Take the witch trials, for example - to the best of my extremely limited knowledge, most witch trials involved very poorly-defined ideas about what a witch was capable of or what the signs of a witch were.
Consider something like this and notice that our modern "explanations" aren't much better.
And because of those damned atheists we can't even start a witch hunt to figure out who's responsible!
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: