Chronology criticism

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Chronological criticism is a collective term for a form of historical revisionism that has remained scientifically meaningless . The term is used both by proponents as a self-designation and taken up by those who oppose these theories.

The criticism of chronology includes various theses, according to which the historical course ( chronology ) reconstructed by historians is flawed. Most of these theses contain a drastic shortening, less often a re-dating or lengthening of entire historical periods.

classification

There are several authors who argue in pseudoscientific books that certain sections of the chronology and historiography are flawed due to errors and deliberate forgery.

A fundamental critique of documents or a comparative analysis of the disaster reports in the mythologies of the peoples usually serve as the basis . Many representatives of the criticism of chronology are also supporters of neocatastrophism , in this context reject the generally accepted scientific views on the history of the earth and the evolution of life and deny the validity of scientific age determinations by dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating . These theses are to be distinguished from the scientific criticism of history , which only questions the dating or existence of individual finds and events.

The focus of the chronological criticism is in particular the dating of the end of the last Ice Age as well as the traditional historiography of ancient Egypt , biblical history, antiquity and the Middle Ages .

Various theories have been developed from this, in particular catastrophism in all its manifestations (e.g. Velikovsky) and sometimes even the belief in visits by aliens. Gernot Geise and Hans-Joachim Zillmer, for example, reject the theory of evolution and claim that dinosaurs lived together with humans on earth. Gernot Geise also believes that these aliens built the Egyptian pyramids, as well as the structures of aliens on the moon and Mars.

theses

Nikolai Alexandrovich Morozov

Morosow (1854-1946) put in his book The Revelation Johannis - An Astronomical-Historical Investigation (1907) on the thesis that the Revelation of John describes the astronomical constellation that on Sunday, September 30, 395 according to the Julian calendar the island of Patmos .

The thesis shows that the Revelation of John or the reign of Domitian (81–96) was dated about three centuries too early. However, the thesis is now considered refuted, since the Revelation of John was mentioned by the church fathers Jerome and Irenaeus even before the time of John Chrysostom .

Wilhelm Kammeier

The elementary school teacher and writer Wilhelm Kammeier (1889–1959) is the originator of the thesis of the “ invented Middle Ages ”, which he developed in the 1920s and published in book form in 1935. His main argument was the allegedly proven late forgery of all medieval documents and manuscripts. Kammeier wrote three other chronology-critical books. In the 1990s, his thesis was taken up by the Germanist Heribert Illig and the non-fiction author Uwe Topper and promoted in the media.

Immanuel Velikovsky

The Russian psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovsky (1895–1979) became known as the founder of neocatastrophism . He also dealt with the history of ancient Egypt and reconstructed it on the assumption that the exodus of the people of Israel coincided with the catastrophe described in the Ipuwer papyrus . As a result, he shortened the passage of time to include the Middle Kingdom . Since all ancient chronologies are based on the Egyptian, the shortening leads to the deletion of around 550 years from the conventional chronology. He also followed the approach that “ dark centuries ” were a mistake in historiography and should be viewed as fiction. His work is summarized in the series Age in Chaos (1952).

Heribert Illig - Gunnar Heinsohn - Hans-Ulrich Niemitz

Heribert Illig (* 1945) postulates in his work, first published in 1994, that the time between the 7th and 10th centuries AD was inserted into the chronology by forgeries by Ottonian historians and that Charlemagne never existed. In addition, Illig also worked with the sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn (* 1943) on the Egyptian chronology , whereby, in contrast to Velikovsky, they did not rely solely on biblical sources. Heinsohn agreed with Illig's phantom time thesis and tried to check it against the Carolus and Pippin coins. He came to the conclusion that all Carolus coins come from Charles the Simple and that the Carolingian coin reform goes back to Pippin the Elder . Heinsohn also believes he can prove that the Sumerians never existed, and that the history of Mesopotamia and Egypt was stretched by 2000 years to support the biblical story. The technical historian Hans-Ulrich Niemitz (1946-2010), like Illig, supported the theory of an invented period of time in the early Middle Ages (the term "phantom years" comes from him) and in his book questioned the reliability of radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology as well as all other scientific dating methods .

Anatoly Fomenko

The mathematician Anatoli Fomenko (* 1945) believes that, through statistical analysis of historical source material from antiquity and the Middle Ages, he can prove that the same stories were composed in different forms in different epochs and thus repeated, since numerous ruling dynasties and events (e . Wars) should show conspicuous and statistically significant parallels in other epochs. So be u. a. the Almagest of Claudius Ptolemy did not emerge until around the year 1000 and thus the time of Jesus only about 1000 years ago. From this he developed his New Chronology . Like the majority of modern chronology critics, Fomenko questioned the objective methods of dating age, such as B. Dendrochronology and Radiocarbon Dating . Fomenko found a following among others with the Russian world chess champion and politician Garry Kasparov . In his attempts at reconstruction, Uwe Topper also referred to Fomenko's criticism and his method of statistical text analysis.

Horst Friedrich

In his book Jahrhundert-Errtum Eiszeit from 1997, the philosopher of science Horst Friedrich doubts the common views about the ice ages . He claims that there have never been glaciers hundreds of kilometers in length and that glaciers could not possibly have transported boulders over such long distances because they lacked the necessary “thrust”. Friedrich's theses are considered untenable by natural scientists and have all been refuted.

Uwe Topper

Uwe Topper (* 1940) is one of the most journalistic and active chronology critics in the German-speaking world and has written several books on this subject. Since 1998 he has expanded Heribert Illig's thesis and assumes that Mohammed lived about 297 years earlier, and thus the emergence of Islam (from 622) coincides with the condemnation of Arius at the Council of Nicaea (325). Later, Topper's publications tended towards Fomenko's thousand-year theory. Like him, he claims that all documents of non-European historiography, for example from India and China, are modern forgeries. Another controversial thesis of Toppers is that the Hurrites (whom he called Horra) played a central role in the Copper Age . Like other chronology critics, Topper doubts the scientifically shaped image of geological history and Darwin's theory of evolution .

Hans-Joachim Zillmer

The graduate engineer Hans-Joachim Zillmer (* 1950) tries, like Fomenko and Topper, to prove that antiquity only began around 1000 years ago and was projected far into the past through falsified historiography and multiplied by means of similar repetitions. Zillmer comes to the conclusion that the Roman Empire never existed in Rome, but that the real Romans were on the one hand Etruscans who founded Rome, and on the other hand represented ancient Greeks who ruled south of Etruria in southern Italy and Sicily ( Magna Graecia ). Zillmer suspects a major natural disaster (“ Little Ice Age ”) in the 6th century as the reason for the break in history . Zillmer shares Illig's view that three centuries (7th – 9th centuries) should be deleted from history. He also denies the existence of the Ice Age ; instead it assumes a much shorter “snow time”. In reviews of his books, Zillmer's theses were rejected as scientifically untenable.

Christoph Pfister

The historian Christoph Pfister (* 1945) is one of the most far-reaching advocates of the criticism of chronology. According to Pfister, both the earth's history and the cultural history must be radically shortened. He denies the reliability of any scientific age dating. Geographically he is a supporter of neocatastrophism. In his book, Pfister believes that the entire history of mankind from the earliest advanced civilizations can be shortened to less than 1000 years: he considers the ancient cultures of the Celts, Greeks and Romans to be inventions from the Renaissance. In his opinion, the Pantheon in Rome dates from the 16th century, which Pfister regards as the actual Middle Ages. Hebrew is a religious artificial language, which was also only invented in the 16th century, just like the Bible and all other ancient writings. The entire story before the year 1600 was a forgery and invention of the early modern scholars Joseph Justus Scaliger and Denis Pétau .

criticism

So far there are no scientifically recognized hypotheses that would justify a fundamental criticism of the chronology. That is why the theses of the chronology critics are unanimously rejected in specialist science. The currently best-known example in German-speaking countries, the theory of the invented Middle Ages due to incorrect calendar calculations and assumed forgery by monks and historians, is viewed by experts as refuted.

The historian Paul Kirn commented on Wilhelm Kammeier's theses that "that alleged counterfeiters' association" must have had tremendous skill in forging:

“Let's assume for a moment that it really is. The works of such an important historian from the early days of Friedrich Barbarossa as Bishop Otto von Freising would later be a forgery. What would that say? This would mean that the forgers took the trouble to produce 45 manuscripts and to furnish them externally in such a way that they seem to belong to completely different writing schools and different centuries [...] Finally, one more thing needs to be remembered: To the inventory of our historical sources new pieces added every day. Construction work exposes the remains of buildings hidden in the ground. An old book cover bursts, one finds parchment leaves written on. They confirm the picture of history that is obtained from other sources. Are we to assume that those building remains and these parchment notes were hidden centuries ago by malicious forgers [...]? "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johannes Rosenberg (2004): The Chronology Criticism, the child poured out with the bath water! - ZeitGeist issue 1/2004
  2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of October 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Hans-Joachim Zillmer: “The evolution lie. The Neanderthals and other forgeries in human history ”, Munich 2005; Hans-Joachim Zillmer: “Darwin's mistake. Antediluvian finds prove: dinosaurs and humans lived together ”, Munich 2006
  4. ↑ Gernot L. Geise: "The origin of humans: The trail leads to Mars", Peiting 2002; Gernot L. Geise: “Planet Mars full of riddles and contradictions”, Peiting 2002; Gernot L. Geise: "Our Martian heritage: We extraterrestrials", Peiting 2004
  5. ^ Irenaeus: Adversus haereses. V 30.3 ( English , German ).
  6. ↑ Uwe Topper: Kammeier and the falsification of the Middle Ages , review of the book The falsification of German history (Leipzig 1935 / Husum 1979) by Wilhelm Kammeier, undated
  7. ^ Wilhelm Kammeier: The falsification of German history . Adolf Klein Verlag, Leipzig 1935.
  8. ^ Wilhelm Kammeier: New evidence for the falsification of German history . Adolf Klein Verlag, Leipzig 1936;
    Wilhelm Kammeier: The truth about the history of the late Middle Ages . 1936;
    Wilhelm Kammeier: The falsification of the history of early Christianity . Publishing house for holistic research, Wobbenbühl 1982 (posthumously), ISBN 3-922314-03-1 .
  9. ↑ Heribert Illig: Did Charlemagne ever live? . Ullstein, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-548-36429-2 (first edition 1994).
  10. ↑ Gunnar Heinsohn: The Sumerians did not exist . Mantis, Graefelfing 1988.
  11. ↑ Christian Blöss and H.-U. Niemitz: C14 crash. The end of the illusion of being able to date with radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology. Second edition, Verlag IT&W, Berlin 2000 ( online as a PDF file).
  12. ↑ Anatoly T. Fomenko: Empirico-Statistical Analysis of Narrative Material and its Applications to Historical Dating . Dordrecht 1994, ISBN 0-7923-2604-0 .
  13. ↑ Garry Kasparov: Mathematics of the Past ( Memento from November 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ http://webspace.webring.com/people/fg/gunnar_ries/quart.html
  15. ↑ Uwe Topper: Horra - the first Europeans . Grabert, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-87847-202-1 .
  16. ↑ Uwe Topper: The emergence of the metal age from a new perspective , to the book Horra by Uwe Topper, Berlin 2003.
  17. ↑ Evolution, Geology and Human History beyond Darwinism and Creationism , at zillmer.com .
  18. ↑ Hans-Joachim Zillmer: Columbus came last. When Greenland was Green: How Celts and Vikings Populated America . Langen Müller, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7844-2952-1 .
  19. ↑ Klaus Richter: Review of Hans-Joachim Zillmer: Columbus came last , under Buchkritik.at , March 7, 2005.
  20. ^ Günter Schweigert: Book review of Hans-Joachim Zillmer (2005) The evolution lie. October 2005, accessed February 8, 2020 .
  21. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from September 5, 2012 on WebCite )
  22. ↑ Christoph Pfister: The matrix of ancient history. Analysis of a religious historical invention . Second revised edition. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2006.
  23. ^ Paul Kirn: Introduction to History , Berlin 1968, pp. 18/19.