Disputed Statements

Wounded Knee Massacre, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 250.000000

No complete or reliable count of Lakota dead was made at the time, since bodies were left in a blizzard for days before burial, so this figure is the low end of the range modern historians, including Utley, converge on for total Lakota deaths, killed and mortally wounded, counting both the initial gunfire and the pursuit of fleeing survivors that continued for miles afterward.

Source The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, Robert M. Utley tier 1

Wounded Knee Massacre, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 300.000000

The upper end of the range historians give for the same total, Lakota killed and mortally wounded across the encounter and its aftermath. Some earlier and popular accounts have cited figures as low as roughly one hundred fifty, but modern historians working from the Army's own contemporary reports and burial records treat two hundred fifty to three hundred as the better supported range; both bounds recorded here describe that same population rather than two different categories of casualty.

Source The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, Robert M. Utley tier 1

Wrath (Ira), Vices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Rooted in Evagrius Ponticus's eight tempting thoughts, set out from the Egyptian desert monastic settlements of Nitria, Kellia and Scetis around the late fourth century CE, and carried west by John Cassian. Gregory the Great reduced the eight to the familiar seven, wrath among them, in his Moralia in Job around 590 CE.

Source The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature, Morton W. Bloomfield tier 1

Wudang Martial Arts, Practices

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States Tradition credits the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng as originator

Wudang martial arts tradition credits the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng, placed variously in the Song, Yuan or early Ming period depending on which version of his legend is followed, as the originator of the art on Wudang Mountain in Hubei province. Kristofer Schipper's scholarly study of Daoist body cosmology and ritual treats this origin story, together with the wider framing that divides Chinese martial arts into an internal Wudang tradition and an external Shaolin tradition, as a later legend and a classical literary trope rather than as verified history: the Zhang Sanfeng attributed to Wudang martial arts is not securely documented as a historical martial artist, and the internal-external division itself became fixed in popular and literary sources centuries after the practices it purports to describe. Historians treat the actual early development of Wudang's martial practice as considerably less clear and more gradual than the single-founder legend presents, but the surviving record does not offer a documented alternative origin point precise enough to replace the legendary one, which is why the tradition's own account remains what is recorded even as its historicity is treated as unverified.

Source The Taoist Body, Kristofer Schipper (translated by Karen C. Duval) tier 1

Wulfila, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 311

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Germanic Languages, Wayne Harbert tier 1

Wulfila, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 383

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Germanic Languages, Wayne Harbert tier 1

X, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Chaldean Letter Value

Currently States 5

According To Modern planetary numerology, the scheme called Chaldean

The values recorded here follow Cheiro's Book of Numbers (Cheiro, the pen name of William John Warner, published by Herbert Jenkins, London, 1926), the most widely reproduced version of the so-called Chaldean numerology table. Cheiro's own text names no ancient Chaldean source for the letter values it assigns, and comparing it against other published numerology tables from the same and later periods finds no agreement between them on several letters; no Mesopotamian or Chaldean text has ever been produced that contains a comparable letter-number correspondence. That comparison is why historians of the modern occult treat "Chaldean" as a nineteenth and twentieth century marketing label rather than a checkable lineage claim. The value recorded here is Cheiro's published reading, not a settled fact.

Source Cheiro's Book of Numbers, Cheiro (William John Warner) tier 3

Xin (Trustworthiness), Virtues

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period

Currently States The Five Constants as a formally fixed set of five, correlated with the five phases, wu xing, is credited to the Han dynasty scholar Dong Zhongshu; the individual virtues are independently attested earlier in the Analects and Mencius.

Source Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 1, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (eds) tier 2

Xingyiquan, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1600

Xingyiquan is conventionally attributed to Ji Jike, also called Ji Longfeng, whose own lifespan is reported inconsistently across sources, variously 1588 to 1662, 1602 to 1683 or 1588 to 1682, and whose historicity is questioned by some scholars, who read him as a composite figure representing the art's gradual, syncretic development rather than a single verifiable founder. The range recorded here spans the mid to late seventeenth century these disputed accounts converge on.

Source Lost T'ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch'ing Dynasty, Douglas Wile tier 1

Xingyiquan, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1690

Xingyiquan is conventionally attributed to Ji Jike, also called Ji Longfeng, whose own lifespan is reported inconsistently across sources, variously 1588 to 1662, 1602 to 1683 or 1588 to 1682, and whose historicity is questioned by some scholars, who read him as a composite figure representing the art's gradual, syncretic development rather than a single verifiable founder. The range recorded here spans the mid to late seventeenth century these disputed accounts converge on.

Source Lost T'ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch'ing Dynasty, Douglas Wile tier 1

Xochipilli, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Account

Currently States Xochipilli is closely associated with, and by some accounts treated as a youthful aspect of, the maize and flower deity Centeotl, the two sharing iconographic elements including flower and butterfly motifs in surviving Aztec sculpture.

Colonial era chroniclers and modern scholars of Aztec religion are not consistent about whether Xochipilli and Centeotl represent one deity under two names, a father and son pair, or two distinct but closely related figures within the wider complex of flower and maize deities, so the relationship is recorded here as a genuine open question rather than a settled identity.

Source An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, Mary Miller and Karl Taube tier 2

Xocotl Huetzi, Veintenas

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Approximate Gregorian Span

Currently States Early to mid August

Scholars have proposed several correlations between the xiuhpohualli year and the Gregorian calendar. The month range given here follows one widely reproduced reconstruction and is offered for relative placement only, not as a settled date: the 365 day count carried no intercalated leap day, so its alignment with the solar year is understood to have drifted across the centuries of its use, and colonial era testimony was recorded decades after the practice had ended.

Source The Aztecs (Smith, 3rd edition), Michael E. Smith tier 1

Xolotl, Deities

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin of the Name

Currently States Xolotl's Nahuatl name is most often glossed as monster, and it carries a sense of doubling or twinning.

Nahuatl specialists disagree on the exact root sense. The same element appears in axolotl, literally water xolotl, and some scholars connect the name to a word for servant or slave rather than to monster directly, so the precise original sense is not settled even though the deformity and twin associations it carries are well attested.

Source Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind, Miguel Leon-Portilla tier 1

Xuan Kong Fei Xing, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1000

Xuan Kong sources describe a lineage of secret transmission reaching back to the Song dynasty around 1000 of the common era, with an even earlier and less verifiable claim naming the third to fourth century scholar Guo Pu. The method was deliberately kept secret for centuries, and the first explicit textual reference appears only at the end of the Ming dynasty. The system used in essentially its modern form is credited to Grandmaster Shen Zhu Ren's nineteenth century decoding of the older texts, with the first published account appearing only in the early twentieth century. The range recorded here spans the claimed ancient transmission to the documented modern emergence.

Source The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui: Chinese Geomancy, Stephen Skinner tier 3

Xuan Kong Fei Xing, Disciplines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1906

Xuan Kong sources describe a lineage of secret transmission reaching back to the Song dynasty around 1000 of the common era, with an even earlier and less verifiable claim naming the third to fourth century scholar Guo Pu. The method was deliberately kept secret for centuries, and the first explicit textual reference appears only at the end of the Ming dynasty. The system used in essentially its modern form is credited to Grandmaster Shen Zhu Ren's nineteenth century decoding of the older texts, with the first published account appearing only in the early twentieth century. The range recorded here spans the claimed ancient transmission to the documented modern emergence.

Source The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui: Chinese Geomancy, Stephen Skinner tier 3

Y, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Chaldean Letter Value

Currently States 1

According To Modern planetary numerology, the scheme called Chaldean

The values recorded here follow Cheiro's Book of Numbers (Cheiro, the pen name of William John Warner, published by Herbert Jenkins, London, 1926), the most widely reproduced version of the so-called Chaldean numerology table. Cheiro's own text names no ancient Chaldean source for the letter values it assigns, and comparing it against other published numerology tables from the same and later periods finds no agreement between them on several letters; no Mesopotamian or Chaldean text has ever been produced that contains a comparable letter-number correspondence. That comparison is why historians of the modern occult treat "Chaldean" as a nineteenth and twentieth century marketing label rather than a checkable lineage claim. The value recorded here is Cheiro's published reading, not a settled fact.

Source Cheiro's Book of Numbers, Cheiro (William John Warner) tier 3

Ya ي, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States One of the fourteen letters that stand disjoined at the head of a sura

According To The disjoined letters of the Quran

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, editor-in-chief, HarperOne, 2015) surveys the classical and modern commentary tradition on the disjoined letters that open certain suras and reports no consensus reached across fourteen centuries of that commentary. The positions it records include that the meaning is known to God alone, that the letters abbreviate divine names or attributes, that they function as an oath, that they present ordinary letters of the language as a rhetorical challenge, and that some began as scribal or collectors' marks later treated as scripture. Comparing the internal textual evidence, which letters occur and in which suras, against the range of proposed readings, the commentary confirms which letters appear where while confirming that none of the proposed meanings has displaced the others.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief) tier 1

Yaa Asantewaa, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1840

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Yaa Asantewaa (c. 1850-1921) (Encyclopedia.com), Encyclopedia.com (Gale Group, Encyclopedia of World Biography) tier 2

Yaa Asantewaa, Historical Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit End Year

Currently States 1921

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source Yaa Asantewaa (c. 1850-1921) (Encyclopedia.com), Encyclopedia.com (Gale Group, Encyclopedia of World Biography) tier 2

Yahya Yuhana as the True Teacher, Doctrines

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Point in Dispute

Currently States Where Mandaean origins actually lie, in the Jordan valley of the first century, where Mandaean tradition holds that Yahya Yuhana baptized Jesus and rejected his teaching, or in Mesopotamia. Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley's The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People (Oxford University Press, 2002) treats it as a real scholarly argument with positions on both sides rather than a settled question.

Source The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley tier 1