Historian Says the Middle Ages Never Happened: Phantom Time Theory

Mysterious Universe: Little known German historian, writer, and publisher, Heribert Illig is perhaps one of the most eccentric conspiracy theorists out there. He developed the Phantom Time Theory in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, eventually elucidating his ideas in several books, none of which has yet been translated to English. The Phantom Time Theory says that the years AD 614 through 911, a period commonly known in standard history as the Early Middle Ages, never happened. Get a grip on those words before moving on. Illig says that the Middle Ages – a period that includes the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the rise (and fall) of the Byzantine Empire, and the Viking Age, among other foundational epochs – didn’t happen, and were at some point made up by the academic establishment, through a series of blunders and a heavy reliance on antique documents, which he believes are unreliable.

Illig says that the current year isn’t 2014, but rather is 1739; some 273 years out of date.

The basis of his theory is the discrepancies between the Julian calendar and the current Gregorian calendar.The Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar, was long known to introduce a discrepancy from the tropical year of around one day for each century that the calendar was in use. By the time the Gregorian calendar was introduced in AD 1582, Illig alleges that the old Julian calendar “should” have produced a discrepancy of thirteen days between it and the real (or tropical) calendar. Instead, the astronomers and mathematicians working for Pope Gregory had found that the civil calendar needed to be adjusted by only ten days. From this, Illig concludes that the AD era had counted roughly three centuries which never existed.
He also cites a lack of archaeological evidence for the events thought to have occurred during that time, as well as the presence of Romanesque architecture in tenth-century Europe.

Why? Good question...read more>>>...