Were the Dark Ages all just a bit of made up fun? Find out more with today’s weird wikipedia article, courtesy of The Wikiworm…
The phantom time hypothesis is a revisionist history and conspiracy theory developed in the 1980s and ’90s by German historian and publisher Heribert Illig (born 1947 in Vohenstrauß, Germany). The hypothesis proposes that periods of history, specifically that of Europe during the Early Middle Ages (AD 614–911), are either wrongly dated, or did not occur at all, and that there has been a systematic effort to cover up that fact. Illig believed that this was achieved through the alteration, misrepresentation, and forgery of documentary and physical evidence.
Basis for the hypothesis include:
- The scarcity 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.
- The presence of Romanesque architecture in tenth-century Western Europe. This is taken 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 existence of the individual known as Charlemagne, is a forgery by medieval chroniclers; or more precisely, a conspiracy instigated by Otto III and Gerbert d’Aurillac.
- 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 the hypothesis
- Observations in ancient astronomy agree with current observations with no “phantom time” added, such as sightings of Halley’s Comet.
- Archeological remains and dating methods such as dendrochronology refute, rather than support, “phantom time”.
- 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 23rd. 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.
- If Charlemagne and the Carolingian dynasty were fabricated, there would have to be a corresponding fabrication of the history of the rest of Europe, includingAnglo-Saxon England, the Papacy, and the Byzantine Empire. The “phantom time” period also encompasses the life of Muhammad and the Islamic expansioninto the areas of the former Roman Empire, including the conquest of Visigothic Spain. This history too would have to be forged or drastically misdated.
