The early middle ages never happened

reply to post by One Moment


What in the hell are you bantering on about? We knew more back then than we do now? Are you fracking for real?

"By the time the Gregorian calendar was introduced in AD 1582, 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"

So you are saying they miss counted days. A few days off here and a few days off there so by the time the Gregorian calendar was introduced in AD 1582 they had miss counted to point that the year 1582 was in fact 1285 and they would make today, 2010 is in fact 1713.

I can beleive it is a few years off because of little is any record keeping but 297 years?

Starting from year 1
1285 X 365=469025 days
469025 / 1582 =296 days (rounded off)
365 - 296 = 69 days

By my math they would have had to miss count each year by as much as 69 days. That is a lot of miss counted.

I do believe the calendar is off but by no more than 10 years at best. But 297 years is a little hard to believe.

I would like to here more about this.

I wonder if this fits in to Isaac Newton's discovery that the worlds chronology has been greatly inflated by the boasting of men. In particular ancient chronology was inflated to make it seem that a particular culture (e.g. ancient Greece) was superior.

Newton found the discrepancies using hard science. Namely the occurrence of celestial events, like eclipses, is fixed by the orbits of the moons and planets and thus many events can be exactly determined if celestial events are recorded.

Here is the original work.
Chronicles of History

There are some web pages with good synopsis but I had trouble finding them.

What do I think? I think Illig is clueless about calendars.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
Many, when you ask them about what happened between the year 600 and 1100 have a blank mind. Empty. Nothing. What did they teach about that time in History class? Not much. Because so little is known about the early middle ages that they are referred to as Dark Ages. Some believe that the middle ages or at least the early middle ages did not exist!

Eh, that's just because they don't actually go looking for it or refuse to recognize it. There's tons of artifacts and texts -- the Book of Kells, for instance, along with a long list of other illuminated manuscripts (with dates on some of them.)
en.wikipedia.org...

And, of course, the Byzantine empire and all its artifacts and writings and historical figures has to be erased to make that "Dark ages didn't exist" happen:
en.wikipedia.org...

It proposes that there has been a systematic effort to make it appear that periods of history, specifically that of Europe during Early Middle Ages (AD 614–911) exist, when they do not. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.[1]

We're talking thousands and thousands of manuscripts, and too many tombs to count as well as lists of kings and so forth.

By the time the Gregorian calendar was introduced in AD 1582, 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.[2]

I think it was Illig himself who decided that there was a discrepancy of 13 days. I'm not sure how he got this, either.

The basis of Illig's hypothesis is the paucity of archaeological evidence that can be reliably dated to the period AD 614–911, on perceived inadequacies of radiometric and dendrochronological methods of dating this period, and on the over-reliance of medieval historians on written sources. For Western Europe, Illig claims the presence of Romanesque architecture in the tenth century as evidence that less than half a millennium could have passed since the fall of the Roman Empire, and concludes that the entire Carolingian period, including the person of Charlemagne, is a forgery of medieval chroniclers, more precisely a conspiracy instigated by Otto III and Gerbert d'Aurillac.

It's amazing just how much one man is willing to ignore to "prove" his unusual idea, including the letters written by Charlemagne and other evidence of his existence:
www.fordham.edu...

This is just one example of how Illig picks and chooses his sources carefully to support his thesis. He then ignores a whopping boatload of other material, including solar eclipses and the gradual change in funeral customs reflected in graves, wanting us to believe that record keeping about celestial events was very flawed and that burial and funeral customs changed completely (with transitional forms) in a year or two.

There's a nice analysis here: www.stephan-matthiesen.de... -- however, it's in German. The Babelfish translation is pretty weak and you may not be able to get the full sense of the arguments, here. I read German (rather poorly, at a third grade level) so I can piece together the problems with the Babelfish translation.) They go into the solar eclipse argument as well as the impossibility of faking documents and so forth for a multitude of historical personages -- including contact by these people with folks in areas that did not experience the "Dark Ages."

Whether this specific Theory is true or not, its easy to imagine that parts of History have been fabricated or manipulated by "the powers that be" of various times. Who is to stop any Empire of any Period of time simply write chronology the way they see fit...

The fact that they can't access ALL the material. Attempts were made at various times to eradicate all mention of certain rulers (Hatshepsut was one), yet evidence with their names still exists.

What do you think?

Uhm... "needs to quit cherry picking evidence" came to mind immediately.

[edit on 10-7-2010 by Byrd]

(duplicate post, courtesy of the rather dreadful internet connection at this hotel)

[edit on 10-7-2010 by Byrd]

reply to post by Byrd


Here is something that we really not ought to ignore the possibility of.

My contention, which I have written about extensively here on ATS is that the Dark Ages were Dark for the expressed point and objective of stamping out pagan religions and imposing Christianity as a form of Roman Law.

Much of this Paganism was stamped out violently, and through deception.

For instance Astronomers say it is impossible for Jesus to have been born December 25th, that the Star that heralded his birth as told in the Bible would have appeared in March and not December.

What we do know, is that Rome could not get the Pagans to stop celebrating Yule, a festival many nations had from the Winter Solstice through New Years, and dates back all the way to Babylonian times.

So they Christianized it by proclaiming Jesus was born on the 25th to usurp the celebration.

What if, during the dark ages the violence of wiping out Paganism was so horrific they sought to minimize it by creating a alternative history that obscures a good bit of it?

For instance suppose Hitler would have won World War II, what would history then say about the Holocaust a couple centuries later, would they gloss it over as a necessity, or make it seem like it never happened at all.

Handwritten manuscripts (I have seen many illuminated ones at the Getty Museum in Malibu California which has the world’s largest collection) are just that hand written.

Watch what I can write by hand: Today Monday April 13th, 2251, I walked my dog!

That doesn’t mean it is Monday, April 13th or the year 2251 or that I walked my dog or even have one. It means that I wrote a false account and record.

Spies, Law Enforcement Agents, and Forgers and Criminals establish false identities all the time, with the State doing it just as much as the criminal element.

Now because the computer time stamp on this post is going to say: Saturday, July 10, 2010 we know my above statement is false.

Because people are actually witnessing this occur, people who are alive and breathing right now and can be questioned about it and speak about it and give testimony to it, we further know my above statement is false.

So two very important aspects are missing in regards to information written in hand by an Army of Roman Monks, Clerks and Scribes, no independent verification, no living witnesses to question, so yes it really could all be false and manufactured to impose a new form of governance that derives it’s power from a willing populace after an unwilling populace was murdered off, and those crimes obscured to history.

My contention is that once the Roman Christian Religious system was firmly in place they lifted the Dark Ages and permitted the Renaissance Period to proceed to put the population now firmly under their control back to work to acquire more land and resources and expand the empire and it’s holdings.

I see motive and opportunity here, the motive being the Roman State’s desire to forgo the huge cost of Bread and Circuses and defending far flung borders, by creating a divide and conquer system that would use God as the basis of Governance instead of Roman Power as the bases for governance, with the bulk of the people’s rewards payable upon death by that God, and very few rewards for submission and servitude of the State in life.

How much time is missing in this period is irrelevant, I do believe that is exactly what happened, and why.

Thanks.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
reply to post by Byrd

 

What if, during the dark ages the violence of wiping out Paganism was so horrific they sought to minimize it by creating a alternative history that obscures a good bit of it?

While it's quite true that the Christians appropriated old gods and made them into saints and festivals of other gods into Christian holidays, the erasing of history in a world where you have literate people who are active artisans and craftspeople and who live in many different countries is not possible. How do you get the Byzantine empire (for example) to get the Turkish empire (their mortal enemies) to agree with them to destroy all evidences of certain historical events? How do you get both of them to silence ALL of the writing of the Jewish rabbis? How do you get the English to go along with the fading Byzantine Empire (directly opposed to the Roman Catholic Church) and agree to alter all their historical documents?

How do you get them all to hunt down every prayer, every item with a date on it, and every letter from one official to another (particularly those giving the central government news of activities on their frontiers) and destroy it -- particularly when we have two opposed Christian factions (that battle occasionally) along with the Muslims (who don't care for Christians.)

How do you get all these warring societies and quarreling nobles (remember the Magna Charta in 1215, when the barons forced King John to sign their set of rules for government) both great and small to ALL... simultaneously... agree to destroy history.

An appeal to Christianity won't work in those literate areas which are non-Christian. An appeal by the Byzantine pope won't work in Western Europe. An appeal by the Roman Catholic pope won't work in Eastern Europe. Neither of them can stop trade with India and China and they don't have a lick of influence there.

So... how WOULD you get them to destroy it all?

Destroying the records of a small band of people is very possible (less so in these days of good communication). Destroying the names of important rulers (such as Hatshepsut and Ahkenaten) has proven impossible -- and that destruction was ordered by rulers of that particular culture within a short time after the deaths of these people.

What argument could they have given that would convince Muslim, Hindu, Eastern Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic Christian, and others to completely rewrite history? To each of these religions, all the OTHER religions I just listed were "pagan."

a little side note,

The term "The dark ages" was coined by a contemporary "orthodox"/byzantine christian monk, writing in 530's in reference to the dark skies, that year that were caused by ash clouds from the cataclysmic eruption of krakatoa in 536-38?.
This eruption was one of the watershed events in development of western civilazation.
The dark ages did happen

reply to post by Skyfloating


ive been on the same tracks that there is big gaps in history thats been filled in with manufactured nonsence.

have you read any of the fomenko works wiki entry ?


s´f

Did not exist?Is this some kind of joke?

Originally posted by zerbot565
have you read any of the fomenko works wiki entry ?

No, the theory is completely new to me. Thanks for the heads up.

Geesh! What happened to the Vikings? Who was fighting off the Saxons?

This theory sounds a great deal like those of Anatoly Fomenko . This is the first book in a series where the Russian mathematician argues that the dating of history is wildly inaccurate. He discusses every fact brought up by the people responding to this thread with evidence otherwise.

This is not to say I agree with Fomenko (I don't) but I found his theories fascinating.

Many, when you ask them about what happened between the year 600 and 1100 have a blank mind. Empty. Nothing. What did they teach about that time in History class? Not much. Because so little is known about the early middle ages that they are referred to as Dark Ages. Some believe that the middle ages or at least the early middle ages did not exist!

Clearly those people didn't go to my school(s)!

We were taught that quite a lot happened in that period. The 8th and early 9th century were the time of Charlemagne and the first "unification" of Europe, to name just one major development. (And there were others!)
Culturally it was also a great time; it's not called the "Carolingian Renaissance" for nothing.
It was also the time of Al-Andalus, the Islamic state in Spain, the time of the battle of Poitiers, etc., etc, etc.

I read about a similar theory - by a Russian mathematician, I think - back in 2002. While it is very interesting and well thought out, ultimately I don't think it really holds water.







[edit on 17-8-2010 by AdAstra]

[edit on 17-8-2010 by AdAstra]

Originally posted by niv
This theory sounds a great deal like those of Anatoly Fomenko . This is the first book in a series where the Russian mathematician argues that the dating of history is wildly inaccurate. He discusses every fact brought up by the people responding to this thread with evidence otherwise.

This is not to say I agree with Fomenko (I don't) but I found his theories fascinating.

Yes, exactly - that's the one I was thinking of, but couldn't remember the name!
Thanks.



[edit on 17-8-2010 by AdAstra]

Before saying this theory is nonesense, learn how history has been presented over time.

The idea of dating something to year 2010 for example is quite new. In the past, dates were generally based on the year of the reign of whoever was in power:

-in the 3rd year of the reign of Claudius
-in the 1st year of the reign of Caligula
-in the 17th year of the reign of Tiberius
-in the 23rd year of the reign of Augustus

etc, etc, etc.

Every civilization dated things this way according to their own monarchs. So, first, you have to know who came before whom in order to get a chronology. Then you have to match up French dates with German dates with Chinese dates with English dates...

Then you have to remove the frauds. Yes, intentional frauds. Almost every civilization has made itself artificially older. It looks better to say that your civilization has thrived 1000 years than to say it has thrived for 150. In almost every civilization you will notice that lists of monarchs repeat. The names will change, but the reigns are the same length and the events repeat themselves. This was traditional and almost expected from any civilisation. So giving a list of monarchs is absolutely worthless. Study the popes and compare them to Roman emperors, you will be surprised.

In support of Illig, in Europe you will find buildings which appear identical; same materials, constructed using the same techniques, same architecture, but built 300-400 years apart. This is impossible.

New construction techniques were invented then abandoned for 400 years. Yeah right.

There is a hole of around 300 years in Arab history. There are many holes in Chinese history. But to find them you have to look beyond official history.

Charlemagne would have breakfast in Paris, lunch in Rome, Tea in London and dinner in Kiev. Fast horses I guess. Charlemagne is a very unlikely character and more than likely a construct of several other characters.

The chronology of history has been put together too often by idiots with an agenda. Historians invented complete falicies that are now considered history. As an example, there is absolutely nothing to support the story of the plague that killed 1/3 of Europe's population. The first time anyone has mentioned anything about this is 120 years after the facts. During this supposed plague, not a single word about it was ever written.

Fact of the matter is, it is much more likely that this is the year 1675 than it is 2010. When you learn the real facts about history, it becomes obvious that it is impossible that 2000 years have gone by since Julius Caesar. Unless our ancestors were all a bunch of morons, and if that were the case, we wouldn't be here.

Then again, it is also possible that this is the year 1200 or abouts.

reply to post by Byrd



Just wanted to add this convenient compilation of both original and secondary sources that apparently has been sitting here for quite a while:

The Internet History Sourcebooks

But one thing that I've learned for certain on this forum is that it's useless to even begin to discuss anything with people who are a priori convinced of their "theories".
I have also learned that actual knowledge of any given matter does not mean you're going to be listened to, except by those who already know better.




[edit on 17-8-2010 by AdAstra]

[edit on 17-8-2010 by AdAstra]

Believers in our current consensual History seem to think that everyone who ever wrote anything dated it. The didn’t. There were no calendars that writers adhered to. The closest they came to dating is
To say something like, “in the 9th year of King XXX…..” Therefore it isn’t necessary to get anyone to destroy thier history. It simply didn’t happen .

You all also seem to think that there was an ongoing recording of events. Most people were illiterate. Being able to read and write even in the 1700’s was something only the elites could do. We forget that even 100 years ago not everyone had a high school education and There were still folks who were illiterate.

It was the elites who did the writing. Do you think they would embellish the history of their families?
Do you think that Royalty may have extended their family history into the past so as to impress the masses with their long standing authority to rule. Likewise for the Roman Church.

Here is an article on the problem of Dating. It also has a diagram of "coincidental" paralells from different "times" of history. This one shows comparison of Roman rulers to Biblical rulers. Curious, yes?
www.revisedhistory.org...

Letters written by Charlemagne? Indeed? Certainly they couldn’t be forgeries, could they?
Likewise for Julius Caesar.

Solar Eclipses? Yes indeed, they are interesting, and they blow some of the alleged dates clean out of consideration. The above site has an article on Egyptian Horoscopes that brings the dates of those Tombs up into the 11 & 1400’s AD/CE.
www.pims.math.ca...
"The results presented in [1] are most intriguing. The dates obtained were as follows:
Round Denderah zodiac - morning of March 20, 1185 A.D.
Long zodiac - April 22-26, 1168 A.D.
Big Esna zodiac - March 31 - April 3, 1394 A.D.
Small Esna zodiac - May 6-8, 1404 A.D."


Those interested in British History will also find an interesting article there.

And then we have the problems with Carbon Dating. It is not an exact science.
For these reasons from: www.specialtyinterests.net...

“Radiometric dating and real time may be assumed to be equivalent only if the following criteria are met:
For C-14 dating the conditions are:
The material to be dated must be organic
The organism to be tested must have gotten its C-14 from the atmosphere
The sample has remained chemically and physically a closed system since its emplacement.
That we know what the atmospheric concentration of C-14 was when the
organism lived.”

Thank you ajmusicmedia for the excellent summary.

I have Volumes 1 & 2 of Fomenko's Histoyr: Science or Fiction
It is a very detailed work and he present information that will rattle your perception of history.

reply to post by OhZone


Those who have actually studied history and historiography - and that necessarily includes working with primary sources - know full well how history is written.
The more serious among them have also known about the shortcomings of carbon dating - as well as other ancillary sciences - for decades.
As for myself, even I have been familiar with Fomenko's theories (for that's what they are) for almost a decade now.

Just because many valid theories are all too easily and unjustly dismissed, it does not follow that a theory is correct because it has been dismissed.
But I gather that understanding the full extent of the many, many, many! very real holes in this theory takes people with a solid knowledge of the subject and an unbiased mind.
Good luck finding many of those here! (Or, in all fairness, anywhere.)

There is a rule in academia that everybody should be familiar with by now: publish or perish.
On the flip side, the levels of general knowledge among the public have declined so drastically in the past few decades that it is very easy for anyone with a pen - sorry, computer - to cash in on other people's ignorance.
It's a s simple as that.











[edit on 17-8-2010 by AdAstra]

Just replying to the OP here:

This theory is bunk. I actually focused much of my studies in university on the time period in question, and there is AMPLE archaeological evidence from this period.

The suggestion that the Carolingian dynasty never existed I find particularly humorous. We're still finding coins from that period in digs all over western europe.

Did Otto and his co-conspirators go around Europe burying fake silver coins that they minted JUST FOR THIS PURPOSE on the off chance someone might dig them up in 1000 years and be convinced?

Utter hogwash.

We call it the "dark ages" precisely because there are few written records from the period (aside from church sources) but the archaeological findings explain the absence of written sources.

To suggest that simply because there were fewer written records from the period that the period did not exist is downright childish. The initiator of this claim has obviously never done any real historical research, nor has he ever bothered to seek out and consult primary sources.

No star and no flag for you.


P.S. I'm writing a paper right now on the formation of the Kingdom of England and the royal house of Wessex until the Norman conquest. Time period? ~750 - 1050 AD.

GASP! Apparently my whole paper is being written on a period of time that never existed! Bede would be spinning in his grave if he knew!

And no one tell Cnut the Great, either. Apparently his entire reign was make beleive.

Holy crap, people, how incredulous can you get?