Just how accurate are the ages and the calendar?

[HorseArcher]

Ok, here goes the the wiki:

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. It was first proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius, and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom it was named, on 24 February 1582 by papal bull Inter gravissimas. It is a reform of the Julian calendar.

So..ok, let me get this straight. Our base of years depends on 2 guys, starting with Julius Ceasar and then a Pope and the whole thing depends on , on an approximate incarnation of Jesus. (Anno Domini).

Now, it's not the question of if the numbers/days/moon cycles/leap years correct or not, but can the calendar be manipulated to add/distract years at various points of time by those who are in a some sort of reign (ex: a ruler) and in the control of writing the known history?

And if you do so have the control of what year we are in, would that be also make it possible to remove/add various events that happened or how about even worse, stuff added that didn't happen at all by "squeezing it in" , making some room for it?

If we go with the Gregorian Calendar or the Julius Calendar, are we sure it's 2008 and not 1998?

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

If we go with the Gregorian Calendar or the Julius Calendar, are we sure it's 2008 and not 1998?

Yes, we are.

Just because those guys set/reset when the cycles start and how long the cycles are going to be doesn't mean they could somehow achieve mind-magic and make events and years "disappear" etc. Your question is silly.

[Strattios]

Ummm, those men developed the calendar as in when the year "0" is as well as things like length of year. They don't control the years, they just say what number the year is. If it was suddenly to become 1998, then every date would have to be set back a decade.

[conon394]

If we go with the Gregorian Calendar or the Julius Calendar, are we sure it's 2008 and not 1998?

The years (zero year) as noted already are arbitrary but so what if you decide the Gregorian calendar is of by a year you just predate date things a year?

In any case the more accurate Gregorian system was already know before JC he just picked a hack to make his calendar.

[HorseArcher]

Yes, we are.

Just because those guys set/reset when the cycles start and how long the cycles are going to be doesn't mean they could somehow achieve mind-magic and make events and years "disappear" etc. Your question is silly.

Thidareik, you got one hell of a tunnel vision. Never consider alternative for anything? Never ask, never question just accept it as it is?

No need mind magic. Only need stories about various events based on nothing else but written accounts from writers who were biased in one way or another.

And if someone wants to tell me, that the Vatican isn't biased - especially in the middle ages- then I don't know what to tell you.

Now, in this video I do not agree with this book commercial at all, but you should pay attention to the first 2-3 minutes about the stories of forgery and plagiarism. Indeed, "history" can be created out of thin air, if there is no archeological and cross-examination ever done, especially if everything else is point opposite, so they actually dismiss the "real account" as forgery, because it doesn't fit the current picture.

[Sebdeas]

Minor detail, year zero doesn't exist, because it would mean there was nothing. It starts with year 1.

But you can't change time, they just wrote down a different date.
For example, the Russians used the Julian calender till 1918, which explains why the October Revolution actually happened in November, and most Protestant countries didn't start using the Gregorian calender till 1700, which could also explain why dates don't match up.

[Odovacar]

I guessed what is the hole from which this wind blows...
Anatoly Formenko..and our german friend, Illig.

Unfortunately for our friends, there are scientist who examine trees to see their annual rings. (Dendrochronology) They examined a roman bridge's remaining tree "legs" in Germany which was built around AD 35, and its really that old.

If Illigs theory would be true the trees would have lesser annual rings, by 300 years.
Or the bridge was not built in 35 AD, but 300 years before that..when the romans were lords not even in North Italy

[ThiudareiksGunthigg]

Thidareik, you got one hell of a tunnel vision. Never consider alternative for anything? Never ask, never question just accept it as it is?

Er, no - it's just that I've been around long enough to come across many, many ideas and to have examined them carefully. Like Odovacar, I detected that you were talking about something like Formenko and Illig's silly theories. They have been comprehensively debunked. I've already done the necessary reading to be able to say that. Now's your turn to go and do the same.

[HorseArcher]

Er, no - it's just that I've been around long enough to come across many, many ideas and to have examined them carefully. Like Odovacar, I detected that you were talking about something like Formenko and Illig's silly theories. They have been comprehensively debunked. I've already done the necessary reading to be able to say that. Now's your turn to go and do the same.

Ok, but let's consider this. Plagiarism and editing of various documents regarding history of a particular country/area/ruler/ did happen. They have been going after various parts of history, which only have written evidence and/or physical evidence is lacking or none-existent/never found.

Let me tell you an example. (I'm making this up)

An emperor has been crowned at a particular kindgom. He really sucks as an emperor, but he is an excellent contributor and follower of a certain religious group. This religious group has tremendous influence on the kingdom and even beyond (christianity or islamic etc) and they have what they need , an excellent ruler for their own propaganda (a puppet).
This guy really sucks, but history needs to remember him for more than what really he has done, so a 100 or 200 years later a certain person charged with writing a certain book (let's say a monk) has to put him in a light that looks favorable , because of the situation ( we're talking about 200 years later) requires it (his descendant is about to be crowned or the church is facing a critisism, or a war or similar critical situation) .
So what this writer needs to do is to introduce him as somebody great, but looking at his deeds , there is nothing to be proud of.
So let's make him somebody more than he was. He (the writer) can't really just add stuff without facing the problem of someone will find out, so he got to do it the smart way.

Let's say this emperor was born at a certain age, and crowned at a certain age, so the easiest thing would be to slide his date of birth and slide his start a bit to create some "space" for his deeds, because some documents proving his bio does not allow to "stick in" more stuff. For example , in 1244AD, his country was in war and he was visiting another kingdom for 3 years, so from 1244 to 1247, you can't really add anything because the other kingdom's historian documents would immediately disqualify , whatever this monk is trying to add since there are documents proving what he was doing. (Of course, it is easier, if both kingdom is subjugated by the same relgious propaganda and they work in coordination, same language, same church etc. )

So how to outsmart this? Easy. Slide his birthdate a few years , disprove previous documents and slide the year he was crowned and stick in 5-6 years ...here or there, wherever it's the best. Now, you can add whatever you want into this space , artificially created and we got ourselves a hero we needed.

Consequences?

Today (let's say 600 years later) our historians digging around and reading ancient texts and trying to connect various events to certain ages, and they happened to be using the crowning of this king as a start off point, and they get into a giant confusion of conflicting info. They not only will slide the events, but never realize that those years never happened and the deeds never happened, but yet treated as fact......later add this to certain country today basing its politics on this event and walks the line according to this and disproving this fact would create such a confusion, that it is better left alone, or instead of going after the facts, the historians would ignore anything that disqualifies , since the event has already written down as "unbreakable" and the "base of a starting point".

Get my drift? :hmmm:

[conon394]

The 4th Horseman of Apocalypse

But that won’t work because modern history is not simply a compilation of chronicles and only from one source.

Dendrochronology has already been pointed out – but take Athens (or elsewhere in Greece) - the Mycenaean, Classical and Roman strata are demonstrably below the Byzantine and Frankish/Venetian ones. Moreover Olynthus a site that defiantly came to end in one point of time bears a correlation to only one Athenian layer – 4th century Athens no amount of monks playing with books is going to change that unless you think they set out in droves to fabricate evidence and bury it.

[Odovacar]

Get my drift? :hmmm:

No. First you need to prove it happened.
And you forget that foreign chroniclers frequently remarked when a king was crowned, partially because the change in foreign politics.

[SigniferOne]

Today (let's say 600 years later) our historians digging around and reading ancient texts and trying to connect various events to certain ages, and they happened to be using the crowning of this king as a start off point, and they get into a giant confusion of conflicting info. They not only will slide the events, but never realize that those years never happened and the deeds never happened, but yet treated as fact......later add this to certain country today basing its politics on this event and walks the line according to this and disproving this fact would create such a confusion, that it is better left alone, or instead of going after the facts, the historians would ignore anything that disqualifies , since the event has already written down as "unbreakable" and the "base of a starting point".

Get my drift? :hmmm:

HorseArcher, please don't tell me you buy into this whole Fomenko nonsense. There are two main ways in which the reliability of a history may be checked: one is by external evidence, cross-checking the details of the work with known facts or works of other historians; the other is by internal evidence, dependent on the author's reliability with prior facts, on his motives and values derived from our judgment of his character.

Given all that, it's very hard for most authors to fudge history in such a way that we couldn't check it. The only period of history that this mainly applies to is to the Middle Ages, especially prior to 1000 AD when illiteracy reigned and records were short in the extreme: this often produced just one chronicler whom we had to trust for hundreds of years of history, with little to corroborate his story using outside references. Second, that time period produced chroniclers, a type of historians who left almost no trace of their character and values, and were lampooned by Polybius as being focused on mere enumeration of facts without any reference to characters, motives, causes, or evaluation. See for instance the Chronicle of Villehardouin, an important source for the 4th Crusade yet completely bereft of any insight into the human personality, motivations, emotions, and historical causes; content with merely listing a few bare facts. Thus it's nearly impossible to evaluate his character and determine his trustworthiness, external references aside. In a famous example, one medieval chronicler says:

Year W, plague occurred
Year X, famine occurred
Year Y, battle of poitiers happened
Year Z, plague occurred

Such a monumental even for world history, mentioned in a line. Detailed analyses of causes and effects: absent. How could you make a detailed evaluation of this chronicler's character? You can't.

But for Classical and post-14th century history this is less and less the problem. See for instance Leonardo Bruni's History of Florentine People, a luxuriant, profuse examination of values, causes, and ideas. Or see Vasari's Lives of the Artists, a vital source about men like Michelangelo and Donatello which goes into great depth to examine their personalities and character traits. One can easily grasp the characters of both Bruni and Vasari from the details of their work, and determine the level of their trustworthiness quite aside from external evidence. Exactly the same applies to Classical Titus Livius; some of the early portions of his work no longer have surviving corroborative evidence, but we can gather a lot of evidence for his level of trustworthiness from internal evidence and from the values of his personality.

[HorseArcher]

HorseArcher, please don't tell me you buy into this whole Fomenko nonsense.

No, I'm not buying into the Formenko nonsense, (as I indicated in the first post), I'm just pointing out the proven forgeries and plagiarism already uncovered and documented and treated as facts by all historians.

What makes you think there are no more forgeries and plagiarism?

I just don't understand people, who think we're living in the ages , where everything is uncovered and done and there is no more to be added or taken. As the saying goes, every generations thinks they are smarter than the one before and wiser than the one after.

[SigniferOne]

No, I'm not buying into the Formenko nonsense, (as I indicated in the first post), I'm just pointing out the proven forgeries and plagiarism already uncovered and documented and treated as facts by all historians.

What makes you think there are no more forgeries and plagiarism?

I thought the answer was in the post above; two reasons: external evidence, and internal evidence.

I just don't understand people, who think we're living in the ages , where everything is uncovered and done and there is no more to be added or taken. As the saying goes, every generations thinks they are smarter than the one before and wiser than the one after.

I think you are putting forth a straw man. New facts and realizations may always be uncovered. Which still doesn't necessarily mean that whole histories will be re-written. The course of history is pretty well set.

[Odovacar]

Chronicle of Villehardouin, an important source for the 4th Crusade yet completely bereft of any insight into the human personality, motivations, emotions, and historical causes; content with merely listing a few bare facts. Thus it's nearly impossible to evaluate his character and determine his trustworthiness, external references aside.

Why is it impossible? He is clearly biased in many matters, that's fact simply.
On the contrary its easy to see his shortcomings as historian.
Though truth be told, he just wrote his memories not history.

There are more serious medieval "chroniclers" like Wiliam of Tyr and the praised Otto von Freising.
Both wrote very good works.

[Orretje]

There's also the fact that people in the Middle Ages did not see time the way we do now. We see time as progressing and the world evolving along with it. In Medieval times, time was simply the here and now and did not progress in the way we see. The best example to illustrate are the Medieval pictures of Christ on the Cross with Roman soldiers standing around them, all wearing 15th century armour. For people of the Middle Ages, any day would be the same as the present, so a 1000 years ago things were exactly the same as they are now. In the 1400's there were knights in armor, so in the year 1 or 500 there were also knights in armor. Therefore it didn't really matter when exactly something happened, as historical inaccuracy did not exist as an idea, since time and the world were static.

[HorseArcher]

There's also the fact that people in the Middle Ages did not see time the way we do now. We see time as progressing and the world evolving along with it. In Medieval times, time was simply the here and now and did not progress in the way we see. The best example to illustrate are the Medieval pictures of Christ on the Cross with Roman soldiers standing around them, all wearing 15th century armour.

Well, the whole problem is that the picture itself was painted in the Middle Ages. What we need is a drawing or carving from the probable time of Jesus, which we don't have, at least I'm not aware of it. We have writings, but even the first writings, that ever mentions Jesus is about approximately a 100 years later, after his death. It's like the whole thing about Jesus being very much looking like a Caucasian, while everyone knows he was middle eastern (jewish), so the pictures are deceptive.

For people of the Middle Ages, any day would be the same as the present, so a 1000 years ago things were exactly the same as they are now. In the 1400's there were knights in armor, so in the year 1 or 500 there were also knights in armor. Therefore it didn't really matter when exactly something happened, as historical inaccuracy did not exist as an idea, since time and the world were static.

Perhaps too static if you ask me, but before someone labels me a conspiracy nut, I just have to say, that the "static" is much more of an illusion , since we're looking at paintings and images done in the middle-ages, which were done in the fashion of that era.
Just for the records, I studied art, so pretty much anything from history reflects of that time's belief , that's why we see the greeks and romans usually go after muscular, physically fit image of their heroes, while the middle ages emphasise on catholic and islamic view of graciousness (long faces, expensive dresses etc) .