Great question, Jon D. I'll take a stab at it and hope a few others offer their opinions.

It is really hard to tell what true history is - in fact, I would say it is impossible. We only live in the moment. We can maybe learn to "relive" history through some altered consciousness techniques (many have claimed to have done so), but there is no guarantee that it is a "true" history, as opposed to a "what if."

All we really have to go in are artifacts - memories and physical artifacts, recordings of experiments, etc. I am reminded of the Blind Men and an Elephant parable. Each man has a different set of data on which to based his conclusion about what the elephant is.

So it is with our theory of the universe. It is based on artifacts - collected evidence from experiments, such as the cosmic microwave background radiation, red shifts, gravitational calculations, etc. The question is: what theories fit that set of data? It turns out that many theories do, including a digital simulation theory, or a evolving digital consciousness theory. Some of the theories are clearly wrong, since only one can be right, right? In the scientific community, this "set of possible theories" undergoes a wholesale filtering out of theories that don't fit into scientific reductionist materialist orthodoxy (aka religion), which include the digital theories I mentioned. Instead, they start with a small subset of possibilities and one becomes a popular favorite (big bang). As new data comes in, and the theory as it exists doesn't fit the data, the standard practice is to "evolve" the theory to accommodate the new data (inflationary big bang). So, effectively what is happening may be exactly what you describe - wrong path, getting one set of band-aids after another, until the theory is as unworkable as our tax code.

Somebody will then have to be the brave person and subject themselves to 20 years of ridicule as they propose something that was in the original set of valid theories, but never recognized as a possibility. From cave art to heliocentrism to cold fusion, these things happen every once in a while.

In summary, I think it is highly likely that the truth about our origins is very different than what is described in scientific orthodoxy. Even if you subscribe to the evolutionary digital model ("My Big TOE"), I think it is unlikely that our virtual reality evolved as described in the inflationary big bang theory. How many theories stand the test of time? Not too many.

Really like your question, John_D. Jim responded with one of his typical high calibre takes.

I'm on vacation and only have an iPad with soft keyboard so will be brief. At age 51 and nearly 2 decades of researching matters across a wide spectrum, I've concluded that nearly all mainstream knowledge that is purveyed to us is flawed on its fundamental foundations. History, science, religion, etc, etc. IOW, "everything you know is wrong" is not so bad a way to sum things up. We have some useful pragmatic knowledge that advances technology and such to a degree, but we're devoid of any actual fundamental understanding of anything - at least in the mainstream realm that is the state of affairs. I also tend to believe that a lot of so-called mainstream understanding is purposely befuddled and steered down blind alleys. Kind of a grand conspiracy by the Gnostics' Archons, if you will.

for you it was the Giza pyramids. Agree with you in that choice. One of my favorite enigmas is the platform at Balbeck Lebanon and the books by Chris Dunn. More lately has also been the Göbekli Tepe Archeological site in Turkey. But all megalithic construction any where on the globe really constitutes an enigma regarding our past history when approached in truly rationale and disspassionate manner.

Yes indeed, Ed Leedskalnin is quite an enigma. Did he raise those stones by levitation? Here's a picture of him with some hidden clues. The small spheres (yin/yang symbols) on the cover of the book Ed is holding, one on the left and one on the right of the pyramid may symbolise the concept of the energy cycle underlying Ed's Magnetic Flywheel Generator. Interestingly, if you take the 16 letters of the book cover title (bottom right) and read from the first two letters on the bottom right and upwards, it reads "Emery OK". The Magnetic Current Researcher Matt Emery has joked with colleagues that this is Ed's prophetic validation of his work!!

With the technology today they should be making amazing films.
Lost art: How To Spin A Yarn.

But to answer the question, I find as I get older I place less and less in materialism and consider Idealism more.

Jon D
When I read your post I started thinking about Aristotle's "first principle."
It's the big question, I should prolly think on it a few more years before posting a reply, but I just hadda.