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Johan S. Moen




Location: Kristiansand, Norway
Joined: 26 Jan 2004

Posts: 259

PostPosted: Mon 14 Nov, 2011 2:22 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:


My apologies for giving that impression! It was a wry comment on a trend that I've seen.


Cheers, and no problem, I do get that myself sometimes! How about we say you get to make a factually incorrect comment on american postwar literature(sci-fi for extra points) somewhere, and I won't butt in? Big Grin

Matthew Amt wrote:
Point taken, at least to a point! But seriously, do you get many peer-reviewed publications in support of whacked-out conspiracy theories? (I guess I'd expect a *few*!)


Not an enormous amount, but more than I'd like(often in somewhat disguised forms). Peer-review in itself doesn't always do the trick, since it depends on who the peers are...and on who runs the journal. Similar stuff happens in "mainstream" academia too of course, from time to time, one need not look further than the Sokal affair. Tnankfully, that one was at least deliberate. And hilarious! Happy

With regards to what you said about how entrenched the dates are; it is going to be interesting to watch how that pans out if the chronology is indeed revised. I loathe to think how many thousands of textbooks will then have the wrong dates, and how much potential confusion there would be, especially when citing old publications in newer ones.

Johan Schubert Moen
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Jess Rozek




Location: Burlington, VT
Joined: 23 Mar 2010

Posts: 30

PostPosted: Mon 14 Nov, 2011 4:50 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

See what I'm wondering is how 13 days versus 10 days missing translates into "we lost 300 years!"

And hell, if there was that much understanding between all the empires and cultures of the time to engineer this feat, how is it there was so much war?

I can see it now:
Otto III: Hey will guys help me be the Christian of the millennium by adding 300 years to your calendars?
Neighboring king: Yeah sure, we'll forge 300 years into all of our documents, but we simply cannot allow your kingdom's boundaries to cross that river! TO WAR!!!! Big Grin
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Ken Speed





Joined: 09 Oct 2006

Posts: 656

PostPosted: Mon 14 Nov, 2011 7:51 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Dan wrote, "In the Bronze Age this is exactly the case. It was an artificial mechanism to help reconcile the dodgy Egyptian chronology."


Can you give me more information please. I have to admit I have no idea what you're talking about which doesn't mean that you're incorrect; you're just referring to something of which I'm unaware.
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Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

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PostPosted: Mon 14 Nov, 2011 10:39 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

This might help
http://www.centuries.co.uk/preface.htm
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Yuri Serebemnick





Joined: 03 Sep 2008

Posts: 35

PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 1:44 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Really interesting stuff here, gentlemen.
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Matthew Amt




Location: Laurel, MD, USA
Joined: 17 Sep 2003

Posts: 1,456

PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 5:22 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Johan S. Moen wrote:
I loathe to think how many thousands of textbooks will then have the wrong dates


Yeah, that gets brought up a lot, too, "But we'll have to rewrite all the books!" Again, not to be picking on you, but what objection can there be to publishing correct information? Any textbook below university level is not going to be much of an issue, and the number of university courses on the Bronze Age is darn slim, in my experience. On the other hand, there is a constant flood of books these days offering "a new look" at whatever topic is popular, so shifting the dates doesn't seem like such a big deal in that regard. To me, it just seems like a great chance for all the bigwigs in academia to jump on the wagon and publish new and exciting stuff, but how many of them are going to hold out until the wagon runs over them? Weird...

Quote:
and how much potential confusion there would be, especially when citing old publications in newer ones.


THAT could be interesting, yeah. Probably a lot of transitional language at first, e.g., "1000 BC (1250 old chronology)" or something like that, until folks get used to it. Notes at the front telling how to adjust to the old dates, etc. This all had to have happened a century or more ago as all these high dates got established, because before that the low chronology was generally accepted! Geometric followed Mycenaean very nicely without all the garbage in between. Not much point in studying if we can't handle the changes it may bring. As a comparison, look at what astronomers go through! For a while the solar system kept getting new planets, until we decided that there were 9. Then some silly agency decided to "downgrade" poor Pluto, and we have to fix all the books! (Me, I'd downgrade that agency to a "club"...) Not to mention all the stuff that's being discovered outside our system these days.

Well, I talk too much! Kind of a frothing radical on Bronze Age Chronology, I'm afraid. (And it's a good *300* years, not just 250 like those wimps Peter James and Dan Howard keep saying, ha! Froth froth froth!)

Matthew
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Randall Moffett




Location: Northern Utah
Joined: 07 Jun 2006
Reading list: 5 books

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PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 5:48 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Truth is for the ancient period moving fifty, a hundred,even two hundred years is often not that much of an issue as often we are at times dealing with periods of time much larger than this due to limits on remaining evidence. When I started teaching on the period again last January (after years of teaching only medieval classes) I mention the possibility of this issue and to date no one has had a hard time dealing with the fact there might be an adjustment/alternative time line, though I do still largely stick to the conventional chronology. In some way the newer framework fits in, if for example the Trojan war is taking place in the tenth century BC it would in some ways explain the weakened and quickly developing state of Greece and some of the major shifts that take place there from 850-800 BC on for the next few hundred years quite nicely. Since there is a change from what had been a rather long lived culture there might be a major part of this change.

Does that then extend the Mycenaean Culture a few hundred years longer?

RPM
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Sean Manning




Location: Austria
Joined: 23 Mar 2008

Posts: 853

PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 7:43 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Randall Moffett wrote:
Truth is for the ancient period moving fifty, a hundred,even two hundred years is often not that much of an issue as often we are at times dealing with periods of time much larger than this due to limits on remaining evidence. When I started teaching on the period again last January (after years of teaching only medieval classes) I mention the possibility of this issue and to date no one has had a hard time dealing with the fact there might be an adjustment/alternative time line, though I do still largely stick to the conventional chronology. In some way the newer framework fits in, if for example the Trojan war is taking place in the tenth century BC it would in some ways explain the weakened and quickly developing state of Greece and some of the major shifts that take place there from 850-800 BC on for the next few hundred years quite nicely. Since there is a change from what had been a rather long lived culture there might be a major part of this change.

Does that then extend the Mycenaean Culture a few hundred years longer?

RPM

I don't think so. The Egyptian chronology which everything else is based on is based on Manetho, the papyri which were available a hundred years ago, and some dodgy interpretations of astronomical details. If its seriously mistaken, the dates assigned to pottery types elsewhere need to be reassigned. Archaeologists have been slow to pay for carbon dating of finds whose context they can fit into the standard chronology, although some have started to do it to rebutt James. A group called the Aegean Dendrochronology Project is trying to link up the Bronze Age and Iron Age wood finds so they can use them to rebut James; I'm not certain that the results will be what they expect, but I think its an excellent idea.
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Johan S. Moen




Location: Kristiansand, Norway
Joined: 26 Jan 2004

Posts: 259

PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 9:11 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:

Yeah, that gets brought up a lot, too, "But we'll have to rewrite all the books!" Again, not to be picking on you, but what objection can there be to publishing correct information?


None really; it's wasn't meant as an objection on my part, if that is what has to happen in order for the field to advance then I'm very much fine by that. I'm just musing on the fuss it's going to cause - and to be honest, I'm glad I won't be bang in the middle of it when it happens. Happy

Johan Schubert Moen
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Timo Nieminen




Location: Brisbane, Australia
Joined: 08 May 2009
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PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 12:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Dark-Ages a myth?         Reply with quote

Len Parker wrote:

Under Sources vs Sources, Illig does raise some good questions about the Aachen construction. http://www.bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/illig_paper.htm


Not such a unique building, and the similar buildings are of Carolingian age. Not nearby, though - the closest geographically is AFAIK an Abbasid palace (Qasr al-Dhahab in Baghdad). The style is essentially Central Asian (see Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road, for discussion of this, and connections between these states), and can be seen in Central Asian palaces (many examples if one is willing to extend the comparison the tent-palaces; if not, fewer examples) and Buddhist architecture.

"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
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Dan Howard




Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Joined: 08 Dec 2004

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PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 1:05 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Sean Manning wrote:
A group called the Aegean Dendrochronology Project is trying to link up the Bronze Age and Iron Age wood finds so they can use them to rebut James; I'm not certain that the results will be what they expect, but I think its an excellent idea.

I think they are in for a surprise. You'll see lots of weasle words and dodgy data interpretation to try and avoid admitting that James was right.
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Len Parker





Joined: 15 Apr 2011

Posts: 484

PostPosted: Tue 15 Nov, 2011 6:12 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I've been poking around looking for more carolingian architecture and I found this on Charlemagne's palace Ingelheim. http://orgs.uww.edu/avista/papers/aachen_sanderson.html I think everyone interested in the period would like to see more excavation and artifacts. Illig's theory on phantom time seems to hang on Einhard's account of the period being completely bogus.
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E. Storesund





Joined: 10 Jan 2011

Posts: 101

PostPosted: Wed 16 Nov, 2011 12:16 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I love stuff like this that just doesn't add up (not talking about Howard's subject, which I am not familiar with).
Kjell Aartun, who won the royal medal for "outstanding research" after claiming, like several others, to have deciphered the Phaistos disc and linear A.

More staggering, though, is his claim that ALL runic inscriptions prior to the viking age are written in a semitic language, and totally unrelated to proto-germanic or proto-nordic. Not to mention, that he interprets them all to be written as part of some fertility cult. He also sees hieroglyphics and other signs that nobody else sees in the inscriptions, or where other people see nothing but cracks in the mounatin. Nobody can turn an "ek erilaz" inscription into an erotic novel like he does.
B-b....but what... but what about the language we can ACTUALLY READ in the inscriptions? We would basically have to ignore everything we know about runology, and the languages of the inscriptions to accept this theory.

Maybe we can link the two theories and suggest the sexual revolution of the 60's is ACTUALLY the same event as the arrival of pervert rune-carvers from the mediterranean.
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