The study of the important social anthropologist Michael Herzfeld (an extended version of the lecture he gave in the context of the annual “Delivorrias Lecture” in 2024) starts from the decoding of the “monumentalization” of the oral evidence of Folklore and the use of the latter, together with Archaeology, for the strengthen of the national discourse, in order to lead to broader reflections on the notions of “cultural continuity”, the limitations and distortions implied by methodological nationalism in the understanding of history, and finally to proposals for alternative interpretations of continuity.