> 1 Are there really people ... Why would their lives be assumed not to be "real", what even is that mindset?

Yes, there are a very great many!

The philosopher David Gray says that most modern thinking sees our way of life and liberalism and "progress" as meaning growth and change. It implies it is inevitable, a kind of always changing improvement.

Change that has occurred is for the good and its impossible to go back. I like the ${current_year} meme where someone says "it's 2026 things have changed, sweety". The joke is funny because that's what people actually say and that they say this every year but they don't notice that they say that every year.

So the modern way of life has many people who view people in the past as not real, as figuratively made of wood, who are primitive, who didn't lead complex lives.

David Gray concludes by saying that Liberalism therefore needs to be constantly fought for, that you cannot rest on your laurels and think that humanity is naturally and inexorably progressing.

These scrolls and History as a whole challenges a fundamental psychological investment in modern liberalism.

To think of the world as always improving and evolving for the better directly opposes a kind of empathy about how people 2500 years ago are the same human beings as we are. The scrolls should humble us.

Given this.

> 2. "Real and complex lives" doesn't mean "just the same as ours", mind you.

They are more like ours than we like to imagine. We prefer to think of ourselves as improved.