Every feel like you lost 300 years somewhere? Image © by Michael Paukner. Image Source: Cargo Collective.
I09 recently reported on Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz's Phantom Time Hypothesis, defined on Brain Pickings as a "bizarre historical conspiracy theory positing that the Roman calendar was infiltrated with 297 years which never actually occurred and the Middle Ages never took place, so this isn’t the year 2010 but, rather, 1713." According to Cargo Collective:
When Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz introduces his paper on the “phantom time hypothesis”, he kindly asks his readers to be patient, benevolent, and open to radically new ideas, because his claims are highly unconventional. This is because his paper is suggesting three difficult-to-believe propositions: 1) Hundreds of years ago, our calendar was polluted with 297 years which never occurred; 2) this is not the year 2010, but rather 1713; and 3) The purveyors of this hypothesis are not crackpots.
The Phantom Time Hypothesis suggests that the early Middle Ages (614-911 A.D.) never happened, but were added to the calendar long ago either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents, or by deliberate falsification by calendar conspirators. This would mean that all artifacts ascribed to those three centuries belong to other periods, and that all events thought to have occurred during that same period occurred at other times, or are outright fabrications.
Brain Pickings recently ran a profile on the Austrian artist Michael Paukner, who illustrated Niemitz's notion, shown above. Paukner has also visualized other mysteries, like the hundred monkeys theory, Kundalini, Megatron's Cube, Stonehenge rebuilt, and a diagram of the capital city of Atlantis. You can see his work here.
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I know it's an overused and trite word to pull out here, but still apropos to say, "fascinating".
ReplyDeleteWell that is certainly a new one...
ReplyDeleteI love just how humble people who make these claims are, "a world (or history) changing event occurred and only I was smart enough to uncover the truth!"
Harlan Ellison played with people's susceptibility to these "magic calendar" theories with a story called "The Paladin Of The Last Hour". The premise is that the transition from Julian to Gregorian calendars left one hour unaccounted for, and so the Pope 'borrowed' the final hour preceding apocalypse and stored it in a pocket watch. The watch was entrusted to a succession of men pure and willful enough to resist the temptation to wind the watch-- setting it in motion would put us in that final hour, meaning the dead would rise and enable the user to meet deceased loved ones. I think there was a 1980's episode of "The Twilight Zone" that adapted it.
ReplyDelete@Thomas - thanks for your comment. More than anything, it's fascinating that someone could be convinced that an entire historical period is a fabrication. I really wonder how his theory could match up with anything logical. Who would profit from creating a whole fictional medieval era? Perhaps this is an encrypted critique of the Roman Catholic church.
ReplyDelete@Cyc, yes one of the hallmarks of the conspiracy theorist is the arrogance of the little man. I think espousing conspiracies is a way of asserting that one is not so small and powerless as one appears to be, because one knows 'the real truth.' Ironically, it's an inverted credo, because it works by stating that overtly one /is/ small and powerless against nameless forces that are up to the most improbable things.
ReplyDelete@PBLFSDA Thanks, as always, for your wonderful comments. I think this remark definitely warrants a post in and of itself, and I will link back to your comment in the process. Amazing - thanks again.
ReplyDelete