians, scientists, often repeat each other's errors.
Myths have a life of their own, impervious to evidence or correction.
The assumption of the superiority of our views to that of older cultures is the most stubborn remaining variety of ethnocentrism. The search for truth is long and laborious and easily set aside. And since the present is transformed day by day, minute by minute, second by second, into the past, while the future is unknown and unknowable, we are left on the dark sea without stars, without compass or astrolabe, more unsure of our position and our goal than any of Columbus's sailors. The terror of meaninglessness, of falling off the edge of knowledge, is greater than the imagined fear of falling off the edge of the earth. And so we prefer to believe a familiar error than to search, unceasingly, the darkness.