When Europe started carving up the world the acolytes of empire started carving up history to support their beliefs and interests.
By 1850 the acolytes of empire had diced and sliced the Annals of China to create a great and glorious history for Comet Halley all the way back to 11 years before the Christian era.
The valuable details existing in the annals of China, and but recently known in Europe, enable us to trace this famous comet with a high degree of probability to the year 11 before the Christian era, – a most important circumstance, not only as regards the history of this particular comet, but as bearing on the constitution of these bodies in general.
On the Past History of the Comet of Halley – J R Hind
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society – Vol 10 – Issue 3 – 9 Jan 1850
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/10/3/51/2603551
By 1986 the Annals of China [with a little help from the Annals of Babylonia] had provided Comet Halley with a magnificent pedigree stretching all the way back to 240 BC.
Since 240 B.C., Chinese observers have documented a nearly unbroken record of scientifically useful observation of Comet Halley.
After the probable 240 B.C. apparition, only the 164 B.C. return went unrecorded by the Chinese, and with the exception of occasional Korean and Japanese sightings, useful Comet Halley observations made outside China were virtually non-existent for over a millennium thereafter.
The History of Comet Halley – D K Yeomans, J Rahe and R S Freitag
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada – Vol 80 – April 1986
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1986JRASC..80…62Y
Establishing this definitive history of Comet Halley was a momentous academic achievement.
It was also a miraculous academic achievement.
Scanning ancient archives for unequivocal sightings of Comet Halley requires skill, dedication and clairvoyancy.
Firstly:
Observations in ancient archives aren’t labelled: Comet Halley.
(89) 26th August, 1682.
“On a chi-ssu day in the seventh month of the 21st year of the K’ang-hsi reign-period, a (hui) comet was seen in the longitude of the (Tung-) Ching (22nd lunar mansion). Its tail was over two feet long.”
(CSL, K’ang-hsi Shih-lu, 103/20b; THL 7/20b)A more detailed account of the comet was given in the CSK and CWHTK.
It is as follows:“On a chi-ssu day in the seventh month of the 21st year (of the K’ang-hsi reign-period), a (hui) comet was seen to the north of Pei-Ho. It was white in colour and had a tail over 2 feet long pointing towards the SW. It moved towards the NE rather rapidly. On a jen-shen day (29th August), it entered the Wu hour-angle sequent (i. e. between the 24th lunar mansion Liu and the 26th lunar mansion Chang) with a tail of over 6 feet in length.”
(CSK 14/ 194; CWHTK 12/7252)This is Halley’s comet.
Chinese Astronomical Records on Comets and ‘Guest Stars’
Ho Peng-Yoke and Ang Tian-Se – University of Malaya
Secondly:
Naked eye observations of Comet Halley may appear in ancient archives at anytime during a [roughly] six month long window of opportunity.
last perihelion: 9 February 1986
…
On 8 November 1985, Stephen Edberg (then serving as the Coordinator for Amateur Observations at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Charles Morris were the first to observe Halley’s Comet with the naked eye in its 1986 apparition.
Thirdly:
This six month observational window of opportunity on the erratic Comet Halley may occur at anytime in a six year window of probability.
Halley’s orbital period has varied between 74–79 years since 240 BC
Fourthly:
The providential provenance of Comet Halley contains a perplexing pattern.
In fact, given it’s six month long observational window of opportunity, it’s difficult not to conclude the history of Comet Halley contains at least 695 duplicated years.
This duplication suggest the thread of history is broken at the Heinsohn Horizon when the orbital excursions of planet Earth and Comet Halley both began.
See: https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/the-calendar-of-king-john/
On the one hand:
The duplicated years in the Annals of China could be purely coincidental.
Just like the duplicated cultures in the Annals of China are purely coincidental.
If China of Antiquity (the Han Dynasty is usually dated 202 BC to 220 AD) and China of the Early Middle Ages (the Tang Dynasty is conventionally dated 618-907) do not follow one after the other but are chronologically parallel, we, e.g., can avoid the stubborn problem of why identical-looking bronze horses from the two dynasties are dated over 700 years apart.
Papermaking’s Mysterious 700 Years of Secrecy
Gunnar Heinsohn – Feb 2017
http://www.q-mag.org/_iserv/dlfiles/dl.php?ddl=q-mag-gunnar-paper-making-021017.pdf
On the other hand:
The Annals of China may contain 1,152 years of duplicate data.
Han dynasty 206 BC – 220 AD
The coinage issued by the central government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD).
….
Architectural historian Robert L. Thorp points out the scarcity of Han-era archaeological remains, and claims that often unreliable Han-era literary and artistic sources are used by historians for clues about lost Han architecture.
And the history of Comet Halley may be too catastrophic to contemplate.
https://www.wmf.org/project/santa-maria-antiqua-church
Santa Maria Antiqua al Foro Romano
The church was partially destroyed in 847, when an earthquake caused parts of the imperial palaces to collapse and cover the church.
For this reason, a new church called Santa Maria Nova (New St Mary, now Santa Francesca Romana) was erected nearby by Pope Leo IV, on a portion of the ruined temple of Temple of Venus and Roma, where once stood a chapel commemorating the fall of Simon Magus.
Santa Maria Antiqua suffered further damages during the Norman Sack of Rome (1084).
The church of Santa Maria Liberatrice (Sancta Maria libera nos a poenis inferni) was built in 1617 on its ruins, but then demolished in 1900 to bring the remains of the old church to light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_Antiqua
Either way:
Take care and enjoy the holidays.
MalagaBay 
The Han-Tang parallel collapses for the same reason that the contemporary existence of the empires of August-Tiberius and Constantine and their successors collapse.
If these two empires existed at the same time – where are the interactions between them?
400 or so nonexistent years between 530-930 AD in the West is credible.
Which would mean, oi proven, that Heribert Illig’s basic insight is correct.
But Gunnar Heinsohn’s is not.
700 ghost years from 230 to 930 are not sustainable
.
Gunnar Heinsohn’s radical revision of the 1st millennium AD/CE removes some 700 years of chronology, but not 700 years of history. In Heinsohn’s revision, Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages are aspects of Antiquity (1 – ca, 230 AD) and run in parallel with it. All three come to a sudden catastrophic end ca. 230. The city of Rome is destroyed and largely buried (much of ancient Rome still lies buried beneath modern Rome today). The western Roman empire never recovers. The eastern empire does recover, and survives until the Ottoman conquest. To better understand Heinsohn’s revised chronology, it may help to count backward in time. 1066 = Battle of Hastings etc. ca. 1000 = beginning of the High Middle Ages. 930 – 1000 AD = devastation caused by natural catastrophe, with famine, plague, conflict and gradual recovery. Merovingians and beginnings of the castle culture. ca. 930 AD = natural catastrophe, possibly global in scope, that brings Antiquity, Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages to a sudden, simultaneous end. ca. 870 = Aurelian plague and Antonine fires. ca. 860 = Charlemagne, a foederatus of the Roman Empire. ca. 820 = Hadrian. ca. 780 = Constantine. ca. 721 = death of Diocletian. 714 AD = death of Augustus. ca. 700 = birth of Jesus. ca. 670 = Battle of Actium.
This is a basic outline of Gunnar Heinsohn’s revised history of the 1st millennium as I understand it.
I suspect Gunnar is on his third reconstruction in light of all the extant data. The difficulty is dealing with physical or chronological time and artificial time or history, and the underlying assumptions.
But the reigns of August and Constantine are heavily documented and the religious culture of the empire in both empires is radically different, Clark.
Where can you find a single reference from Augustus or his contemporaries to Constantine and his contemporaries or vice versa?
I have yet to see you, Gunnar or anyone else c come up with a single example o such a interactions.
How did Constantine for example deal with Herod the Great who supposedly ruled in his part of the empire?
And what role did Constantine play – or not play – at Actium?
Louis is right about underlying assumptions… our years of schooling have created expectations about history that are not confirmed by stratigraphy. For example, Antiquity, “Late Antiquity” and “the Early Middle Ages” are all found at the same stratigraphic depth. Why? Because the latter two are simply aspects of Antiquity. Churches we call “Late Antique” were really built in Antiquity.
“Documentation” for those three aspects of the same historical period is mostly correct. However, by mistakenly placing contemporary periods in sequence, hundreds of imaginary years were accidentally added to our textbooks. An yet, the history contained in those years is mostly real. For example, unlike Illig, who claims that Charlemagne is not a genuine historical figure, Gunnar Heinsohn identifies Charlemagne as a real Roman ally, not a latter-day Roman imitator. Charlemagne lived and reigned in Antiquity. Illig points to the sketchy nature of the archaeological evidence for Charlemagne. Gunnar counters by saying there is ample archaeological evidence for Charlemagne, once we look in the right place. The reason that “the Early Middle Ages” has left almost no archaeological evidence in Italy is that the real evidence is found in Antiquity. In our textbooks, Antiquity (“the crisis of the Roman Empire”), “Late Antiquity” (the disaster of Justinian) and “the Early Middle Ages” (the 10th century collapse) all ended in catastrophes. For Gunnar, all three periods end in the _same_ catastrophe, which has been repeated twice in textbooks because contemporary periods have been incorrectly placed in sequence. For Gunnar, Augustus died in 14 AD/CE. (= 714 AD) Constantine is dated ca. 80 AD (=780 ), long after the death of Augustus, and 110 years after Actium. In other words, Rome and the culture of Antiquity (= Late Antiquity = the Early Middle Ages) was struck down by a massive global catastrophe circa 1087 years ago, never to rise again. About 70 years later came the post-catastrophe, impoverished beginnings of the High Middle Ages.
It is more complicated still. Not even a letter from Octavian to his brother in law, Mark Antony, has survived. We have no autographs from Antiquity. No document was preserved from Rome’s huge state archive, the tabularium (built [74 m long] around 78 BCE [https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabularium]).
In textbook chronology, the tetrarchy of Diocletian (284 ff AD) follows Emperor Augustus by some 300 years. Yet, nowhere do we find buildings of the tetrarchy superimposed on strata of the barrack’s emperors (230s-280s AD) that cover ruins of Imperial Antiquity (1-230s AD). In stratigraphy, style and technology (down to the form of swords and the absence of the stirrup) the tetrarchy follows Late Hellenism/Late Republic of the late 1st century BC.
Tombs from the first half of the 1st century AD are cut into the perimeter wall of the mausoleum (Via Appia) of Maxentius, defeated by Constantine the Great, that supposedly was built in the early 4th century AD. Yet, it must have been built before the tombs, i.e., before 50 AD.
The tetrarchs repeat wars and battles that were already fought against the same enemies some 300 years earlier etc. (see more in http://www.q-mag.org/). Gunnar Heinsohn
Gunnar and Clark are falling back on their traditional non-argument of trying to prove an impossible hypothesis by attacking other hypotheses or structures.
The onus is on THEM to provide any evidence whatsoever that Constantine was an exact contemporary of Titus – In other words that the Byzantine building of Jerusalem came within a decade of its destruction by the legions of Vespasian and Titus. Provide the evidence for this amazing theory -please. ANY evidence for starters.
Oh dear. Here comes the traditional ad hominem stuff. Martin’s question about Titus and Constantine was really aimed at Gunnar. Personally, I support Gunnar Heinsohn’s thesis because, shocking as it is, it makes more sense than textbook history of the 1st millennium. Last year I wrote a brief article for MalagaBay under the pen name Saucy Chaucer, which can be found here https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/a-canterbury-tale-by-saucy-chaucer/ . I had recently attended a lecture by a professor from Boston College who claims that the collapse of Roman rule in Britannia resulted in the disappearance of the dozens of valuable and nourishing food plants — from beans to turnips to cabbage and mint — that Romans introduced to Britain and which had been successfully cultivated there for centuries. Even Roman water mills disappeared, seemingly too darn tough for Saxons to operate. During this agricultural dark age, the Venerable Bede, while not engaged in writing his learned theses, apparently had to scrounge around in the fields and forests for something to eat. And yet Roman plants, horticulture and mills all came back in the 10th and 11th centuries. Compared with the utter folly of such ideas — which dominate classrooms and textbooks today — Gunnar’s archaeology-based thesis is a breath of fresh air.
Re the collapse of Roman rule in Britannia, some time ago I came across a book which attributed that to Boudicea. The story goes thus: The Roman could not conquer the British with military. Their effective solution was to introduce to the British a lavish way of life they could not afford. They gave their ‘gold’ to the Romans for Roman ‘glitter’. Boudicea reversed that and the whole roman system collapsed.
Apparently the EU is built upon that premise. Two decades ago a friend explained what he saw happening in Portugal. It was not much different. For the past 20 years I saw that repeatedly taking place. Quo Vadis Europe? Many ancient civilisations collapsed in the same manner. Ibn Khaldun was right.
Dear Martin!
It’s good that you challenge me. If you feel compelled to present your questions in the form of profound and superior knowledge that’s fine with me, too.
The striking similarity between Herodian Temple Mount building technology and masonry (dated to the early 1st c. CE) and Constantine’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre (dated to the early 4th c. CE) has been documented by Shimon Gibson. It made him believe that the Temple Mount structures must have been destroyed not in the 1st but in the 4th c. CE (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.635160).
That parallel between Imperial Antiquity and Late Antiquity was topped at Tiberias (Lake Kinnereth) where Imperial Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages were found in a contemporary setting: “During the course of a dig designed to facilitate the expansion of the Galei Kinneret Hotel, Hartal noticed a mysterious phenomenon: Alongside a layer of earth from the time of the Umayyad era (638-750[CE]), and at the same depth, the archaeologists found a layer of earth from the Ancient Roman era (37 B.C.E.-132[CE]). ‘I encountered a situation for which I had no explanation – two layers of earth from hundreds of years apart lying side by side,‘ says Hartal. ‚‘I was simply dumbfounded‘ “ (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/the-big-one-is-coming-1.96548).
Since such a stratigraphy would put the Umayyads right after Hellenism (that ends in the 1st c. BCE), i.e. 700 years earlier (or Hellenism 700 years later) than in textbook chronology, one has invoked some surgical geological movements to explain away the evidence. Yet, at Bet Yerah (also on Lake Kinnereth) the immediately post-Hellenistic chronology of the Umayyads was confirmed, and published this year. In a sounding of tower four, “we found that its foundation trench cut several walls of Hellenistic and Early Bronze date”. The western wall of tower five “was founded on an earlier Hellenistic wall”. Tower six covered a “portion of a water channel that appears to have drained the fortified area. The soil inside the channel was reported to contain ‘Roman’ glass and pottery” (Da’adli, T. [2017], “Stratigraphy and Architecture of the Fortified Palace”, in Greenberg, R., Tal, O., Da’adli, T., eds., Bet Yerah. Volume III: Hellenistic Philoteria and Islamic Al-Sinnabra. The 1933–1986 and 2007–2013 Excavations, Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority).
Whenever you come across a super-imposed Umayyad stratigraphy matching textbook chronology (i.e., [1] Hellenism, [2] Herodian, [3] Roman, [4] Byzantine/Ghassanid, [5] Umayyad)] I would be happy to go there, and check it. After all, I searched in vain for six years now. Cordially, Gunnar.
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The mark of cult belief is to accuse every legitimate critic of being ad hominem. You do not disappoint Clark.
I would very much like to see a convincing elimination of 230 CE to 930 CE for the very simple reason that I would like to be a lot closer to the glories of Roman era civilization and literature than we are on the conventional model. It is also, I believe much more optimistic and encouraging to imagine the human race rebounding back from cosmic catastrophes within a century or two rather than the 500 to 700 years of misery and darkness required by conventional history.
My point is simple and I repeat it. Where is the evidence to make Constantine and Augustus contemporary. Any evidence at all? I asked you for it. You have given none.
The evidence for the catastrophic destruction of Britain in 530 CE is clear and that of Rome in 230 is also clear. Nor am I ruling out the possibility that the 300 years of history in between did not exist independently and has to be conflated.
But for it be conflated, you must have evidence that the different rulers, who built buildings, minted coins and were recorded in histories actually interacted with each other – and you still have provided absolutely none – None whatsoever.
All you and Gunnar do is when I or Trevor Palmer or anyone else is repeat the mantra of your own interpretation of the historical and archaeological records – which is especially interesting since neither you nor Gunnar has any experience as a historian or archaeologist and I do not believe either of you has ever done any field work.
Accusing Gunnar’s critics of ad hominem attacks is no answer at all. it’s the kind of tactic “worthy” of cultic true believers. Gunnar is not a god and has certainly been wrong before. His solutions are still full of holes in the historical record and his archaeological suggestions need to be independently verified and supported.
Attempting to slander and otherwise discredit el legitimate independent minds is unworthy of him – and you. Or at least it ought to be.
You checked out any mental thought independent of Gunnar nearly 30 years ago, Clark. Unconditional worship is no substitute for scientific debate.
However, if Rome was overthrown by catastrophe in2 30 CE, which I accept then the entire theory of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and of other civilizations too is disproven.
Rome did not fall because it was too pagan, because of murderous Games in the Coliseum, because it persecuted and martyred Christians or because it destroyed the Jewish Temple.
Nor did Rome fall because of lead poisoning, or too much taxation, or too much bureaucracy or not enough “freedom.”
Roman civilization in the Illig/Heinsohn/MalagaBay perspective did not fall at all. It was overthrown by a cosmic catastrophe which no human leader or society could have had any control over.
The implications of this for history, philosophy, sociology are infinite.
Martin Sieff wrote… “(Clark) checked out any mental thought independent of Gunnar nearly 30 years ago. Unconditional worship is no substitute for scientific debate.” Prior to this ad hominem nastiness Martin wrote… “The mark of cult belief is to accuse every legitimate critic of being ad hominem.” Thanks to Martin’s revealing comments, I now see why he responds the way he does. The fact that I agree with Gunnar Heinsohn on the primacy of material, archaeological and stratigraphic evidence is anathema to those who place their faith in the primacy of text, in this case the fairy tale textbook history of post-Roman Europe. All this, however, is irrelevant to the matters at hand. Nowhere have I said that Constantine was contemporary with Augustus. If Gunnar takes this position, I am not aware of it. Perhaps Martin is thinking of Diocletian. To those who haven’t seen the manuscript of Gunnar Heinsohn’s book, it can be found at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0cUI6X8yuR7MkNhdmctd01Cb2c/view?ts=595aa356
The main text is in German, but a summary in English begins on page 486.
Dear Martin!
Since the belief that Diocletian lived nearly 300 years after Augustus is yours the obligation to archaeologically prove it is also yours. There are some 2000 sites of former Roman cities (plus a multiple of country villas) to chose from. Your job is easy. I do not expect hundreds of stratigraphies to support your belief. Yet, you should at least present one whose sequence of strata supports such a chronology before I can seriously consider to follow you.
Since the belief that the Jewish war in the 60s CE against Rome and its LEGIO X FRETENSIS was followed by the Jewish war of the 350s against LEGIO X FRETENSIS the obligation to prove it is yours, too. You should at least present one camp of LEGIO X FRETENSIS from the 350s CE in Israel after the several camps of that legion in Israel from the 60s CE. Israel is a small country where it would be difficult to hide such structures.
If strata are not your cup of coffee you may begin with art and architecture. Just show the evolution over 300 years in the construction of temples and palaces or in the patterns of mosaics. If you prefer philology show the evolution of Latin or Greek in the inscriptions of the 1st and 4th century CE.
There are many more approaches to tackle the subject. Yet, if you merely repeat your demand that I obey your historical scheme with blind faith we cannot not make progress. I concede that your ideas have billions of devotees. So why don’t you just call up a few hundred trained archaeologists and historians to sieve through the excavation reports to find the layer-group that will refute me. I will even be content with a single site in which the residential quarters with streets, ovens and latrines of the 4th century are built upon ruins of the residential quarters with streets, ovens and latrines of the 1st century.
Cordially, Gunnar
Gunnar sadly repeats his usual attack to hide the fact that he has presented no defense at all.
It would be marvelous to find interactions between his Eastern and Western empires. But where are they? He still has not presented a single one. Who did Augustus interact with in the West when he crushed Mark Anthony, eliminated the Kingdom of Egypt and worked so closely with Herod the Great for so long?
Why is there not a hint in Constantine’s time of interaction with the traditional pagan empire of Augustus? . Why does Tacitus know nothing of the Eastern Empire? And why is Procopius, who gives fully accurate details of the archaeology of the Nea Church in Jerusalem, so ignorant of the Western Empire. Eusebius gets into great detail on the history of the Church from the time of Nero to that of Constantine.
Gunnar is playing verbal games here. I am no the one presenting a wildly radical and bold, truly revolutionary restructuring of ancient history. He is. But not only has he not proved it. He hasn’t presented a single credible synchronism to support it and give credibility to it.
I repeated- the evidence for the catastrophic destruction of Rome around 2304 CE is clearly very strong. The case for cutting many hundreds of years from the Dark Ages, as Heribert Illig and Emmett Scott agree is on also very strong. The evidence for the catastrophic destruction of Roman Britain – again extremely strong.
But the case for convincing people of all of this is completely undermined all of this by insisting on running August, Constantine and their c successors as parallel and simultaneous without any supporting evidence.
If you can build a convincing case to do so – That is different. That would be great. But you haven’t even begun to.
All we have is Gunnar – loyally backed by Clark – presenting his interpretation of archaeological layers from genuine field reports but are they cherry picked? Has Gunnar visited these sights? Has he convinced a single mainstream archaeologist? Or at least engaged one or several in debate?
not?
As I repeatedly emphasize – arguments of identical art and style are no arguments at all. They just equally serve to prove that August built the monuments and major government buildings of the Washington Mall or that the 19th century palace of Westminster “must” be contemporaneous with Cologne Cathedral.
Gunnar – You never answered the specific criticisms of Ev Cochrane of Aeon or of Trevor Palmer and Lester Mitcham of the British Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in your debates with them on the Bronze Age archaeological record. Nor did you ever answer my questions about the layered stratigraphic archaeological evidence showing the sequence of civilizations from the Chalcolithic through the Iron Age at sites throughout the Middle East region. And I have at least visited some of those locations like Megiddo, Hazor and Troy myself.
You presented your radical theory. The onus is obviously on you to actually provide some evidence to support it.
And I NEVER asked you to “obey” “My ” historical scheme with “blind faith.” I never asked you to “obey” anything. I asked you to provide evidence of historical synchronicity between two powerful Roman Empires that conquered or ruled the same territory – 30 years apart on the “conventional” model – simultaneously on yours. You haven’t,
Claiming that I tried to force you or threaten you to “obey” “my
” historical scheme is ridiculous. But a very revealing way of the way you respond to legitimate questions. That is a ludicrous falsehood. On the contrary. I want YOU to prove YOUR scheme.
Trying to cover up a failure to answer your critics by false accusations against them just wont cut it.
Responding to c Clark – Claiming that you and Gunnar always respect the primacy of archaeological evidence simply isn’t true. Neither of you ever acknowledged striking correlation of archaeological layers in in the Middle East trace back archaeological layers in Israel/Palestine from the Chalcolithic to the through the three strata of the Iron Age.
I do not believe that either of you has acknowledged, let alone addressed the work of the late Yehoshua Etzion in his massive work “The Lost Bible’, let alone Donovan Courville’s pioneering work “The Exodus Problem and Its ramifications.” Both of these established very strongly the case that the Exodus from Egypt and the ensuing Israelite Conquest of Canaan occurred at the Early Bronze /Middle Bronze Age interchange.
Etzion in particular did massive work in his book identifying the Iron Age II strata in Israel/Palestine with the archaeological record of the Persian Empire – paralleled throughout the Fertile Crescent – over its 200 years of history amply documented both by rulers’ inscriptions and the detailed histories of contemporaneous Greek historians.
Gunnar is being very specific in identifying the Jewish Re volt oif 70 AD with a war in 350s AD. In that case, can he – or you – please fill in the detail of the History. How does this work? Who interacts with who? Why are Vespasian and Titus on the one hand and the Christian Roman emperors of the argued “phantom” 350s AD unaware of each other. Are the Roman civilizations in Israel/Palestine simultaneously pagan (60s AD) and Christian (350s AD) Why does Josephus have no awareness of Constantine and his successors?
As to my cultic reference, you can disprove that very easily Clark. Simply recall or document any time over the past 29 years when you publically criticized or disagreed with any of Gunnar’s arguments.
Gunnar has bold and brilliant ideas.The entire conception which Malaga Bay blog is committed to, of tracing catastrophic events through the Middle Ages – is fruitful and enormously important. The evidence for trembling astronomers, lethal comet close encounters and overthrows of civilizations is very strong. Hundreds of years I do agree should be examined as likely phantom centuries. But the parallel histories claim still just doesn’t work. You haven’t even started to construct a case for them.
It isn’t the archaeological record that you and Gunnar insist upon. It is Gunnar’s own very personal interpretation of what is in the archaeological record. People honestly and sincerely see what they want to see there.
If Gunnar is right you both should be able to present a coherent political history of interaction between two parallel time sequences – in some cases three – that are hundreds of years apart. If your archaeology is correct than establishing the historical interactions should be straightforward. Please do so.
.
Martin Sieff (MS) wrote: “As to my cultic reference, you can disprove that very easily Clark. Simply recall or document any time over the past 29 years when you publically criticized or disagreed with any of Gunnar’s arguments.”
CW writes: MS is very full of himself if he imagines that others are hoping to win reprieve from his petty judgments. Now, I understand MS is in a difficult spot. He’s trying to defend his own chronological ideas while at the same time involving himself in competing chronology issues he only partly understands. I am sympathetic to his situation because It took me three years of translating Gunnar Heinsohn’s manuscripts from German to English, while asking endless questions, before I began comprehending the enormous implications of Gunnar’s revised chronology of the 1st millennium CE. Gunnar himself worked for years of before realizing that Antiquity, Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages all take place within the same ca. 230 year span of time. All three periods come to a sudden, simultaneous end in a global catastrophe which Gunnar dates to ca. 930 CE… 1088 years ago. In this radical revision of history, Charlemagne — the best-known figure of the Early Middle Ages — is not a latter-day reviver of Roman culture. He is a Roman ally who lived around the time of Marcus Aurelius.
If MS decides to do his own translating, I strongly recommend the DeepL online computer program. It’s not clear if MS has looked through Gunnar’s 541-page manuscript (which is available here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0cUI6X8yuR7MkNhdmctd01Cb2c/view?invite=CNCNt_UL&ts=595aa356
or if he has read the English summary that begins on page 486. Many of his questions might be answered there. On the other hand, some questions might not have answers yet. Gunnar Heinsohn’s revision of the 1st millennium is a work in progress. The German email list devoted to this subject has more than 30 members, most of whom seem to be constantly sniping at Gunnar’s proposals, while advancing their own ideas. Ideally, academic friction generates light. But, inevitably, it generates heat, as well. That seems to be the case on MalagaBay, as well.
Dear Martin!
To obey your chronology ideas I would, inter alia, also have to believe in the famous “Silent Period” of original Hebrew texts between the 2nd c. CE (Bar Koseva’s [Kokhba’s] Mishnaic Hebrew from Nahal Hever) and the 9th century CE (Codex Cairensis etc.). Moreover, I would have to believe that Hebrew failed to develop. After all, it is without evolution for the 700 years from the 2nd to the 9th century. Thus, you want me to have confidence in assumptions that stretch credulity to the extremes.
Still, I would follow you if you would prove your point. You could do that by simply showing a single Near Eastern site with Hebrew texts/inscriptions in a 9th century stratum below which follow some twenty cultural strata for the 700 years without Hebrew until, deep down in the archaeological cake, Hebrew is found again in the 2nd century. After such a presentation I could not help but start thinking seriously about the strange fate of Hebrew. Right now I believe the history of Hebrew looks awkward because of the chronology you force upon it.
You know already that I am not aware of any site anywhere with such a cake of cultural strata between 200 and 900 CE. If you do know such sites (within or beyond Israel), wouldn’t it be fair to not hide them from me any longer?
The moment you present such sites I will be back. Cordially, Gunnar
First I find it truly bizarre that Gunnar refers to a “silent” history of the Jewish people from the second century to the ninth century.
This is absurd.
The period from the the beginning of the 3rd century CE to the 6th century CE in both Palestine and Mesopotamia is the most productive and obsessively recorded in Jewish religious history. it is the era of the compilation of the Palestinian and – even vaster – Babylonian Talmuds
It was also a long era of Jewish self-rule in both the Palestine/Israel and Mesopotamia/Babylonian communities and the names of and sequence of the community rulers have also been clearly recorded.
Clearly this was not the work of the still invisible, enormous army of dedicated, super-efficient Vatican forgers that the Heinsohn 700 year gap and horizon hypotheses require.
In terms of archaeology, the Byzantine remains in Israel/Palestine ascribed to the 4th century and the 6th century are massive and th4 evidence of a large Jewish peasant population at that time astonished the archaeologists, who had not expected it.
I am not the one challenging the established documented record, Gunnar. You are. Please discuss – and explain.
.
Second – Nor do I require, nor does anyone – multiple levels of stratigraphic remains sitting neatly on top of each other for 2,000 years. This kind of fantasy only exists in your imagination.
As the archaeologists who have actually worked on the sites of Jerusalem, Rome, London, Paris and other major cities know only too well, when a site is continually occupied for hundreds of years or even a millennium, later builders do not obligingly, simply build on previous layers of rubble, whether demolished by invaders, cosmic catastrophes or anything else.
More usually, especially during long centuries of settled occupation, they clear away previous remains and scoop down to create their own secure foundations. Therefore inevitably large quantities of remains from different layers and levels will be found hundreds of years later by later excavators piled together as rubble or as the foundations of other, sites.
But I doubt you know this Gunnar since you cannot cite a single archaeologist in support of your claims despite your insistence that the archaeological record negates and must over-ride every other form of evidence.
Yet you yourself are not an archaeologist. You never received any formal training in archaeology. And I do not believe you have ever worked on an archeological dig in your life either as a professional or even, as I have on occasions as a volunteer. So you have no first hand experience of the actual physical conditions in the earth that practicing archaeologists must deal with.
Third, when cosmic catastrophes did occur, the destroyed older site was not always or automatically resettled afterwards. Often there were centuries when the site in question was not, often testified to in surviving historical annals.
The cities of Jericho and Ai in particular are examples of this kind of phenomenon in Israeli archaeology, as the late Yehoshua Etzion and Donovan Courville both pointed out.
Fourth, there are clearly many examples when the horror, suffering and human loss associated with the destruction of cities was so great that the survivors simply picked and relocated elsewhere. This may well have happened in London, where the Anglo-Saxon cities of the 8th and 9th centuries CE – which Gunnar has claimed as proof of the “Heinsohn Horizon” and “700 year gap” have been found within the past 12 years and energetically excavated.
https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/specials/timeline/saxon-london-discovered.htm
Can this be explained away?
Perhaps, but the onus clearly is on Gunnar to do it.
I do not require continual evidence from 20 strata – or less – at the same site for 2,000 years. That is a condition of Gunnar’s imagination, not of the messiness and unpredictability of human settlement patterns.
But I have provided two enormous anomalies that he claims can not have existed:
First, the 63 tractates and the 6,200 pages of the Jewish Talmud.
When were these written Gunnar? They did not exist in the time Marcus Aurelius when Rabbi Judah the Prince codified basic Jewish law in the vastly slimmer six volumes of the Mishnah. By 1000 CE, however, the entire Talmud is already there – enormous. Hundreds of years before R Saadia Gaon, the dominant religious authority of Babylonian Jewry already takes them for granted. On your model, when were they written please?
And second, the archaeological record in the Aldwych area of Anglo-Saxon London as vividly described by the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers themselves and now excavated in the 21st century to s considerable publicity.
Clark Whelton is obviously in no position to accuse others of petty and personal abuse when he writes CW writes: “MS is very full of himself if he imagines that others are hoping to win reprieve from his petty judgments.”
But I am not the one fantasizing about the elimination of 700 years of history and the realignment of entire eras when absolutely no evidence for interaction of two such radically different periods exists.
Clark at least gives us a specific parallelism to work on after, he assures us, at elast three years of poring over Gunnar’s model.
Charlemagne is to be an exact contemporary of Marcus Aurelius.
Fine, can you give us any evidence, any evidence at all that either Charlemagne or Marcus Aurelius knew of each other’s existence, Clark?
After all, Marcus Aurelius campaigned repeatedly on the Rhine frontier against the Germans If Charlemagne was such an important and powerful ally, especially if he led a resolutely Christian Empire where the pagan philosopher Marcus Aurelius manifestly did not, surely they must have at least acknowledged some of those awkward differences.
Its not my judgments you have to “win reprieve” from, Clark. Its the evidence of history and archaeology – or the obvious lack of any such evidence entirely.
And from that far from petty judgment, you will find no reprieve.
Instead of reading Gunnar Heinsohn’s manuscript (available online) himself and getting answers directly from the source, Martin Sieff (MS) asks questions about Gunnar’s revised chronology of the 1st millennium CE. There is no hint that MS has even read the English translation in that manuscript. I hope MS understands that I have no wish to convince him of anything. If MS is curious about Gunnar Heinsohn’s thesis, but does not read German, then a reasonable grasp of Gunnar’s ideas can be obtained by copying and pasting original text into the DeepL online translation program. A number of papers by Gunnar have been translated into English, but some of the ones I have are several years old and may not be current with the latest research. However, I suggest two papers from 2017… “Rome and Poland in the 1st Millennium CE” and “Architecture in 9th Century Germany Compared to Architecture in 9th Century Rome.” Of special interest is the paper from March, 2014 “Charlemagne’s Correct Place in History” (there may be a more recent version). If MalagaBay subscribers wishing to read these papers will send me an email, or contact me in these pages, I will send pdf copies.
Dear Martin!
A pleasure you are back: „Very few Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible have come down to us from the ‚Silent Period‘– between the 2nd century, when the last of the Dead Sea
Scrolls were written, and the 10th century, when the Aleppo Codex was produced“ (Israel Museum). You must show the strata fitting y o u r chronology for the Talmud, not me
Still, I agree with the “messiness”. That’s why I restrict my questions for evidence to just one site, not thousands or hundreds or tens. Do I ask for too much when I want to be pointed a single stratigraphy matching your chronology? Yet, I am not really expecting an answer from you but from professionals all over the world. At the beginning of my work I asked the finest experts in Germany, Israel etc. Only after they could not help I started my attempt to understand why 2nd and 9th c. strata exhibit the same architecture, the same small finds, the unaltered languages etc.
I wanted to make sense of Richard Krautheimer’s seminal discovery that basilica ground plans in Rome are the same in the 2nd, the 5th, and the 9th as well as in the 1st, the 4th, and the 8th century. Yet, their ruins are never superimposed but spread evenly over the city. A letter explaining my unexpected stumbling into this endeavor to my former cooperator, Heribert Illig,may be found here: http://www.chronologiekritik.net/ (first text,and click on English)
A last word on Israel by Levine (2008). “Whereas these finds [synagogues] had once been dated to the first centuries CE, today it is generally agreed that they stem from the third to fifth centuries. / An even further revolution in the dating of Galilean synagogues may be currently in the making as a result of a series of articles by Jodi Magness,
who dates a number of these synagogues (Capernaum, Gush Halav, Khirbet Shema) to the fifth and even sixth centuries on the basis of ceramic evidence. If she is correct, many of these buildings would have to be dated some 100–300 years later than previous estimates. Needless to say, the historical implications would be enormous“.
To comprehend that enormity we must remember that there is a lot of Jewish history for the 1st and 2nd centuries that are now denuded of synagogues whereas we know very little Jewish history for the centuries that are now adorned with these splendid buildings.
Moreover (Levine again): “The architecture and decoration of the Galilean-type building drew heavily from Roman public buildings that flourished in the East in the early
centuries CE“.
Now we have synagogues in the 3rd-5th c. in the style of the 1st and 2nd c. for which we have synagogues.
Cordially, Gunnar
Dear Gunnar:
it is always a true pleasure to debate with you and enjoy your brilliant initiatives. I regret that we gave had so little opportunity to interact in person over the many years.
However, on these great issues, you have not answered a single one of my substantive questions about your Dark Age Revision.
1) How do you explain, explain away or re-interpret the Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon London that has been uncovered in the 21st century in the Aldwych area?
It is there. And if it’s dating holds, it eliminates your 914/930 “Horizon” completely.
Anglo Saxon London EXISTS.
It has been excavated.
According to your model, it should not exist at all.
Yet there it is.
2) I repeat, if the 200 AD to 600 AD period did not exist in the Fertile crescent as well as in Europe, when were the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud s on their gigantic scale compiled.
There is no hint that the two Talmud s yet existed when the Mishnah was compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince around 200 AD. And they are both certainly there by 1000 AD when Jewish scholarship begins in Western Europe and we have the complete commentary on the Talmud of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (Rashi) . So when were the two Talmud s compiled?
A 250-400 year “gap” between Justinian and Charlemagne or from Justinian into the 1 early 10th century still allows time for this and much else. A 700 year gap does not.
The onus is not on me to explain this. It is on you. You are the one proposing the elimination of the 700 years. So of course it’s up to you and your supporters to make your scheme work.
3) I still see NOT A SINGLE EXAMPLE of interaction between the Western and Eastern Roman rulers whom you claim ruled simultaneously over the same areas or contiguous ones. You have provided not a single example that Charlemagne and Augustus – or whomever else he was contemporaneous with – were aware of their simultaneous existence.535 and 835 AD or so
You have ignored all my questions in your reply. I asked for answers , facts, documentation. You still have not provided any at all.
I am still looking forward to your answers.
With personal appreciation and warmth
Martin
Dear Clark:
I have read, studied and enjoyed all of Gunnar’s papers you mentioned. My concern is not what they include but what they manifestly do NOT include.
Not a single one of Gunnar’s claims has been independently verified. Nor has he documented the 2600 identical stratigraphies he claims prove his thesis. they al have to be taken on faith.
I repeat my previous questions and will add some more:
1) If Charlemagne and Marcus Aurelius are exact contemporaries why is there not the slightest hint that either of them was aware of the simultaneous rule and existence of the other?
Why does not a single historian of either period mention this?
Can you provide a single example from histories, inscriptions, coins or anything else that your alleged simultaneous rulers had the slightest awareness of their mutual contemporary existence?
2) Please explain to me the uncovering of at least two layers of existence of Anglos-Saxon London during and previous to the reign of Alfred the Great excavated in the Aldwych region of the city over the past 15 years. If this has been misdated, please explain how.
You are not an archaeologist. Neither is Gunnar. You have both cherry picked anomalies from a vast record of data across Europe.
But if even Anglo-Saxon London at the Aldwych site is verified, your entire structure collapses.
A major Anglo-Saxon city flourished for hundreds of years during an era that Gunnar – and you – claim did not exist. Yet the archaeological evidence which Gunnar and you both claim is paramount both testify that the city did exist when it was not supposed to.
None of Gunnar’s papers to which you refer – all of which, I repeat I repeatedly read – offer solutions to these and so many other problems.
Nor do either you or Gunnar show Christianity can simultaneously be a new and persecuted tiny sect in Rome at the time of Nero yet be the dominant religion of the Eastern Empire under Constantine’s successors at the same time.
Why was there no enormous religious civil war between the Eastern and Western empires at this same time?
Why do neither Augustus nor Tiberius appear to have been aware that Constantine on Gunnar’s model conquered “their” Rome at the Battle of Milvian Bridge since he was the successor of Diocletian whom you assure us was contemporaneous with Augustus? But then Constantine was marching against Maxentius. And both Augustus and Tiberius and their historians were oblivious of him.
When were the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds written. Under a 300-400 year Dark Age gap there is plenty of time for them. In a 700 year gap, there is no time for those enormous works to have been compiled at all.
How do you and Gunnar challenge the very distinct and often overlapping Herodian, later Roman , early Byzantine, later Byzantine and Arab archeological remains in the land of Israel, all of which conform to the evidence of histories of their respective eras?
And can you provide ANY documentation and support for these sweeping and so far entirely unsupported and unverified claims from ANY sources that Gunnar has not personally written?
It is a mark of cult fanatical believers to repeatedly cite only the same tiny selection of writings by their revered “gurus” as imagined proof of their sweeping claims. That is what you have done in response to my requests for documentation to support Gunnar’s unverified claims.
But there is an enormous world of scholarship out there. Does it provide any independent evidence to support your assertions at all?
No reader of Malaga Bay or anyone else should be convinced for a second by ANYTHING Gunnar, or you, or I write.
They should be convinced by the independent evidence from independent sources to support – or disprove – all our arguments.
You still have not provided any.
Respectfully
Martin
Dear Martin,
When you write that “It is a mark of cult fanatical believers to repeatedly cite only the same tiny selection of writings by their revered “gurus” as imagined proof of their sweeping claims,” I suspect you’re simply engaging in a bit of rhetorical mischief. If, however, you seriously believe that Gunnar Heinsohn is a “guru” leading some sort of unquestioning history cult, or if you truly believe the prodigious amount of work Gunnar has produced (in both German and English) is “tiny,” I urge you to seek help. You might consider spending time as a member of the German email list that focuses on 1st millennium AD chronology. You would quickly see that the 30+ scholars on this list are not shy about criticizing, scolding, condemning, and otherwise doubting some or all of Gunnar’s thesis. The record shows that Gunnar does not evade or avoid criticism. He lectures to mainstream scholarly audiences (as he did in Rome) which can be expected to rebuff his radical shortening of the 1st millennium.
If you are really persuaded that today’s textbooks convey an accurate picture of 1st millennium AD history, why have you joined this discussion? As a missionary? In order to warn others? To repeat, I have no interest in changing your mind, and I can’t do your reading for you. I don’t know which of Gunnar’s many papers you’ve seen, or where you got the idea that Gunnar cites “2600 identical stratigraphies.” All I can do is suggest you keep reading. However, not all the answers you seek are in print. Gunnar’s thesis is a work in progress. Personally, I’m convinced that what is now called “Late Antiquity” and “the Early Middle Ages” is, for the most part, a series of ex post facto Christian fairy tales and forgeries which have been used as filling for the 700-year gap that was accidentally created when – in the aftermath of a horrendous catastrophe that happened circa 1,088 years ago — three contemporary periods of history were mistakenly placed in sequence. The catastrophe was preceded several generations earlier by another calamity, the deadly Antonine plague, which cut the population of Rome in half, spread chaos throughout the empire, and inadvertently brought Christianity to power. In large numbers, Romans desperate to survive the contagion abandoned their old nature gods, which had apparently turned against them, and adopted the nascent Christian faith. Or, as Gunnar puts it, “They couldn’t jump into the baptismal pools fast enough.”
Sincerely,
CW
New York, NY
Dear Clark:
You tell about these scholars supporting Gunnar and I don’t doubt their existence. But I didn’t ask for names I asked for evidence and once again you have failed to provide any i asked for supporting evidence and independent verification and you haven’t provided any more at all.
How can Anglo-Saxon London have been found in at least two settlement levels at the Aldwych site when the centuries of its habitation never existed? You have yet to acknowledge those excavations at all.
When was the Talmud written if the conventional 200-600 AD period did not exist?
How can entirely different remains from later Roman, early Byzantine (Constantine), later Byzantine (Justinian) and Arab Omayyad remains be found throughout Israel/Palestine, especially in Jerusalem if the simultaneous theory is correct?
You make two crucial admissions when you write “Gunnar’s thesis is a work in progress. Personally, I’m convinced ….”
That is exactly the point. YOU are “CONVINCED”
But you need to open your own mind to examine what former Vice President Al Gore memorably called “inconvenient facts”
You clearly have not read what I have previously written on this blog. I have no objection to the concept of a catastrophe leveling the Roman Empire ca 234/5 AD.
On the contrary, this would explain dramatically a host of previously unanswered questions about the fall of the Roman Empire.
This catastrophic hypothesis whether initiated by Heribert Illig, Gunnar, both of them or lots of other people is the biggest breakthrough we have ever had in uncovering the real reasons for the fall of the Empire and the history of its decline.
The evidence of a traumatizing Dark Age that started 300 years later around 535 AD and resulted in a traumatized Western world recovering around a date that came to be later interpreted as the 9th century AD is also extremely convincing. The period “535 AD to 835 AD” roughly speaking does appear to be a fantasy era, with Anglo-Saxons largely peacefully occupying a devastated, almost entirely depopulated English heartland.
The 234/5 catastrophe also provides convincing answers at last to the radically different conditions that we see not only for the next 50 years but all the way through the 4th century AD:
All this work constitutes a magnificent breakthrough that throws dramatic new light upon the rise of Christianity, the consequent rise of Islam after the 535 catastrophe and the radically different conditions of the world that followed it.
I repeat what I have clearly written on this blog before: I embrace and support the conception of 300 “ghost years” as a gap. If there was similar evidence to make the gap a 700 year one I would support that too. But there is not.
The evidence for the 300 year gap from the mid-6th to the mid-9th century is consistent and overwhelming from England to Baghdad and Samarra.
Similarly there is clear evidence for repeated catastrophes, including likely an major one being in the 10th century.
I am NOT asking skeptically for additional evidence to support these propositions, although we can never have too much. But the pattern of evidence for them is already consistent and clear.
However, I repeat, Gunnar’s additional model involving the triplication of history, the 700 year gap and the contemporaneous existence of the Augustus-Tiberius and Diocletian-Augustus empires are NOT supported by evidence.
You continue to ignore the major problems I have presented to you. They are not alone. There are endless more ones.
I simply note here that after, by your own admission, having spent three years to translate Gunnar’s work into English painstakingly in all that time and effort, you showed no awareness of one of the most publicized archaeological digs in the world in London only a decade before, and it never occurred to you to seek independent verification of ANY of Gunnar’s remarkable claims.
You conclude: “Personally, I’m convinced that what is now called “Late Antiquity” and “the Early Middle Ages” is, for the most part, a series of ex post facto Christian fairy tales and forgeries which have been used as filling for the 700-year gap that was accidentally created.”
Yes, you clearly are convinced of what I maintain is your fantasy and Gunnar’s – The extension and transformation of a very documented 300 year gap into a 700 year gap that only generates new insurmountable problems and is not needed to resolve existing ones..
You still offer no evidence at all to explain away the archaeologies of Anglo-Saxon London, of Israel-Palestine and even of Constantinople itself where the 300 year gap is clearly documented. But a 700 year one is not.
Please do.
Sincerely
Martin
Martin Sieff (MS) wrote: “You tell about these scholars supporting Gunnar and I don’t doubt their existence. But I didn’t ask for names I asked for evidence and once again you have failed to provide any i asked for supporting evidence and independent verification and you haven’t provided any more at all.”
Clark Whelton (CW) replies: I suggest you reread what I wrote, which was intended to show that the chronology scholars on the German email list may or may not support Gunnar Heinsohn’s work, but they all have criticisms and doubts about one point or another. I brought this list to the attention of MS in order to disprove his persistent fantasy that Gunnar is leading some sort of unquestioning history cult, to which MS naively thinks I belong.
MS wrote: “How can Anglo-Saxon London have been found in at least two settlement levels at the Aldwych site when the centuries of its habitation never existed? You have yet to acknowledge those excavations at all.”
CW replies: I try to make allowances for MS’s precarious situation. He has read some of Gunnar Heinsohn’s work, but clearly much of it has not yet come his way. Normally a person who is only partially informed on a particular subject refrains from engaging in criticisms that can expose his lack of information. For example, MS does not appear to have read Gunnar Heinsohn’s paper “Arthur of Camelot and Aththe-Domaros of Camulodunum: a Stratigraphy-based Equation Providing a New Chronology for 1st Millennium England” (June, 2017). If MS had read this paper, he would have found the following on page 2: “Three hundred years, it would seem, have left almost no trace (of Saxons) in the ground (of Britain). Truly, it would appear, that these years were indeed dark. Not only did men forget how to build in stone, they seem to have lost the capacity even of creating pottery; and the centuries in England that are generally designated Anglo-Saxon have left little or nothing even in this necessary domestic art. Pottery making does appear again in the tenth century“ (O’Neill 2009, 228).
Heinsohn writes: “In actual fact, the period with extremely scarce evidence may not have started as late as the 5th but already in the 3rd century AD:
“Many [British] building sequences appear to terminate in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. […] The latest Roman levels are sealed by deposits of dark coloured loam, commonly called the ‘dark earth’ (formerly ‘black earth’). In the London area the ‘dark earth’ generally appears as a dark grey, rather silty loam with various inclusions, especially building material. The deposit is usually without stratification and homogeneous in appearance, It can be one meter or more in thickness. […] The evidence suggests that truncation of late Roman stratification is linked to the process of ‘dark earth’ formation“ (Yule 1990, 620).
/ “Parts [of Londinium] / were already covered by a horizon of dark silts (often described as `dark earth’) / Land was converted to arable and pastoral use or abandoned entirely. The dark earth may have started forming in the 3rd century” (Schofield 1999).
Now, if MS believes that the excavations at Aldwych provide a refutation for the missing Saxon archaeology of the 1st millennium in Britain, and therefore of Heinsohn’s work, he is mistaken. Beginning on page 14 of his paper Gunnar writes that for centuries Romans, Celts and Saxons lived side by side in Britain, competing for dominance. A Saxon presence in London is not surprising. Gunnar’s thesis holds that ca. 230 AD (which = ca. 930 AD when 700 phantom years are removed from the 1st millennium AD) a massive natural catastrophe, probably global in scope, destroyed the Roman Empire. Rome was buried, the western empire never recovered, though Byzantium (where the catastrophe is incorrectly dated to the 6th century) survived until the Ottoman conquest. In Britain, where the catastrophe is frequently marked by deposits of “dark earth,” Roman culture and control collapsed. As Britain began to emerge from the devastation, Saxon culture dominated, right up to 1066.
On page 29, Gunnar summarizes… “Once building strata and archaeological substance get a fair hearing and are allowed to put textbook chronology to the test, England’s destruction and dark earth layers of the Crisis of the Third Century, and/or the Crisis of the Sixth Century, will be recognized as the devastating traces of the Tenth Century Collapse. The hard evidence conventionally attributed to the 1st-3rd and/or 4th-6th centuries AD will turn out to be the desperately searched for evidence for the 8th to 10th century AD.
“Saxon cities will no longer be mysteriously missing but will be recognized as integral parts of Late Latène and Roman culture that, in turn, will be moved from the time span of c. 50 BC-230s AD into the stratigraphy-based time span of c. 650 to 930s AD. Agriculture and cultivated plants do not disappear for many centuries but are continuously grown, although harvests are reduced by the Tenth Century Collapse…”
Sincerely,
Clark Whelton
Clark Whelton’s latest posting is so astonishingly ignorant of the well-documented record of Anglo-Saxon archaeology and history it is difficult to know where to begin educating him.
Contrary to his assertion, based on no evidence whatsoever, I have indeed read Gunnar Heinsohn’s “Arthur of Camelot” paper. Indeed, it was the insoluble problems associated with the absurd placing of King Arthur as early as Gunnar Heinsohn maintains that led me to seriously question the whole over-ambitious model in the first place.
Clark Whelton’s personal animus to me is now so clear that he can only refer to me as “MS”. A straightforward “Martin” or “Professor Sieff” is beyond him.
Appropriate etiquette therefore presumably dictates that I should refer to him as CW from now on: So Be It.
Of course, all readers of this debate will not be surprised to see that the only source CW turns to for “irrefutable” evidence is Gunnar Heinsohn’s (GH?) own writings.
If that is not evidence of a Cult mentality what is?
There are of course considerably more impressive documented resources that anyone can easily access to document hundreds of years of Anglo-Saxon civilization that according to GH and CW simply do not exist.
To make things easy for them, they should start with basic Wikipedia references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeology_of_Anglo-Saxon_England
And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_in_Anglo-Saxon_England
From these most basic and elementary resources GH and CW can learn that the Anglo-Saxons had distinct burial customs and styles that were radically different from those of Roman Britain and that in many – though certainly not all – cases the Anglo-Saxons even appropriated for themselves Roman British burial places for their own.
This of course is indisputable evidence that that the Anglo-Saxons lived after the Roman Britons.
CW, as usual citing GH claims “the missing Saxon archaeology of the 1st millennium in Britain” and claims I am mistaken to cite the Adwych excavations – of which he was clearly entirely unaware until I brought it to his attention – as evidence of that “missing” Anglo-Saxon archaeology.
Yet once again he offers NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE to discredit the Aldwych finds.
Just as he continues to ignore the archaeologies of Constantinople and Paris, that point to 300 year occupation gaps but NOT to ANY 700 year gap.
In fact I would not be bothered to find any or even many 700 year gaps. The crucial point is that while some sites may well not have been re-inhabited for 700 years, we have an abundance of evidence about the thousands that were during that time.
Well – I am not mistaken in this instance but CW is quite simply delusional.
Because the Anglo-Saxon archaeology of England is not missing at all and it never was.
To cite Wikipedia for starters – and it is not hard to find – “we have discovered from archaeological excavations at various sites, including Sutton Hoo, Spong Hill, Prittlewell, Snape and Walkington Wold, and we today know of the existence of around 1200 Anglo-Saxon pagan cemeteries…”
1200 Anglo-Saxon pagan cemeteries.
That’s a lot of cemeteries.
The other evidence of hundreds of years of Anglo-Saxon habitation in England before the tenth century is also abundant.
To once again cite Wikipedia on the issue of coinage:
“From the latter part of the 6th century… the first Anglo-Saxon coins were produced, although sustained production would not appear until the 630s. These were small, gold coins, called scillingas (shillings) in surviving Anglo-Saxon law codes, although they have since been referred to as thrymsas by numismatists. Modelled on coins produced at the same time in Merovingian Francia – geographically the rough equivalent of modern France – these early Anglo-Saxon gold shillings were often inscribed with words borrowed from either Merovingian or Roman coinage, although examples have been found which instead bear such names as those of King Eadbald of Kent, the moneyers Witmen and Pada, or the names of mints in London and Canterbury.[3] Small, thick, silver coins known as sceattas were also produced in England, as well as in Germanic continental areas of the North Sea coast, from about 680 to 750, bearing designs which featured a wide range of iconography.
“In about 675 the gold shilling was superseded by the silver pening, or penny, amongst the Anglo-Saxons, and this would remain the principal English monetary denomination until the mid-14th century.”
Wikipedia helpfully notes that from the 8th century – another era that according to GH and CW never existed in England, new types of coins are found.
GH and with CW faithfully echoing him repeatedly claim that archaeological evidence must be paramount and that it supersedes all historical accounts.
Yet here we have the abundant archaeology of an entire nation – and parallel stories can be told throughout Europe – where the Anglo-Saxon world and era that cannot possibly exist on the GH model is clearly and abundantly documented as having done so.
Out of respect for readers who are more serious about access studying the documented record, I recommend they start with “The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England”, Cambridge University Press, 1981. Rather dated now because so much more material has been found, but still abundantly documented.
I repeat – as CW bizarrely refuses to acknowledge – I accept the evidence for the catastrophe of 230 AD. But it does not eliminate history as GH and CW fantasize for the next 700 years.
On GH’s model, Constantine the Great must overlap, as the successor of Diocletian, with Augustus and/or Tiberius. CW is quite insistent on that.
However this is truly ludicrous when one looks at Arthur and Britain and where GH would place Arthur because Constantine was the son of Constantius I Chlorus who reconquered Britain into the Roman Empire in 296 AD. Yet according to GH, Constantine lived nearly 300 years earlier and well before the first lasting Roman conquest of Britain by the Emperor Claudius, who was the successor of Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula.
Before Constantine, for most of the previous century, the great rival to Christianity as the future great religion of the Roman Empire was Mithraism, the cult of the Unconquerable Sun (“Sol Invictus”). This can be well understood as a desperate quest for a new cosmic deity of light after the 234/5 cosmic catastrophe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus
But it makes no sense at all if Constantine was a contemporary of Augustus and/or Tiberius, as GH would have him.
But there is no hint of either Christianity or Mithraism existing at all in Britain as early as the time of Claudius.
Note that CW approvingly quotes GH as claiming that mainstream scholars and academics “desperately searched for evidence for the 8th to 10th century AD” that is not found in conventional archaeology.
In reality, the evidence for those eras is abundant. It is GH and CW who must desperately deny it exists.
CW’s claim that Celts, Romans and Saxons lived side by side in Britain competing for dominance in presumably the period from, the 40-s AD to 230 AD is simply ludicrous.
No serious historian has ever suggested such a thing. The contemporary Roman historians never hinted at it. It is a figment of GH’s and therefore of CW’s ever-loyal imaginations.
Neither archeology nor the highly detailed and documented Roman histories of the period indicate any such thing. Nor do the oral traditions of the English, the Welsh or anyone else.
The archaeology of Camulodunum, which CW neglects to mention (does he even know?) is modern Colchester in fact provides evidence of continuing Roman occupation and rebuilding for hundreds of years after 230 AD.
Again, from Wikipedia on the archaeology of 4th century Colchester-Camulodunum-Camelot:
“As with many towns in the Empire, the colonia shrunk in size in the 4th century but continued to function as an important town.[63] Although houses tended to shrink in size, with 75% of the large townhouses being replaced by smaller buildings by c. 350,[63] in the period 275 to 325 a weak “building boom” (the “Constantinian renaissance”) occurred in the town, with new houses being built and old ones reshaped.[63] Many of the towns mosaics date from this period, including the famous Lion Walk mosaic.[3] Late Roman robber trenches have been found at some sites for removing and salvaging tessalated floors and tiles for reuse in later houses.[31][32] The pottery industry in the town had declined significantly by 300,[63] but the 4th century did see an increase in the bone-working industry for making furniture and jewellery,[31] and evidence of blown glass making has also been found.[31] Large areas of the Southern part of the town were given over to agriculture.[31]”
“Despite the scaling down of private buildings an increase in the size and grandeur of public buildings occurs in the period 275-400.[63] The Temple of Claudius and its associated temenos buildings were reconstructed in the early-4th century, along with the possible forum-basilica building to the south of it.[76] The Temple appears to have had a large apsidal hall built across the front of the podium steps, with numismatic dating evidence taking the date of the building up to at least 395.[76] A large hall at the Culver Street site, dated 275-325 to c. 400, may have been a large centralized storage barn for taxes paid in kind with grain.”
In conclusion, therefore, whether we look at later Roman Britain in the 4th century or the Anglo-Saxon England that succeeded it, the story is the same: There is an abundance of human occupation. There are hundreds, even thousands of sites, distinctly dated and identified by hundreds of archaeologists.
This is hard evidence. It is not empty fantasies based on false, unverifiable or easily disproven assertions. To refuse to acknowledge all this evidence is to defy the record of abundantly documented reality.
Back to London
CW writes :
“if MS believes that the excavations at Aldwych provide a refutation for the missing Saxon archaeology of the 1st millennium in Britain, and therefore of Heinsohn’s work, he is mistaken. Beginning on page 14 of his paper Gunnar writes that for centuries Romans, Celts and Saxons lived side by side in Britain, competing for dominance.”
CW has never referred to the Aldwych excavations before. He does not seem to have been aware they existed.
Now he imagines that they document Romans, Celts and Saxons living side by side, just because GH fantasized that they must.
But there is no hint in the Aldwych excavations that this was ever the case.
The Aldwych excavators documented two centuries of a busy, thriving Anglo-Saxon city in the eighth and ninth centuries AD when according to GH – and CW – nothing should have existed.
They found no contemporaneous Roman or Celtic presence at all.
That only exists in CW’s embarrassingly reckless and fecund imagination.
CW is certainly no archaeologist. He has not visited the Aldwych site. Until I brought it to his attention he never knew it existed.
CW has yet to give any indication that he has read even popular, let alone scholarly reports of the excavations there. He gives no evidence of knowing the first thing about the history, society, archaeology or economic system of Anglo-Saxon England that has been documented in so many ways for so long. His imagination is superior to the years of systematic excavation by the archaeologists at the site.
CW should be at the very least embarrassed by his bizarre rush to judgment in imagining such a bizarre “solution” unjustified by any evidence whatsoever.
His urge to believe in GH’s fantasies forces him to deny the all evidence to the contrary in the real World.
Personal enmity has blinded MS to a simple truth: experts in British/Saxon history recognize that archaeological evidence for post-Roman Saxon Britain is limited to minor finds. They therefore believe, incorrectly, that a “dark age” settled over Saxon Britain. One professor even thinks the many food plants introduced to Britain by Romans disappeared when the Romans did, and that Saxons, for centuries, were reduced to foraging in fields and forests. MS’s refusal to observe basic civilities, and to consider the total archaeological picture, makes continued discussion impossible.
In conclusion,
Clark Whelton
Mr. Whelton (CW)’s once again projects his own personal enmity on me. I once again note he is incapable of referring to me by my given name. Readers should draw the obvious conclusions.
CW cannot refute abundant archaeological evidence so he responds with personal false accusation and insult. Freud would have understood.
Again, I respond to personally false accusation with more Inconvenient Truths.
CW’s claim that “archaeological evidence for post -Anglo-Saxon Britain is limited to minor finds” is palpably untrue.
The city of London from 700 AD to 900 AD – – for more than 200 years before the fictional “Heinsohn Horizon” has been excavated and covers 6.5 million square feet, 600,000 square meters. Is this a “minor find?”
To again turn to Wikipedia:
“Archaeologists were for many years puzzled as to where early Anglo-Saxon London was located, as they could find little evidence of occupation within the Roman city walls from this period. However, in the 1980s, London was rediscovered, after extensive independent excavations by archaeologists Alan Vince and Martin Biddle were reinterpreted as being of an urban character.[3][4] In the Covent Garden area, excavations in 1985 and 2005 have uncovered an extensive Anglo-Saxon settlement that dates back to the 7th century.[4][5] The excavations show that the settlement covered about 600,000 m2 (6,500,000 sq ft), stretching along the north side of the Strand (i.e. “the beach”) from the present-day National Gallery site in the west to Aldwych in the east.”
I ask again: Will CW admit he is simply wrong and ignorant of all the work that has been done by real archaeologists in the Real World?
And if he will not so admit, how does he explain all this away
CW yet again resolutely refuses to admit that I accept the evidence for the catastrophic end of Roman Britain. The archaeological evidence for this is abundant. And very clear. There is a Dark Age that starts around 450 AD, arguably a generation later. And it last for 150-250 years.
But by 700-750 AD London is thriving at the Aldwych site. A major Anglo-Saxon city flourishes for 200 years with no sign of contemporary Roman Britain at a time when Heinsohn (GH) and CW maintain nothing existed.
But as Heinsohn rightly says, the archaeological evidence must be paramount.
And let us not forget those 1200 Anglo-Saxon pagan cemeteries. Did I invent the evidence for them as simply to express a “personal enmity” to CW?
Getting the history of Europe right is a not insignificant issue: It is considerably more important exposing CW’s refusal to acknowledge all archaeological evidence that disproves his preferred fantasies.
Alfred the Great starts rebuilding a fortified city toward the end of the 9th century, at least a quarter century BEFORE the “Heinsohn Horizon.” Here once again archeological evidence supports and validates the recorded historical record.
Please address the abundance of real evidence that you continue to ignore, CW
Please let me return to the original subject: The allegedly observed sightings of comet Halley.
When you doubt that the reports of alleged sightings of comet Halley really refer to the same comet, or even when you are not shure about that they do, as the unknown author of this article insinuates in the beginning, then you cannot draw any conclusions from the data of the sightings. But he does. So he takes the reports as being reports of comet Halley as granted. And then he identifies a duplication of 695 years in the curve of variations of the years of the return of the comet. He might have with equal right have subsumed the corresponding next returns of alleged comet Halley sightings giving an overlap of 141 to 912 AD with 912 to 1682 AD, extending over 771/770 years.
The sighting reports from 141 to 989 AD are all Chinese, with “possible” supports from Japanese and Korean Sources for the latter three. 1066 is the first assumed sighting in Europe, And then only 1456 starts European continiously repeated recording of Halley’s returns.
So, if the author assumed the overlap he had stated to have been detected, he should demonstrate that 1) 141 to 295 AD would correspond to 912 to 1066 in Chinese history, 2) 374 to 607 in Chinese history would correspond to Chinese or European history from 1145 to 1378, 3) 684 to 912 in Chinese history would correspond to 1456 to 1682 in European history.
These assumptions are not realistic.
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