Inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos series, a number of researchers have offered radical reconstructions of ancient chronology. Velikovsky himself argued that much of ancient Near Eastern history should be downdated by some five centuries. Gunnar Heinsohn, in turn, would downdate the Old Babylonian period by over one thousand years. The German scholar Heribert Illig would have us believe that some 300 years need to be deleted from AD chronology and that Charlemagne never existed. I have criticized these chronologies at some length both in the journal Aeon and on the internet newsgroup Kronia. A brief sampling of these writings follows.
- Information on Dr. Heinsohn’s historical revisions
- A review of Charles Ginenthal’s book Pillars of the Past
- The science of astronomical retrocalculations; How it impacts the radical chronologies
- Discussion of ancient eclipse observations and their relevance to the chronological debate