This reminds me of Herodotus [0].

For those that don't know about him:

- he was an ancient historian

- he made a lot of "wild claims" e.g. there was a tribe that made clothes out of human skin

- historians assumed these were myths or exaggerated

- recent research has shown that many of his wild claims were true (even the one above) [1]

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus

1 - https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-scythians-us...