I just had a Baader-Meinhof moment in regards to the subject of this article (and wouldn’t have known what to call it if it wasn’t for the Baader-Meinhof article). For all of you Philip K. Dick fans out there, he mentions this theory in his book VALIS. It made me want to see what this calendar thing was all about, and I did just a little research myself. My memory might be failing me here, but I think that there might be a couple new proponents of the idea since this article was written.

I do remember reading that another possible way that dating could’ve been screwed up could have been if, for example, a prominent person or ruler who was written about was later mistakenly identified as 2 different people living in different time periods, because of discrepancies in the written records (maybe because the two sources writing about them used different names for them, and they didn’t document enough of the same life events of the person for historians to realize the records spoke of the same guy.) The reverse is also true, meaning that it’s possible that one group was writing about ruler so-and-so, and so-and-so’s story or character was so similar to ruler whats-his-face that when historians hundreds of years later went to sort it all out and date it, they put all of the so-and-so and whats-his-face stuff together thinking it was the same ruler (when they really could’ve been two people decades apart.) I’m certainly not saying that I believe our calendar is 300+ years off, but I do think that people have a tendency to VASTLY underestimate the subjectivity of history. Humanity did not consistently keep track of everything from the start of writing up to this day – bits and pieces were recorded (often by unknown/unnamed people or some we know NOTHING about, mind you), and historians had to collect it all and sort through it hundreds of years later based on, for the most part, educated guesswork. The people arguing so zealously one way or the other on this theory and seem to genuinely believe that they know FOR A FACT – I think you missed the point, loves. If it were currently possible to know, with absolute certainty, enough about history to say whether this theory was true or not, then the theory wouldn’t have sprung up in the first place.

Ah, geeze. Apologies for the novel. I was aiming for a short paragraph. If you read comments years and years after the article, Alan, I enjoy your articles and your humor! Cheers.

The Empire never ended!

300 years adjustment would be an audacious hoax to pull off. But then I consider the other audacious hoaxes in operation today and find the idea entirely plausible – not even a particularly difficult hoax to construct and maintain.

In this digital age, it is a simple matter to eradicate inconvenient truths (like artifacts being destroyed right now in Iraq) completely from the historical narrative. It is the winner that writes history…one does not need to look to far to find the organisation most likely wanting to win.

http://www.britannia.com/history/ebk/ebktime2.html

I get to conclusion that the ‘tatar invasion’ [and in fact all of the nomad invasions] were the crusades [Fomenko even says taht some wars [trojan etc] were the same [but says the tatars were the russians] – but to simplify this they were the scythians.

Fomenko says about ‘roman empire’ the populating of europe from east’

Myself i think that the ‘roman empire’ realy was some
nomad empire’

Beside the hungarian chronicles there are a damn lot of these kind of controversial things. Non-existent jewish literature for at least two centuries, problems with dating of Viking and Saracen raids in that era (not that they didnt happen but when, where and how). The Armenian historian Chorenatzi, who seems like lived in the 5th and 8th century at the same time, I mean there weird things around him.
Even places where we believed there is a proof for sure are failing, like Charlemagne exchanged diplomats with Harun al-Raschid, the Caliph of Baghdad. Well, Arab sources do not mention anything about this relation or even the Caroling Empire. Harun al-Raschid actually only exist as a fairy-tale protagonist in the One Thousand and One Night.
Or there is the fable about the Seven Holy Sleepers, spreading across Islam, Persia andeven Byzantinum and other Christian regions. Ther are many versions of the tale but roughly its about seven christians who were sleeping in a cave through about 200-300 years while hiding from prosecutions.
These kind of facts and sories just flooding from all direction of the borderlands of Charlemagne’s Europe.

But lets see the astronomical evidence. They must be clearly disprove this nonsense. But not. Most calculation, Halley’s Comet etc. cannot help. I read a long paper about these things, I won’t get into detail but to quote Dieter B. Hermann, professor of astronomy “Ultimate evidence against Illig’s hypothesis, based solely on historical solar eclipses, can possibly not be found.”

The most close we can get by these sources is this:
“Actually, discussion has concentrated on the reports of solar and lunar eclipses engraved on Babylonian cuneiform tablets. It should be noted that it was not possible to confirm the dates given on these tablets really independent from astronomical retrocalculations. This means that the risk of logical circles cannot be excluded. [ref. van Gent] However, many of these tablets provide very accurate information from centuries of systematic astronomical observations. This allows to analyse the deviation (ΔT) between observation time and retro calculation. [Stephenson (1997)] The excellent statistical match indicates that the timings given on Babylonian tablets are not affected by the medieval PhT. Unfortunately, for the millennium separating the numerous records from Babylonian and Arab as well as Chinese astronomers, only a handful of records may be considered reliable. When the secular deceleration of the earth’s rotation has been calculated, the data could not approve the expected virtually constant deceleration due to tidal friction. Instead, Stephenson hat to presume an unexplained zero deceleration between the 1st and 6th century AD. When the records were reviewed, assuming a deliberately introduced medieval PhT, the expected constant deceleration was found.”

Damn. Actually it backs the theory. At least, some calendar forgery is still more acceptable – following Occam’s Razor – than that unexplained zero decereration era.

I’m just freaked out :)
The more and more I’m trying to disprove this nonsense theory, the more I just prove it practically.

The comparison you are talking about is exist in a sense.

First I think we can agree that carbon dating, due to its official +- one century accuracy and 60-80% reliability – not to mention that 6 months long tests on the same artifact by the British Museum showed an even wider spread of results – make a 300 years gap easily possible. Then it’s interesting that we haven’t got a single unarguable archeological finding from that area or even a letter of contemporaty writings. Yes I know about the Carolingian Renaissance, but I have to mention that both by technology and art style they are 11th century buildings. So it seems like they invented late Romanesque architecture from out of nowhere then forget it suddenly, then we can observe in a very well detailed way how they invented it again in a logical and long process in the 10-11th centuries. At least as weird as the Phantom Time theory. I have to mention, theres really not a single written word can be dated to this time. a Chronicle from the 14th century stating it is a copy of a lost one from the 8th century isn’t “contemporary”. And if we think about what happened in Europe these years it’s more interesting. I mean there supposed to be four huge empires, Charlemagne’s Empire, Visigoth Kingdom, Avar Khaganate and the Khazar Empire. Archeological evidence about them are not much at all, in many cases about zero. What is interesting, because any empires that size we know about – like Roman Empire, Macedon Empire of Alexander the Great, Persia etc. – left for us so much evidence and so much cultural impact we just can’t even count them.

But about the comparison of contemporary written sources:
I won’t go into Islam. The connection between Arian heresy and Islam is well explained in the book itself.
Finding contemporary – or a bit later – sources about the above mentioned empires isn’t easy at all, because there is none. Funny, but outside Europe and Byzantinum, nobody ever mentioned an existence of a Caroling or even Khazar Empire. No trade, no wars, nothing. But we can say the parts of the world were too separated (what is nonsense because Greeks, Romans, Persians etc had a well detailed picture about distant peoples aswell).
But we can find a place where we can make our comparison: Hungary. There is a debate basically about the origin of Hungarians – as long as I know, every new genetical or archeologcal result just go straight against the official theory – but as I’m not an expert i leave it. Based on the mainstream version, they lived somewhere around the river Don, in Royal Scythia, what was the Khazar Empire back then, in the 7-8th century and moved from there to the Carpathian Basin – what was the Avar Khaganate – in the 9th century. So they were outsiders arriving into Europe just in the middle of the “lost” period. The problem is that in the numerous hungarian chronicles (most of them predating the later chronicles describing Charlemagne in detail), there is not a single word about the Khazar or Avar empires, neither Charlemagne or the Visigoths. Rather they gave a very detailed story with a line of rulers and their deeds what counts 104 years between Atilla and Arpad, missing the exact amount of time what Illig calculated. And they gave explanation of most of the questions raised about events in the “lost” time.
We don’t have to care about China or the likes because it isn’t about lost time, or centuries passing on “stand-by” but just a few national epics and heroes invented. What as I look over the history textbooks of the 20th century from different countries and dates, is more than possible.
You can find a detailed explanation about the different hungarian chronicles in the light of this theory by a hungarian researcher (so somebody who is way more qualified then me in the subject) here (very very interesting imo):
http://www.cakravartin.com/archives/the-trap-of-false-history

And I do not say Illig is right. Actually at the first time I just couldn’t stop laughing on the theory. But I have to say, most critics are bending the theory and discredit things loudly what it never stated actually. So I don’t know what to believe, but looking at the subject, not from a very eurocentric point of view, but including neightbouring cultures, it is make a lot of sense.