El Iblis Shah on Tue, 4 Aug 1998 17:25:48 +0200 (MET DST) |
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<nettime> The Great Time Swindle! |
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 .:. 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