The Phantom time hypothesis is a conspiracy theory developed by Heribert Illig (born 1947 in Vohenstrauß, Germany) in 1991. It proposes that there has been a systematic effort to make it appear that periods of history, specifically that of Europe during the 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]
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The basis of Illig's hypothesis is 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.
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.
There are several dating methods which contradict the theory. Observations in ancient astronomy agree with current observations with no 'phantom time' added; for example the end of the Greco-Persian Wars was marked by two solar eclipses within a year and a half; the only possible dates are 2 October 480 BCE and 14 February 478 BCE.[2] Dating methods such as dendrochronology show that the phantom time hypothesis is incorrect, as do records of sightings of Halley's Comet. [3]
The theory also stems from a claim of Illig's regarding 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.[4]
In fact, the Gregorian reform was never intended to bring the calendar in line with the Julian calendar as it had existed in AD 1, 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. The Gregorian reform was never intended or purported to restore the relationship between calendar date and astronomical equinox to what it had been at the time of the institution of the Julian calendar in 45 BC, 369 years before the council of Nicaea, when the astronomical vernal equinox took place around March 23. Illig's "three missing centuries" thus correspond to the period between the fixing of Anno Domini reckoning to begin at AD 1 and the fixing of the Easter Date at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.
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