<nettime> The Great Time Swindle!

[El Iblis Shah <eliblis@t0.or.at>]

The Great Time Swindle - European History a Fake !
A patch for the Millenium Bug Problem? 

There has been quite some media attention in German speaking countries on
discoveries of large scale medieval forgeries of scriptures, official
documents and codices. Specially in 12th century Europe they were widely
used as instruments of political legitimization and psychological
propaganda. A large amount of "anticipatory" forgery raised questions:
documents that were supposedly faked in the dark ages (6th -9th century)
but with too many details on later events to be explained as
self-fulfilling prophecies

A cultural time-warp based on symbol manipulation?

A recent book on "The Invention of the Middle Ages, or the greatest forgery
of time in History" 1) is widely discussed and has made it to the circuit
of cultural magazine formats on TV.

The controversial thesis of this publication claims that the dark ages were
so dark as to be practically non-existent. Especially for the period of
between 611 - 914 there is no hard evidence that anything ever happened
within that time. According to the author the assumption of an invented
time is supported by the fact that the Gregorian calendar reform in the
16th century only corrected 10 days, instead of the necessary 12,7 or 13
days for the three centuries in question.

Those of us who felt a deep unease about the new millenium can cheer up-
according to this research we are just about entering the 18th century, its
approximately 1695.

In our fast paced time the accumulated wealth of an extra 300 years on a
time-bank could proof extremely valuable. This is not only an instant cure
for Millenium Madness but also a simple solution for the Millenium Bug in
computer operating systems.

At the center of research is Charles the Great, Charlemagne, the unique
emperor of European unity in the 8th century.

The larger than life tasks ascribed to Charles the Great, from his physical
qualities, to his intellectual capacity, his financial power, military
success and spiritual status clearly belong in the realm of the fantastic
and truly superhuman.

Many of the wondrous accomplishments seem to be totally incompatible with
the reality of an economically weak and poorly developed Europe with an
undeveloped trade and an inadequate  communication and money system . The
rather bleak scenario shows hardly any urban centers within the ruins of
the roman developments.

A huge collection of circumstantial evidence is brought forward to prove
that his grand empire is really fictional and a detailed archeological
analysis questions the authenticity of all assumed 8th and 9th century
architecture.

Charles the Great, the supposed descendant of "the House of David" (yes,
that's Jesus supposed bloodline, the messianic legacy) is debunked as a
mythological figure and indeed as an only legendary "God-king".

To put it short- the greatest historical figure of the middle ages is about
as real as Father Christmas.

A tongue in cheek Egon Friedell is quoted on the book cover saying:
"Groundbreaking revelations are much less to be expected in recent history
than in ancient history because of the long time span involved."
Obviously he did not know about the millenium Bug and a world where
operating systems are in a delicate balance of instability.

Needless to say the research of this group of deep time-warp historians is
challenging the foundations of all canonical works on the origins of the
European world. Accordingly it is getting responses from the scientific
community that range from blank hostility to ornate ridicule - but most of
all they are trying to ignore it.

A historical example of the disinformation society?

Martin Bernal, in his controversial book "Black Athena, The Afroasiatic
Roots of Classical Civilization" 2), shows the large scale of deep spin and
historical disinformation in the work of European scholars of the last
centuries and touches many relevant issues regarding the cultural
background of the so called middle ages.

Black Athena is an analysis of the systematical distortion of historical
evidence on the part of classical scholars. Based on racism and combined
with political interests ("The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985")
they are tilting the perspective towards a eurocentric gridlock of
ideological hegemony in the interests of a white, male power elite. The
ignoring, denying, and surpressing of the crucial role of African, Semitic,
Moorish and other non-European influence in western history amounts to
censorship. (Bernal's analysis also uses some major corrections of
timetables like the realization that the volcanic Thera eruption, thought
to have destroyed the Minoan civilization of Crete in about 1500-1450 BC,
actually happened 200 years earlier, in 1628 BC.)

Naturally Bernal has encountered immense opposition to his thoroughly
documented research. (One might just have a revelationary experience that
everything you learned in school about his-story is terribly wrong.)

An electronic time-code catastrophy?

While it becomes increasingly clear that disinformation, black propaganda
and symbolic domination are very much part of our history and the oldest
media, the exponentially increased  possibilities of social control and
mind control through the manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum and
the new media have not yet been fully realized.

It has been demonstrated that artificial empires can be skillfully created
so it should be much easier to make civilizations disappear.  Strata of
digital data to be rediscovered by future archeologists could lead to a
future where digital archeology will selectively reconstruct the past from
buried layers of bits and bytes as electronic witnesses. Even the use of
time-machines by explorers of the future might result in ambiguous results
and could lock into some arbitrary echoes of virtual realities.

Our past/future will then be based on a computer artifact, possibly some
random futuristic wargame of the future/past. A barely reconstructed
ancient CD as the blueprint of our lost civilization? A total recall of
garbaged memory?

The broken timelines of European culture could get lost in the dark ages of
a disturbed electromagnetic space-time continuum.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

1) Heribert Illig: Das Erfundene Mittelalter Die grosste Zeitfaelschung
der Geschichte, Duesseldorf 1996ISBN3-430-14953-3  (GERMAN EDITION ONLY!)
http://home.ivm.de/~Guenter/illig.html
Klappententext:
http://home.ivm.de/~Guenter/karl.kl.html

2) Martin Bernal's Black Athena
A web page for Hum110 Conference #12
http://homer.reed.edu/Minott/class/black-athena-kerr.html

Major Primary Sources for the Black Athena Dispute:
http://homer.reed.edu/BlackAthena.html

Martin Bernal's Post to the Athena Debate
http://www.he.net/~skyeagle/bern.htm

Martin Bernal
http://www.africanhistory.com/bernal.html




El Iblis Shah
eliblis@t0.or.at

VHF  .:.   Research Fellow
Virtual Heritage Foundation
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