These new historical studies suggest the radical idea that recorded Indo-European history was incorrectly recompiled by certain influential scholars and publishers nearly five centuries ago. Moreover, if other studies can verify this radical idea, then perhaps a new world time scale may be needed to replace the common era of the A.D. time scale.
The reason why Indo-European history could have been incorrectly recompiled nearly five centuries ago was because during the need to translate Roman numerical data into modern numerical data, several calendrical mistakes may have led historians into misunderstanding the true length of recorded history.
To better understand this new radical idea of how the true chronology of Western History could have been misunderstood by historians nearly five centuries ago, the following bordered section of this essay is an excerpt from AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR link within the ABOUT THE AUTHOR page area of this website.
Duane: As I state in my book project, during the early Renaissance, just when the printing press was repackaging many hand-written archives - and a new numerical system was replacing the Roman count value system, many scholars and publishers followed the chronological conclusions of the highly illustrated works of THE NUREMBERG CHRONICLE by Hartman Schedel. This "artwork" was a very detailed rendering that graphically and chronologically described an "outline of Western History" from the creation of the Biblical patriarch named Adam. It was published the year after Columbus discovered the New World and survived the great "book burning" campaign issued by the Papal Bull order of 1501 A.D..
Reporter 3: Are you saying that because some publisher in 1493 published a book with a mistaken time-line of recorded history, all other historians followed it and that's why conventional history is wrong? Isn't that a little presumptuous to assume that every historian within the last five centuries made no effort to verify that history book - or any one history book created during the early Renaissance?
Duane: I will try to answer your two questions as follows; First, yes I believe that recorded conventional history could have been "established" by powerful leaders - with the help of the newly invented printing press, during the early Renaissance. And that while other time-line versions of history may have been also published, perhaps none of them survived the power of the religious leaders during the "book burning" campaign of 1501. Second, like the old maxim suggest, "History repeats itself; historians repeat each other", perhaps it is possible that historians have been following a chronology which was written five centuries ago - when very few scholars had the resources to verify or challenge a time-line of history endorsed by the local church.
Reporter 3: What about all those dated manuscripts from before the Renaissance - surely they contain dates that predate any history book and "outline of Western History" printed in 1493? How do you explain away these manuscripts?
Duane: We have assumed that historians have been keeping time records since, well, Biblical times. Perhaps all those dated manuscripts were following the dated conclusions of other historians - one in particular was Dionysius Exiguus, who, according to conventional history, lived some five centuries after Christ. Dionysius established the "A.D." time-line - and used the Roman numeral value system to count historical values. In my book, I discuss how his work and the work of other historians, like the Greco-Egyptian mathematician named Ptolemy, could have created a time-line that influenced Medieval historians. Any original dated manuscript from before the Renaissance is based on the Roman numeral value system which I explain may be misunderstood because of several reasons. One concept is that the "M" symbol may mean a "thousand" to some, but it could have also marked or represented "the son" symbol - meaning a Christian mark symbol just before a year count of a date related to Biblical times.
Reporter 3: Are you suggesting that the Roman numeral "M", when used by Medieval historians to date Medieval events, does not equal the numerical value of a thousand?
Duane: Yes - but because some late Medieval historians assumed that the letter "M" had a value of a thousand when dating events, other historians followed the practice and eventually many historical dates from that era reflected the habit. I believe there exist several examples of late Medieval dates that "excludes" the Roman numerical "M" symbol in their count. Perhaps these "abbreviated" dates are closer to the true year count of Western History than the "long version" dates from that era. Moreover, another numerical letter symbol may have also been misunderstood during archive translations. Because the Latin symbol of "C" has a value of 100, and the "G" symbol has a value of 1000 - as in the word "Grand", perhaps the value of the two symbols were mistakenly interchanged by some important scholars during translation - thus creating an extra "zero" in certain counting situations. Also, it is important to understand that the true length of the Middle Ages depends on whether certain principal dated Medieval archives are original or copies. If they are copies, then they could have been modified by other historians who assumed a different time-line of Western History.
Reporter 3: If what you say is true, then the Middle Ages did not last a thousand years. How many years then do you believe existed within this time period?
Duane: The time period between ancient history and
modern history - otherwise known as the "Middle" Ages,
is as yet unknown. When I first published my book, I made no
attempt to question the time value of the Middle Ages - however,
in Version 2 of my book project, I did try to "shrink"
the conventional thousand year time-line value down to a much
smaller scale, but have since withheld any conclusions until more
research is done.
[UPDATE 12/97: New astronomical evidence based on the 76-period
comet and the "Star of Bethlehem" event suggest that
approximately 120 years may be the year count between Christ and
the Renaissance.]
Reporter 2: How many years ago do you believe Atlantis existed?
Duane: That answer depends on the true length of the
Middle Ages. And until I find enough conclusive evidence that
gives the true length, I don't know.
[UPDATE 12/97: Based on the previous update statement - and other
calendrical data, the capital seaport of Atlantis could have
existed less than a thousand years ago.]
Reporter 3: Your book project also attempts to give a smaller time value to the Greco-Roman Era. You claim that because early historians mistakenly dated the original Olympiad time-line to a four-year event, instead of an annual event, all of Greco-Roman history is four times greater than the truth. If that were so, how come no other historian has ever reached the same conclusion?
Duane: Perhaps because no other historian needed to look at conventional history like I have. Most historians have either been content to just repeat history or "fill in the gaps" of conventional history. Perhaps it was easier to write with the momentum of conventional history than to argue with it. Actually, many historians have been true researchers, but five centuries ago the job of the historian was probably more inventive than scientific because of the limited data available to them. The Renaissance may have been the "age of discovery" - but the "age of information" we all now live in also helps in truly understanding historical data.
In the interim, I have since learned that even if our current dating system was incorrectly "packaged" and "published" nearly five centuries ago, it seems little can be done to change the momentum of the Anno Domini (A.D.) or Common Era (C.E.) dating system.
As our current dating system approaches the year date of 2000 A.D., we all have assumed that nearly twenty centuries have transpired since the birth of Christ. Perhaps this common assumption is about to change because of new calendrical data now available. Perhaps a better understanding of the true length of Western History will result in a new time-line.
Again, the following excerpts are from "THE NEW WORLD TIME SCALE" article.
While maintaining the traditional and historical sequence of Biblical, Greco-Roman and Medieval events, this new time scale advocates an anthropological perspective in which modern civilization originated not from the "fertile crescent" of the Middle East in the Old World, but rather from the Caribbean Basin of Middle America in the New World.
This new time scale suggest a much, much smaller annual record of human history on this planet than what is currently taught in schools. In fact, modern education may be about to experience a surprising shock wave of an historical time bomb!
OLD WORLD GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY
Every time we date a check or enter the date on some business transaction, we are subconsciously acknowledging an ancient time scale formulated in an age when nearly ninety-percent of the public was illiterate and grossly ignorant of world geography.
It was also at this time, during the first mass printing of books done by machine, European scholars began using a number system based on a new "non-Roman" number symbol arrangement.
THE BIBLICAL ERA
At the time of this writing the conventional year date of 1994 A.D. (or A.D. 1994) is assumed to represent that one-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-four years have transpired between the birth of Christ and the present.
The New Testament term "Anno Domini" or "A.D." (Year of our Lord) displayed next to the assumed date in years after the birth of Christ, represents a patriarchal time marker wherein every year the Western World is reminded of how many annual units have taken place since the birth of Christ.
Old Testament dates before the birth of Christ are represented by the symbols "B.C." meaning "Before Christ" and are thought to be measured in years back to the approximate birth date of Adam, the first known Patriarch in Hebrew literature.
Some Hebrew genealogical documents can be retranslated into smaller annual values by assigning sub-annual values to the conventional numerical dates between certain patriarchs.
Although untangling ancient biblical history can get extremely controversial and difficult to understand, the annual dates between some primary patriarchs can be done.
First, by translating the conventional annual value between the beginning of the Judaic Calendar and the birth of Christ into lunar units, a much smaller annual time value will appear.
Thus the 3761 B.C. birth date of Adam, which is also the start
of the Judaic Calendar, can now be realized as 3761 Hellenic
months before Christ or about 314 Hellenic years before Christ.
(A Hellenic year equals 360 days or 12 months at 30-days per
month.)
[UPDATE 12/97: 3,761 months at 29.53 days per month equals 304
years at 365.25 days a year. Therefore, 304 years before Christ
is the date of Adam.]
An example of how Biblical annual unit values can be devalued into lunar unit values is found in the assumed age of the oldest Biblical patriarch known as Methuselah. If his Biblical age of 969 "years" were understood as 969 months, then his real annual age would be about 80 years.
The conventional date of the prophet Daniel may have lived only 625 months or only fifty years before Christ - and not 625 "years" before.
If 1250 months were added together at 29.5 days a month, Moses would have been born only about 101 years before the birth of Christ - instead of c.1250 B.C. as believed by many Biblical scholars.
The conventional date of the patriarch Abraham in c.1875 B.C. would equal about 151 years before Christ if Biblical "year count values" were translated to "lunar count values".
Incidentally, if you haven't noticed yet, according to the new calendrical findings, a major patriarch comes along every fifty years. More on this insight later.
Another contributing factor as to the reason annual dates of biblical history were inflated by theologians nearly five-hundred years ago can be found in understanding the true annual value of a time period used to measure ancient history called a Jubilee.
New calendrical research reveals the Biblical Jubilee
originally was based not on a 49 or 50-year Judaic time period,
but rather on a Hebraic 7-year time period ceremony.
[UPDATE 12/97: New data suggest that a one-day time ceremony
event every 4-years was also used as a Jubilean event by early
agrarian cultures.]
It seems the Hebrews of ancient Phoenicia once employed a calendrical "leap" week formula in which every 364 weeks or seven years, an extra week was added to account for a solar calendar based on 365 days a year.
Forerunner to this 7-year pass-over "week" was an annual "pass-over" day after 364 days or 52-weeks, when an extra day was added to the calendar. Both the annual "leap" day and the 7-year "leap" week [or 4-year time ceremony event] became known as a "Jubilee" in early time alignment ceremonies.
The reason biblical transcribers confused a 7-year Jubilee with another much longer time period Jubilee may have been because there once existed an ancient ceremonial calendrical formula used by our agrarian forefathers that included a "leap" day exactly every 50-years. This lost "leap" day formula was forgotten long ago and will be discussed later.
THE GRECO-ROMAN ERA
The annual history of the Greeks and Romans have been calibrated to the time unit known as the Olympiad. While historical scholars were "packaging" their interpretation of Old World Governmental History from limited calendrical data nearly five centuries ago, they confused the annual value of a 4-year "leap" day time period from the Julian Calendar, once used by the Romans, with the original time value of the Olympiad.
New research has revealed the original Olympiad, and the governmental rulers of the Greco-Roman Era, belong to an annual time count of the four-seasons.
In other words, the 292 documented Olympiads between the first Olympiad near Mt. Olympus and the last Olympiad (392 A.D.) should not be multiplied by four to achieve a total span of over a thousand years, but should be counted as 292 years containing four seasons each year.
The revival of the Olympiad nearly a hundred years ago as a 4-year event was a nice idea, however, like the historians of the Renaissance, the group responsible also misunderstood the original annual value of the true Olympiad.
The original purpose of the Olympiad was to mark an annual agricultural calendar of the four-seasons with a one-day festival and athletic event. How historians ever interpreted it as a five-day event every four-years is a short story in itself.
It seems the original Olympiad, like the Patriarchal "pass-over" day, was part of an annual "leap" day event that belonged to a seven-day weekly calendar system of counting time.
When the Hellenic Empire took control during the 77th Olympiad, a ten-day weekly count system instituted by the new government corrupted the original value of a one day event into a five day event. The five day Olympiad is linked to a 36 week annual calendar which had five days "left over" every year.
When the Romans reintroduced a seven day week counting system around the time of Christ, the Julian Calendar included a 4 year "leap" day event which was misinterpreted during the Renaissance as the annual value of the original Olympiad. This calendrical mistake created by historians about five hundred years ago has resulted in a time span four times its original value.
When the Holy Bible was reassembled into the King James version by historians less than four-hundred years ago, other historians built upon this calendrical misinterpretation and as a consequence, the history of the Greeks and Romans apparently lasted for over a thousand years. At least in print.
THE MIDDLE AGES
Conventional history portrays the period between the fall of
Rome in c.476 A.D. and the beginning of the printing press in
Europe in c.1450 A.D. as the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages have
also been identified with the Dark Ages because the nearly
1000-year time period amounted to little in the way of
inventions, discoveries and general human development when
compared to the pace of our modern era.
(Actually, the age of the Byzantine Empire and the time period of
the Middle Ages are almost the same time span because when the
Olympiad count stopped in c.392 A.D., the Greco-Roman Empire was
divided into by the "Barbarian Migrations" epoch.)
This negative human progress led historical scholars of the Renaissance to "catalog" a poorly documented time period to fit between ancient Greco-Roman history and modern history. The discovery of the printing press and the New World were major events in world history and mark the beginning of the modern era.
A major contributing factor for this calendrical misunderstanding is the mistaken numerical translation from Old World governmental archives, between the Latin number symbol of "C" valued at 100, and the Greek symbol of "G", which is valued at 1000.
The reason the value of the two number symbols were confused during archival translations is based on a recent two-layer discovery process in deciphering the origin of the pictorial symbols themselves.
The first discovery lies within the principal that during the early evolution of alphabetical and numerical symbol formulas, ancient scholars associated a unique calendrical coincident in which 99 phases of the moon equals almost exactly eight solar years - thus, the crescent-moon symbol of "C" was once used to explain the "astronomical value" of 100. It became the Latin symbol equaling 100 in the Roman numeral system.
The second discovery is based upon the alpha-numerical concept that the non-Roman number symbol of "8" when written looks very much like the lower case italic symbol of "g" having a "capital value" of 1000 as in the word "Grand". Moreover, the third letter symbol in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets are the named characters of "gamma" and "gimel" beginning with the Latin "G" symbol instead of the Latin "C" symbol.
When the scholars of the early Renaissance began translating earlier calendrical archives of medieval history, they mistakenly interchanged the Roman value of "C" (100) with "G" (1000), believing that the printed number value of "C" equaled the written number value of the lower case italic symbol of "G" - resulting in the greatly inflated value of the Middle Ages.
Also, it is interesting to note that the Roman numerical system cannot graphically express the value of zero (0).
A brief look into the study of early coin graphics may also help to understand this new calendrical perspective regarding a smaller numerical value for the Middle Ages.
Extensive examination of Old World governmental coins, which in themselves represent perhaps the most important "hard copy" of the true chronological record of Old World Governmental History, will reveal alpha-numerical data that almost every European coin dated before the voyage of Christopher Columbus displays only Roman numeral symbols.
The modern numerical system of dating events in "scriptural" symbols on coins or any written material, really did not begin until after the discovery of the New World.
The few existing European coins with modern numeric dates from just before the voyage of Columbus may have been minted after Columbus with dates suggesting when the event was "founded" and not when the coin was "minted".
Moreover, any original manuscript from before the Renaissance that displays the modern numerical dating system probably uses the abbreviated form without the thousand value before the date.
Therefore, while the historians of the early Renaissance were compiling their interpretation of Old World Governmental History, they could only presume the calendrical dates of certain important medieval events or rulers and based them on Roman letter symbol values.
Another contributing factor as to the reason annual dates of the Middle Ages were inflated can be found in certain religious records.
According to conventional Judaic records, there were approximately thirty Jubilees between the birth of Christ and the voyage of Columbus. If, according to certain Biblical records, a Jubilee was valued at almost 50-years, the assumed time period between Christ and Columbus would equal almost 1500 years.
Add to this religious record the fantastic "calendrical
coincident" in which 77,777 weeks also equals 1492 years,
and you have the makings of what may have appeared to religious
historians almost five-centuries ago, a "divine date"
in which this special numerical weekly count and the discovery
date of a huge continental realm in the western Atlantic marked
the beginning of a new age.
(77,777 weeks times 7 equals 544,439 days or 1491.6 years at 365
days a year)
However, if the original Jubilee was only a 7-year time period
as explained earlier, then the recorded time period of thirty
Jubilees, at 7-years each, suggest only about 210 years existed
between Christ and the voyage of Columbus.
[UPDATE 12/97: Because of new data that reveals the use of a
4-year Jubilee by agrarian cultures, 30 periods at 4-year each
would total about 120 years between Christ in 1302 A.D. (304 AA.)
and the beginning era the Renaissance in c.1450 A.D..]
[NEW UPDATE 12/99: The idea that Jubilee counts were used the
measure the timeline of ancient history by scholars during the
Renaissance is based on the view in which religious records could
have helped formulate the A.D. timeline - however, evidence of
this idea to measure the Middle Ages has not been found to date.]
If 210 years [or 120 years] between Christ and Columbus seems hard to believe, just imagine the lifestyle developments of the last two centuries and compare them to the lifestyle developments of what is supposed to be fifteen centuries. Doesn't conventional Old World Governmental History seem unbalanced?
Was the daily living in Roman times that much different from the daily living in the time of Columbus? If not, then why is the concept that almost a thousand years of history existed between the two time periods so believable? Did the Dark Ages really last a thousand years? Why has no historian ever bothered to question this thousand-year inflation mistake?
Perhaps because historians of the last five-hundred years would rather write stories to fill the gaps between important medieval events than to challenge the calendrical accountability of certain religious or political scholars from the Renaissance.
What all this calendrical math comes down to is that after lining up our new Biblical and Olympiad dates of Christ and graphically placing these annual time count values before as yet unknown year value of the Middle Ages time period, the calendrical discovery that Christ was alive less than a thousand years ago is hard, but not impossible, to believe.
This extraordinary calendrical discovery is scientifically supported by recent radiocarbon-14 evidence in which the "Turin Shroud of Christ" was extensively examined and dated at about seven or eight centuries ago.