Phantom Time Hypothesis

[LucidElement]

Hey guys I was reading an article on 30 scary wikipedia pages people may not have known about.. You guys should check that out...

Link for that is.. http://www.refinery29.com/scary-wikipedia-pages?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=adsales&utm_campaign=ent_slideshows&utm_content=The-30-Scariest-Wikipedia-Pages-Youll-Ev#slide-1

One thing I came across in there is the phantom time hypothesis, thought it was interesting, and to see if anyone is familiar with it?

From Wiki " The phantom time hypothesis is a historical conspiracy theory advanced by German historian and publisher Heribert Illig (born 1947) which proposes that historical events between AD 614 and 911 in the Early Middle Ages of Europe and neighbouring regions are either wrongly dated, or did not occur at all, and that there has been a systematic effort to cover up that fact.

EXPLANATION:

The hypothesis suggests a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII to fabricate a dating system that placed them at the special year of AD 1000, and to rewrite history, inventing the heroic figure of Charlemagne among other things.^[1]

Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation, and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.

^{ARGUMENTS FOR ALL YOU BELIVERS!}

• The scarcity of archaeological evidence that can be reliably dated to the period AD 614–911, the perceived inadequacies of radiometric and dendrochronological methods of dating this period, and the over-reliance of medieval historians on written sources.
  
• The presence of Romanesque architecture in tenth-century Western Europe, suggesting the Roman era was not as long as conventionally thought.
  
• The relation between the Julian calendar, Gregorian calendar and the underlying astronomical solar or tropical year. The Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar, was long known to introduce a discrepancy from the tropical year of around one day for each century that the calendar was in use. By the time the Gregorian calendar was introduced in AD 1582, Illig alleges that the old Julian calendar "should" have produced a discrepancy of thirteen days between it and the real (or tropical) calendar. Instead, the astronomers and mathematicians working for Pope Gregory had found that the civil calendar needed to be adjusted by only ten days. From this, Illig concludes that the AD era had counted roughly three centuries which never existed.
  

ARGUMENTS AGAINST FOR ALL YOU SKEPTICS!!

• Observations in ancient astronomy, including during the Tang Dynasty in China, of solar eclipses and Halley's Comet for example, are consistent with current astronomy with no "phantom time" added.^[5][6]
  
• Archaeological remains and dating methods such as dendrochronology refute, rather than support, "phantom time".^[7]
  
• Regarding the Gregorian reform: It was never intended or purported to bring the calendar in line with the Julian calendar as it had existed in 45 BC, the time of its institution, but as it had existed in 325, the time of the Council of Nicaea, which had established a method for determining the date of Easter Sunday by fixing the Vernal Equinox on March 20 in the Julian calendar. By 1582, the astronomical equinox was occurring on March 10 in the Julian calendar, but Easter was still being calculated from a nominal equinox on March 20. In 45 BC the astronomical vernal equinox took place around March 23. Illig's "three missing centuries" thus correspond to the 369 years between the institution of the Julian calendar in 45 BC, and the fixing of the Easter Date at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.^[8]
  
• If Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty were fabricated, there would have to be a corresponding fabrication of the history of the rest of Europe, including Anglo-Saxon England, the Papacy, and the Byzantine Empire. The "phantom time" period also encompasses the life of Muhammad and the Islamic expansion into the areas of the former Roman Empire, including the conquest of Visigothic Spain. This history too would have to be forged or drastically misdated. It would also have to be reconciled with the history of the Tang Dynasty of China and its contact with Islam, such as at the Battle of Talas.
  

........

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis

Would enjoy talking to you guys more about this in detail!

[jaylemurph]

This theory is so poorly researched and argued and relies so heavily on its audience's ignorance and sloth that it scarcely bears commenting on.

--Jaylemurph

[Van Gorp]

Very interesting theory, only are we sure it was only from Illig's time this kind of thought was advanced?

Maybe bit similar as Hardouin earlier, the period of AD 614 and 911 rather cautious?

[Kenemet]

Unconvincing and exceptionally Eruo-centric. The evidence for time being what we say it is is everywhere, and, of course, evidence outside Europe is plentiful.

[jmccr8]

Maybe they count time like I do I've been 19 for 41 years and next year I will be 20

jmccr8

[qxcontinuum]

For what i was reading there i wish these monsters should have been killed by slow dead. I dunno what is wrong with human race !

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

Would enjoy talking to you guys more about this in detail!

I seem to recall that you are a history student, so the interesting question to me is this:

What do you think ?

[Peter B]

One thing I came across in there is the phantom time hypothesis, thought it was interesting, and to see if anyone is familiar with it?

Yes, I remember discussing it on another discussion forum a few years ago, but I don't remember where.

The hypothesis suggests a conspiracy by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, Pope Sylvester II, and possibly the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII to fabricate a dating system...

And pretty much the entire Tang Dynasty of China, the dates of which correspond closely to this proposed time period.

Link: http://en.wikipedia....time_hypothesis

Would enjoy talking to you guys more about this in detail!

Well, given the evidence against the hypothesis, do you see any particular reason to give the hypothesis any support?

Here's a thought: have a look at a map showing Europe and the Mediterranean world in 600AD and another map showing the same part of the world in 920AD. A good book to use would be Colin McEvedy's "New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History". Have a look at how much that part of the world changed in that supposedly non-existent period of time. In particular we see the Arabs change from being confined to the Arabian peninsula to ruling land in a series of states from Spain to the border of India. By contrast the Byzantine Empire loses its possessions in Spain, most of Italy, all of North Africa and Egypt, Palestine, Syria and most of the Balkans...instantly. Well, I suppose if that was the case Constantine VII might have something to explain, especially if the "phantom centuries" pretty much require his father to be the successful Soldier-Emperor Heraclius instead of Leo VI.

[Harte]

This theory is so poorly researched and argued and relies so heavily on its audience's ignorance and sloth that it scarcely bears commenting on.

--Jaylemurph

Besides, I'm too lazy to look into it.

Harte

[Hanslune]

There were people before him who thought similar thoughts and I'll put that information at the bottom.

However this phrase greatly amused me:

over-reliance of medieval historians on written sources.

Well when you want to write a history of what happened 100 years before there are very few eye witnesses!

Edited to add: Jean Hardouin, 1646 –1729: It is, however, as the originator of a variety of paradoxical theories that Hardouin is now best remembered. The most remarkable, contained in his Chronologiae ex nummis antiquis restitutae (1696) and Prolegomena ad censuram veterum scriptorum, was to the effect that, with the exception of the works of Homer, Herodotus and Cicero, the Natural History of Pliny, the Georgics of Virgil, and the Satires and Epistles of Horace, all the ancient classics of Greece and Rome were spurious, having been manufactured by monks of the 13th century, under the direction of a certain Severus Archontius. He denied the genuineness of most ancient works of art, coins and inscriptions, and declared that the New Testament was originally written in Latin. The historian Isaac-Joseph Berruyer had his Histoire du peuple de Dieu condemned for having followed this theory, which has a modern heir in the Russian mathematician Anatoly Timofeevich Fomenko, whose conclusions being based on proprietary methods of statistical textual analysis and computational astronomy are even more radical, but considered to be pseudoscientific. Hardouin also declared that all the councils supposed to have taken place before the council of Trent were fictitious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Hardouin

[Peter B]

However this phrase greatly amused me:

Well when you want to write a history of what happened 100 years before there are very few eye witnesses!

Maybe, like "Time Team", they should have checked the geophysics!?

[LucidElement]

I seem to recall that you are a history student, so the interesting question to me is this:

What do you think ?

I will be back to answer that question Big guy.. And like ive told a lot of people, just because im a History major doesnt mean they TEACH you everything... lol plus i can tell you... "Phantom Time Hypothesis" was never a subject matter... MAYBE somewhere between, European history/ Environmental History / and Early American History, (did i miss it haha) ... but it's thanksgiving week bud so I will defieneatly be back to this sooner then later.. Because, i think it's a pretty interesting theory.. You know, it still sucks that this site has so many skeptics (not pointed at you, just in general).. .. used to be just an outgoing (everyone/anyone would bring a cool new story to the table and we would discuss it...) so different now sadly.... But this is interesting... BUT did you see the FIRST link???

[Peter B]

I will be back to answer that question Big guy.. And like ive told a lot of people, just because im a History major doesnt mean they TEACH you everything...

Sheesh, I hope not! But I hope that one thing they teach you is the ability to assess evidence.

lol plus i can tell you... "Phantom Time Hypothesis" was never a subject matter... MAYBE somewhere between, European history/ Environmental History / and Early American History, (did i miss it haha)

Fair enough, it's a fairly obscure period of history, not sexy like Classical Greece and Rome, or the 20th Century. However, in that case, what's the European history you have studied?

Even so, lecturers shouldn't be obliged to discuss every last controversial historical hypothesis. Presumably, as I said above, they should be equipping you with investigative skills such that when you come across a hypothesis you haven't seen before you have the ability to judge for yourself whether it's reasonable, controversial or laugh-out-loud crazy. If you were to ask your lecturer what (s)he thought of this hypothesis, I hope the first thing they'd do is to ask you what you've done to evaluate it for yourself.

... but it's thanksgiving week bud so I will defieneatly be back to this sooner then later.. Because, i think it's a pretty interesting theory..

Interesting as in "well this guy is brave to propose such an outlandish theory", or interesting as in "actually I think this hypothesis is distinctly possible"?

You know, it still sucks that this site has so many skeptics (not pointed at you, just in general).. .. used to be just an outgoing (everyone/anyone would bring a cool new story to the table and we would discuss it...) so different now sadly.... But this is interesting...

Can you understand why virtually everyone posting to this thread has been skeptical? Have you analysed the reasons we've given for our skepticism, or did you stop reading our comments when we expressed our skepticism? The main problem with the hypothesis is that we can tie historical events across all of Eurasia and North Africa over dozens of centuries. If 300 years of European history was invented, then either 300 years of history across all of Eurasia and North Africa was invented as well, or the associations between European events and events elsewhere in the world prior to this gap period are out by 300 years.

For example, we know that when the first wave of Muslim Arabs conquered Sassanid Persia in 651, the Persian Crown Prince fled to T'ang Dynasty China, where he was welcomed. This isn't unusual as Persia and China had some level of diplomatic contact in previous years. But if events from the early 7th century to the early 10th century were invented, what happened to the Persian Crown Prince? What happened, for that matter, to Sassanid Persia or to T'ang Dynasty China?

This isn't skepticism for the sake of it, or even skepticism in defence of some agreed mainstream narrative; it's skepticism based on strands of evidence which Illig seems to have never taken into account.

BUT did you see the FIRST link???

I only skimmed the other stories because, well, the thread title suggested you were interested only in this hypothesis, and because you asked about only this hypothesis in your OP!

ETA: Changed the example from T'ang China in particular to Persia and China.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Peter B

[Van Gorp]

For example, we know that when the first wave of Muslim Arabs conquered Sassanid Persia in 651

Interesting, how do we know?

[Peter B]

I said:

For example, we know that when the first wave of Muslim Arabs conquered Sassanid Persia in 651.

Van Gorp asked:

Interesting, how do we know?

Simple: as a result of histories written by Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, Pope Sylvester and the German Emperor...oh, I see where you're coming from.

No, that's not how we know it. Rather, it's the consistency of evidence from a wide range of events, from contemporary histories written by people like Sebeos (Armenian), Theophylact (Byzantine) and Ibn-Hisham (Arabic), later histories written by Byzantines and Arabs, even later documents written by post-Sassanid Persians, through the official documents they quoted, through archaeology, and through the coins and inscriptions produced by various societies around the time.

Historians of the time from the Byzantine Empire had plenty of ways of marking the year, whether using the AUC system, the consuls of the year, the regnal year of the Emperor, the AD year or the year of the indiction. Once an event is mentioned in the context of a year, regardless of the convention used to number that year, it's possible to place that even in a broader historical context. No doubt there are inconsistencies, errors and omissions; but seamlessly inserting 300 years of events from across Eurasia is simply implausible.

[Van Gorp]

Simple: as a result of histories written by Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, Pope Sylvester and the German Emperor...oh, I see where you're coming from.

No, that's not how we know it. Rather, it's the consistency of evidence from a wide range of events, from contemporary histories written by people like Sebeos (Armenian), Theophylact (Byzantine) and Ibn-Hisham (Arabic), later histories written by Byzantines and Arabs, even later documents written by post-Sassanid Persians, through the official documents they quoted, through archaeology, and through the coins and inscriptions produced by various societies around the time.

I want to check myself about the year 651, or better 1363 years back in time.

If it is simple to check: you can certainly provide details and probably you have done it explicitly yourself if you say "we know that when the first wave of Muslim Arabs conquered Sassanid Persia in 651"? What sources have you used, which quotes, and what logic?

Or you take this proven by others?

If the consistency is in the error, of course a whole block of events is easily misdated without any fault.

[LucidElement]

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar we still use today was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII to replace the outdated Julian calendar which had been implemented in 45 BC. The Gregorian calendar was designed to correct for a ten-day discrepancy caused by the fact that the Julian year was 10.8 minutes too long. But by Heribert Illig's math, the 1,627 years which had passed since the Julian calendar started should have accrued a thirteen-day discrepancy... a ten-day error would have only taken 1,257 years.

So Illig and his group went hunting for other gaps in history, and found a few... for example, a gap of building in Constantinople (558 AD - 908 AD) and a gap in the doctrine of faith, especially the gap in the evolution of theory and meaning of purgatory (600 AD until ca. 1100). From all of this data, they have become convinced that at some time, the calendar year was increased by 297 years without the corresponding passage of time.

Why cant it be possible there was a discrepency? Of course the Hypothesis is far fetched, i just find it cool to think about. I will look into this and see if anyone else has done research on the Hypothesis, someone outside of Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz.

Edited November 28, 2014 by LucidElement

[LucidElement]

I actually found a link from 2008 that was done on this forum.. http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=127353

and

http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=121649&hl=Middle+Ages

[jaylemurph]

Why cant it be possible there was a discrepency? Of course the Hypothesis is far fetched, i just find it cool to think about. I will look into this and see if anyone else has done research on the Hypothesis, someone outside of Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz.

Of course it's /possible/, but it's not something supported by credible evidence, or -- frankly -- the merest soupcon of common sense. I suggest you read the lucid and thoughtful response by that very clever poster Jaylemurph in the thread you cite.

--Jaylemurph

[Peter B]

I want to check myself about the year 651, or better 1363 years back in time.

If it is simple to check: you can certainly provide details and probably you have done it explicitly yourself if you say "we know that when the first wave of Muslim Arabs conquered Sassanid Persia in 651"? What sources have you used, which quotes, and what logic?

Or you take this proven by others?

If you are asking me whether I have personally verified the date of 651, then no I have not. I have instead relied on the calculations of professionals who have worked through documents and artefacts relating to that event and the surrounding events. That they have concluded the Sassanid Persian Empire fell in 651 is something I am comfortable with accepting.

I likewise have not verified the boiling point of tungsten, whether Anton Bruckner actually wrote the 8th symphony which is credited to him, or the accuracy the figure-8 orbit travelled by the Apollo 13 spacecraft. In each case I am happy to rely on the conclusions of experts in each of those fields.

In each of these cases, I am reminded of the phrase of Stephen Jay Gould in relation to scientific facts: "In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'." {My emphasis} I think it's reasonable to apply the concept to history, at least in a broad sense.

Yes, it's true that the exact dating of some events in history is open to question. Tom Holland points out in "The Shadow of the Sword" that Muhamad's death may have been two years later than the year generally accepted. But this is a long way from questioning the actual existence of three centuries of events, inscriptions, coins, buildings and documents.

If the consistency is in the error, of course a whole block of events is easily misdated without any fault.

Illig's theory does not involve merely misdating a block of events. Instead his theory proposes that a block of events was completely invented out of nothing. And not just the events, but the physical evidence which goes with them. It means either that the entire T'ang Dynasty was made up (along with the rest of the world's history in that period) or that events which have been correlated between Europe on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand have been mismatched prior to 900AD.

The fact remains that physical evidence for the period 600-900 is merely scarce, not absent altogether.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Peter B