Dating and Chronology

[Grosseteste]

That's bullshit.

I have tried to be polite.

 

[Deleted member 37]

You are very polite, but also very ripetitive. It seems you don't want to address the main issue. We are talking about chronology, so mentioning some historian is useless.

Florin Diacu already told you what to do:
A.FOMENKO. Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating (pages 390 - 401 and 401 - 405)

 

[dreamtime]

I have tried to be polite.

Well, at lest there's an academic context behind the word bullshit, thanks to Harry Frankfurt:

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.​

 

[Deleted member 37]

So in your own words, since in the context of this forum the revisionist position is the accepted one, it is up to you to challenge it.

In the context of academia the "challenger" is simply ignored, as Florin Diacu has calmly told to historians: "Unfortunately, this conclusion generated no reaction from historians. Nosovski’s mathematical reasoning seems plausible, but it would be interesting to know if the historical aspects he invokes hold water."
https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201304/201304-full-issue.pdf

 

[dreamtime]

Dr. Gunnar Heinsohn's best work, one of top archaeologists in the world, demonstrating that the assumed historical period 2,100 - 600 BC never existed:

THE RESTORATION OF ANCIENT HISTORY

Great link.

I especially liked this on the Sumerians:

Though the ancient Greeks freely admitted that their science teachers were Chaldaeans (from Southern Mesopotamia/Babylonia), they never gave any hint that they trailed their inspirers by one and-a-half millennia. They rather gave the impression that Chaldaean knowledge was obtainable by traveling Greek students. Today, we are taught that there were no Chaldaean teachers to speak of. This supposedly most learned nation of mankind, did not leave us bricks or potsherds, not to mention written treatises. Yet, modern scholars also teach us that there is one grain of truth in the Greek tradition. The teachers of humanity did indeed derive from Southern Mesopotamia/Babylonia. However-though they lived in the very territory of the Chaldaeans, where the Chaldaeans are missing-they were not Chaldaeans but Sumerians, and the Greeks had never heard of them: When their poleis (city-states) began culturally to blossom in the early -6th century, the wise men of Sumeria had already met their fate 1,500 years earlier. Nevertheless, researchers before 1868-when Jules Oppert created the term Sumerian-had called proto-Chaldaean that today is called Sumerian. Up to the end of the 19th century, art historians labeled as Chaldaean artifacts which today are called Sumerian artifacts. At the turn of the century, major European museums underwent a relabeling procedure from Chaldaean to Sumerian on their exhibition pieces from Southern Mesopotamia.​

​

As the writer tried to prove, the sensationally unexpected Sumerians received a hidden fundamentalist Abrahamic date, whereas the Chaldaeans received a Classical Greek date. If we leave unscholarly dating systems aside, and resort to comparative stratigraphy, we will immediately recognize the contemporaneity of the early Greek city-states and the so-called Neo- Sumerians, who thereby are touted as the painfully-missing Chaldaeans. "Neo-Sumerian" Chaldaeans and early -6th century poleis alike, are found merely two strata-groups below Hellenism. This still leaves a head start for Chaldean scholarship. Yet, it is not measured by millennia or centuries, but by decades at most.​

​

Heinsohn has made a very important contribution to the revisionist debate by focussing attention on the evidence of stratigraphy outside Egypt. Dayton had uncovered many examples in museums around the world where near identical ancient artefacts of very similar styles and manufacturing techniques were given dates which varied sometimes by as much as 1000-1500 years. Heinsohn, from an extensive study of archaeological reports from most of the better known sites across Asia Minor, showed how these anachronisms had arisen. At site after site, archaeologists had artificially increased the age of the lower strata by inserting, without supporting evidence, 'occupation gaps' of many centuries. They did this in order to meet the expectations of excessive antiquity among historians, who had used Biblically derived dates for Abraham (c. 2100), initially seen as broadly contemporary with the great Assyrian king Hammurabi. Using this elongated time frame, great empires of the past such as the Sumerians, Akkadians and Old Babylonians were invented by late 19th C and early 20th C scholars to fill the historical voids. The ancient Greek and Roman historians, not surprisingly, knew nothing of these ancient peoples. Sumerian, said Heinsohn, 'is the language of the well known Kassite/Chaldeans, whose literacy deserves its fame'.​

 

[Daniel]

The issue is to realise that the dating system BC/AD was not used since Year 1.
Therd had to have been a time and a place when people devised, and then implemented, the chronological framework.
The questions are:
1) When did this occur?
2) Who were the people who devised the chronology?
3) What were their beliefs?
4) What methods did they use to create the chronology?
5) How were they able to make their chronology pretty much universally accepted?

Once you know and understood these five points, the entirety of "History" starts looking very different.

 

[Safranek]

Great link.

I especially liked this on the Sumerians:

Though the ancient Greeks freely admitted that their science teachers were Chaldaeans (from Southern Mesopotamia/Babylonia), they never gave any hint that they trailed their inspirers by one and-a-half millennia. They rather gave the impression that Chaldaean knowledge was obtainable by traveling Greek students. Today, we are taught that there were no Chaldaean teachers to speak of. This supposedly most learned nation of mankind, did not leave us bricks or potsherds, not to mention written treatises. Yet, modern scholars also teach us that there is one grain of truth in the Greek tradition. The teachers of humanity did indeed derive from Southern Mesopotamia/Babylonia. However-though they lived in the very territory of the Chaldaeans, where the Chaldaeans are missing-they were not Chaldaeans but Sumerians, and the Greeks had never heard of them: When their poleis (city-states) began culturally to blossom in the early -6th century, the wise men of Sumeria had already met their fate 1,500 years earlier. Nevertheless, researchers before 1868-when Jules Oppert created the term Sumerian-had called proto-Chaldaean that today is called Sumerian. Up to the end of the 19th century, art historians labeled as Chaldaean artifacts which today are called Sumerian artifacts. At the turn of the century, major European museums underwent a relabeling procedure from Chaldaean to Sumerian on their exhibition pieces from Southern Mesopotamia.​

​

As the writer tried to prove, the sensationally unexpected Sumerians received a hidden fundamentalist Abrahamic date, whereas the Chaldaeans received a Classical Greek date. If we leave unscholarly dating systems aside, and resort to comparative stratigraphy, we will immediately recognize the contemporaneity of the early Greek city-states and the so-called Neo- Sumerians, who thereby are touted as the painfully-missing Chaldaeans. "Neo-Sumerian" Chaldaeans and early -6th century poleis alike, are found merely two strata-groups below Hellenism. This still leaves a head start for Chaldean scholarship. Yet, it is not measured by millennia or centuries, but by decades at most.​

​

Heinsohn has made a very important contribution to the revisionist debate by focussing attention on the evidence of stratigraphy outside Egypt. Dayton had uncovered many examples in museums around the world where near identical ancient artefacts of very similar styles and manufacturing techniques were given dates which varied sometimes by as much as 1000-1500 years. Heinsohn, from an extensive study of archaeological reports from most of the better known sites across Asia Minor, showed how these anachronisms had arisen. At site after site, archaeologists had artificially increased the age of the lower strata by inserting, without supporting evidence, 'occupation gaps' of many centuries. They did this in order to meet the expectations of excessive antiquity among historians, who had used Biblically derived dates for Abraham (c. 2100), initially seen as broadly contemporary with the great Assyrian king Hammurabi. Using this elongated time frame, great empires of the past such as the Sumerians, Akkadians and Old Babylonians were invented by late 19th C and early 20th C scholars to fill the historical voids. The ancient Greek and Roman historians, not surprisingly, knew nothing of these ancient peoples. Sumerian, said Heinsohn, 'is the language of the well known Kassite/Chaldeans, whose literacy deserves its fame'.​

Great link, indeed.

One of my favorite excerpts:

The biblical triplication of Herodotus' time span could only be achieved on paper. What one was able to do with the pen could not be repeated with the spade. Even if we use a chronology of 3,000 or 1,000 pre- Christian years of high civilization, this will not change the number and thickness of strata actually in the ground. They remain unalterably the same. Therefore, biblical chronology, applied to Herodotus' four Ancient Near Eastern periods, between the Chalcolithicum and Hellenism, created huge gaps of up to 1,500 or more years at individual sites. These notorious lacunae were eventually filled by historians, who multiplied actual time spans by three. They performed this miracle by heaping three stratagroups from different areas, but from contemporary periods, on top of each other on the pages of the chronology books. Of course, scholarly justifications were needed. These justifications arose from the use of three different dating schemes, which made contemporary strata of different areas look like successive periods, whose centers of power were located in different areas. The three schemes used were

(i) fundamentalist dates of Assyriology,
(ii) pseudo-astronomical Sothic dates of Egyptology, and
(iii) dates of Greek historiography.

The indisputable fact is that strata graphical analysis can NOT be altered, whereas documents can be forged, falsified and not to mention, created out of thin air. Therefore, the onus is on current academics to reconcile their version of 'history' and chronology with the unchangeable evidence of archeology.

@Grosseteste this is the key point made in this document. Your presence here is important in that the more academics not only realize but act upon this inconsistency in their 'knowledge' of the past, the quicker mainstream academia can be convinced to investigate these inconsistencies. I mean the more academics that start to question this and search for answers, the less likely those that do research in this direction will be ostracized by their colleagues as it stands at present.

The paper quoted by Sandokhan and dreamtime above is a worthy read.

 

[sandokhan]

In the period 2003-2012, Charles Ginenthal published one of the best works on ancient history, the four volume set Pillars Of The Past.

A step by step demonstration, using hundreds of bibliographical references, and most unique historical and scientific insights, that the official version of modern history must start around 1,500 BC, and not some thousands of years earlier.

While validating some of I. Velikovsky's and G. Heinsohn's versions of the chronology of history, C. Ginenthal also brought forth some very interesting arguments against A. Fomenko's new chronology of history.

As we shall see in a moment, my version of the new radical chronology of history (all of history was falsified prior to 1,800 AD) comes to the rescue for A. Fomenko's new chronology of history.


C. Ginenthal offers four intriguing arguments against Fomenko's version of history: the El-Lahun papyri Sothic date for the late 12th Dynasty, a chronological key to dating Egyptian chronology (Dr. Lynn Rose’s analysis of the El-Lahun papyri which correlated the heliacal rising of the star Sirius with 34, out of 36 lunar festival data points for the documented material of the pharaohs in question, 34 were direct hits, now 37 lunar festival dates; see volume I of the Pillars Of The Past, pg. 73-107), the list of eclipses from the Annals of Ulster (contains from the years 496-884 AD, as many as 18 records of eclipses and comets which agree exactly even to the day and hour with the calculations of modern astronomers, and which were validated even by Dr. Robert Newton, one of the sets of eclipses in the period 500 - 1,100 AD which Dr. Newton believed to be correct, but which were seen to be part of a huge set of falsified data for the historical eclipses within that same period, see my previous message on the Moon Elongation), the VAT 4956 data ( a cuneiform document located in the Near Eastern department of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, it records the positions of the five planets visible to the naked eye as well as the Moon over a period of about one year, during the 37th regnal year of Nebuchadnezzar II and can be precisely retrocalculated to the year between 568 and the first month, Nisan, of 567 BC), and the 136 BC eclipse reference ( the most accurate and therefore reliable eclipse ever retrocalculated, from the clay tablets of the astronomical diaries of Babylon).


Given the fact that Dr. Anatoly Fomenko believes that the historical records starting with 1,500 AD are reliable/true, it becomes very difficult to defend the new chronology of history given the above arguments presented by Charles Ginenthal.

ONLY by using the NEW RADICAL CHRONOLOGY OF HISTORY can the arguments published by C. Ginenthal be debunked/refuted (volume four of the Pillars Of The Past, pg. 523-548).


The Babylonian cuneiform tablets were created over a period lasting several decades (1,780 - 1,850 AD) by the same group of people who also prepared Tutankhamon's tomb during the 19th century (which contains stunning objects of art:

Howard Carter knew exactly where to dig back in 1922, as Tutankhamun's tomb had been prepared in a haste just a few decades earlier.

In fact, modern researchers were stunned when they investigated the tomb:

Ultimate Tutankhamun to air on National Geographic this July :: Media Update

Visiting Tutankhamun’s tomb, Naunton and his team take in the ancient pharaoh’s haphazard burial site. With little decoration, modest size and absence of esoteric text, the tomb hardly feels fit for a king. Even more unusual, King Tutankhamun’s famous death mask seems to have been hastily fashioned from a woman’s headdress.

See also: The Tutankhamun Deception


Using the new mathematical tools available at the start of the 19th century, they were able to retrocalculate, using the conventional chronology of history, various solar/lunar eclipses, and thus include them in the falsified Babylonian cuneiform set of tablets.

https://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/babylon/babybibl.htm
The Recovery of Babylonian Astronomy
Astronomers Are Using Ancient Eclipse Records to Solve a Cosmic Mystery
Cuneiform


The El-Lahun papyri: again, using the new mathematical tools available, the retrocalculations were done very precisely.

http://hekint.org/the-el-lahun-gynecological-papyrus/


The Annals of Ulster/Bodleian Library were created at the end of the 18th century (the Gauss Easter formula applied to the Gregorian calendar reform tells us that the London Royal Society/Leonhard Euler/I. Newton claims regarding the number of days which were to be calculated in this context are totally wrong).


C. Pfister's analysis of the correct dating for the St. Gallen library:

Die angeblich

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.dillum.ch/html/sankt_gallen_stiftsbibliothek_kritik.htm&edit-text=

 

[Grosseteste]

@Grosseteste this is the key point made in this document. Your presence here is important in that the more academics not only realize but act upon this inconsistency in their 'knowledge' of the past, the quicker mainstream academia can be convinced to investigate these inconsistencies. I mean the more academics that start to question this and search for answers, the less likely those that do research in this direction will be ostracized by their colleagues as it stands at present.

Sure, but some of the responses above verge on the abusive ("bullshit") and this forum offers no encouragement to those of my profession who are interested in some of the contradictions that seem to result from different approaches to dating.

 

[dreamtime]

Sure, but some of the responses above verge on the abusive ("bullshit") and this forum offers no encouragement to those of my profession who are interested in some of the contradictions that seem to result from different approaches to dating.

I apologize. It just comes across as arrogant to go here and tell us we have to explain everything in detail, since there is already so much research available in the forum which you could look at if you were really interested.

 

[Safranek]

Sure, but some of the responses above verge on the abusive ("bullshit") and this forum offers no encouragement to those of my profession who are interested in some of the contradictions that seem to result from different approaches to dating.

Point taken, but consider this. We all have moments when we are prone to respond in a way less then optimal given our character and disposition, I'm sure this applies to everyone at times.

Also consider that dreamtime is a founding member of this forum and has invested a considerable amount of time and resources (along with some others) to make this forum possible in its present form. This includes the constant moderation to try and keep things, civil, congruent, respectful and informative while pursuing his interests of the many subjects being discussed. If you read not only his threads and replies but his moderation posts, you will come to the conclusion that few would be able to do a better job.

Obviously not everything herein is scientific as most members are not scientists by academic qualification, but many intelligent curious researchers trying to uncover our past and lately, out of necessity, our present.

I think it has become evident even to academics, that the amount of peer-pressure to tow the line regarding the status-quo in ALL our fields of science is scientifically unreasonable and demands an explanation from its enforcers, as unfortunately economics is an integral part of all scientific research and especially publication.

So let's not get caught up on intermittent negatively interpreted comments, especially where an apology has been offered and should be accepted to move on to the important things, the center of which is the truth.

 

[Grosseteste]

Point taken, but consider this.

OK many thanks for replying in such a positive way.

Separately, to demonstrate good faith, I propose to include a date calculator in my project. I want an algorithm to convert any date in any calendar to Julian date. There is some great material by Bill Jefferys here Julian Day Calculations (Gregorian Calendar) which I am working on. Also I will put together some code for Gauss's algorithm, which I will check against Stellarium (a widely available astronomical calculator). Note that Stellarium is not consistent with documented dates before 1582 so all of this needs to be checked carefully.

Desired outcome: enter any time and date from any chronicle where some astronomical event is recorded, and check against the software to see if such an event really did occur.

For example, Bede writes "In the year 538, there happened an eclipse of the sun, on the 16th of February, from the first to the third hour." Enter that date into the algorithm to get (i) the Julian datetime, then further enter that datetime into the astronomical calculator to see what happens.

Note that Jennifer Moreton ("Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664", Isis Vol. 89, No. 1, Mar 1998, pp. 50-65) has already performed a similar exercise for the eclipse that Bede reports in his History.

[EDIT] Philipp Nothaft, whose work I mentioned in an earlier post, has a page here Dr Philipp Nothaft | All Souls College : "Most of my research revolves around the history of astronomy, chronology, and time-reckoning in medieval and early modern Europe, with a heavy focus on unpublished sources in medieval Latin manuscripts," so it looks as though some of my proposed project work has already been done.

[EDIT] This book of his also looks interesting:

The Julian Calendar and the Problem of the Equinoxes in the Early Middle Ages​

C. Philipp E. Nothaft​

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198799559.003.0002

This chapter familiarizes readers with the ancient back-story of the Julian calendar and describes how one of the central problems inherent in this calendar—the drift of the equinoxes and solstices caused by an overestimation of the length of the tropical year—manifested itself in medieval literature until the end of the eleventh century. It also explores how the development of the computus genre in seventh-century Ireland was instrumental in preserving knowledge of the Western calendar’s Roman-pagan roots. The final two sections show how the existence of diverging traditions for the dates of the equinoxes and solstices in the Julian calendar created an important context for the practice of solar astronomy in early medieval Europe, which included the use of observational methods.

[EDIT]
And I found a wonderful program by Raymond Mercier. Screenshot below. Converts any date to any date. Costs £30, I am using the demo for now. I checked the Sundays given in Bede Historia and it already turns out there is a 3 year difference, so either Bede is wrong or Mercier is wrong. I will run a full consistency check later.

 

[Deleted member 37]

OK many thanks for replying in such a positive way.

Separately, to demonstrate good faith, I propose to include a date calculator in my project. I want an algorithm to convert any date in any calendar to Julian date. There is some great material by Bill Jefferys here Julian Day Calculations (Gregorian Calendar) which I am working on. Also I will put together some code for Gauss's algorithm, which I will check against Stellarium (a widely available astronomical calculator). Note that Stellarium is not consistent with documented dates before 1582 so all of this needs to be checked carefully.

Desired outcome: enter any time and date from any chronicle where some astronomical event is recorded, and check against the software to see if such an event really did occur.

For example, Bede writes "In the year 538, there happened an eclipse of the sun, on the 16th of February, from the first to the third hour." Enter that date into the algorithm to get (i) the Julian datetime, then further enter that datetime into the astronomical calculator to see what happens.

Note that Jennifer Moreton ("Doubts about the Calendar: Bede and the Eclipse of 664", Isis Vol. 89, No. 1, Mar 1998, pp. 50-65) has already performed a similar exercise for the eclipse that Bede reports in his History.

[EDIT] Philipp Nothaft, whose work I mentioned in an earlier post, has a page here Dr Philipp Nothaft | All Souls College : "Most of my research revolves around the history of astronomy, chronology, and time-reckoning in medieval and early modern Europe, with a heavy focus on unpublished sources in medieval Latin manuscripts," so it looks as though some of my proposed project work has already been done.

[EDIT] This book of his also looks interesting:


[EDIT]
And I found a wonderful program by Raymond Mercier. Screenshot below. Converts any date to any date. Costs £30, I am using the demo for now. I checked the Sundays given in Bede Historia and it already turns out there is a 3 year difference, so either Bede is wrong or Mercier is wrong. I will run a full consistency check later.

View attachment 10613​

I think you are not understanding the issue at hand. This is not a problem of conversion of dates inside relative dating systems. The problem is about absolute dates. When the Council of Nicaea could not happen in 325 AD, all the calculations based on the assumption that modern chronology is right go immediately in the trash can.

I insist that you or whatever historian give, as Florin Diacu suggests, a proper scientific response to the research by Fomenko/Nosovsky. In particular Nosovsky's paper alone, that about the Council of Nicaea, is a good starting point. It is a mere 15 pages and Diacu was able to understand it, so the language barrier is not a thing.

EDIT: language barrier due to translation

 

[Jd755]

If academics directly address any issue outside of the mainstream then their career and all that rides on it is over.

 

[Grosseteste]

I insist that you or whatever historian give, as Florin Diacu suggests, a proper scientific response to the research by Fomenko/Nosovsky. In particular Nosovsky's paper alone, that about the Council of Nicaea, is a good starting point. It is a mere 15 pages and Diacu was able to understand it, so the language barrier is not a thing.

That is precisely what I am working towards. Why do you think I am downloading chronological software such as Mercier's? It's a long and arduous task to check this stuff.

[EDIT] For example, the Mercier program allows me to check, for Gregorian or any other date, whether a solar eclipse occurred on that date. I am still getting the hang of it.

 

[Deleted member 37]

That is precisely what I am working towards. Why do you think I am downloading chronological software such as Mercier's? It's a long and arduous task to check this stuff.

[EDIT] For example, the Mercier program allows me to check, for Gregorian or any other date, whether a solar eclipse occurred on that date. I am still getting the hang of it.

Oh my God. At this point I don't know how to explain to you what you are not understanding. The problem is the WRONG calculation of eclipses done by Kepler in the 17th century... 17th century!!! Florin Diacu (Florin Diacu - Wikipedia), a mathematician with expertise in these sector, has already confirmed that the calculations made by Nosovsky ARE CORRECT! And he urges the historians to go and take a look at his paper, something you obviously don't want to do.

If historians want to be mathematicians then it is obvious that someone else is going to write history in your stead.

Here the paper to read. A.FOMENKO. Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating (pages 390 - 401 and 401 - 405)

 

[sandokhan]

Easter Issue, Dr. G. Nosovsky

Easter Issue

 

[Grosseteste]

Oh my God. At this point I don't know how to explain to you what you are not understanding. The problem is the WRONG calculation of eclipses done by Kepler in the 17th century... 17th century!!!

Well let's take the first step. Mercier (who is not Kepler) has published software available here Calendar conversion program Kairos; font and keyboard utilities which allows to me to select any point in time in the past, using any chosen dating system. Let's say, to avoid any disagreement, the Julian Day Number Julian day - Wikipedia. He then uses astronomical software to determine the position of the sun and moon on that chosen date. That software will use Gauss's algorithm or something like it.

So for example Bede writes "Anno DCCLIII. anno regni Eadbercti quinto, [quinto] Idus Ianuarias eclipsis solis facta est." I.e. in 753on the 9th of January, there was an eclipse of the sun.

Using Mercier's software I can check this, and the software indeed confirms that there was an eclipse on that day.

 

[Deleted member 37]

Well let's take the first step. Mercier (who is not Kepler) has published software available here Calendar conversion program Kairos; font and keyboard utilities which allows to me to select any point in time in the past, using any chosen dating system. Let's say, to avoid any disagreement, the Julian Day Number Julian day - Wikipedia. He then uses astronomical software to determine the position of the sun and moon on that chosen date. That software will use Gauss's algorithm or something like it.

So for example Bede writes "Anno DCCLIII. anno regni Eadbercti quinto, [quinto] Idus Ianuarias eclipsis solis facta est." I.e. in 753on the 9th of January, there was an eclipse of the sun.

Using Mercier's software I can check this, and the software indeed confirms that there was an eclipse on that day.

View attachment 10614​

How many solar eclipses do happen in a year? How many times that eclipse can be repeated? Is that description enough to say it was happening that year?

I repeat myself another time. Florin Diacu has already told you to take a look at Nosovsky's paper. If everything is right, why a mathematician of international fame (not a historian) should say that to you?

I think you don't want to answer the question.

 

[Daniel]

People are raised to believe that the entire chronological framework was created using scientific methods. They have no more reason to question it than they have reason to question how arithmetic works.

However, when someone actually looks into the way Chronology was really put together...