Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

[Aegis]

I stumbled across this article in Macleans magazine (a Canadian magazine) today, and found it rather interesting. It deals with the chronology of history, and whether or not we have the right idea on what time it really is. The idea behind it is that the only, truly accurate way to measure time is through celestial bodies, and their movements through our sky. Because we have not been doing it in such a way, we are supposedly almost a millenia off from what the date actually is.

Anyway, I found it to be a really fascinating article. While I am still somewhat skeptical of the idea (fear of change, I suppose), the idea is presented quite well, with a certain bit of logic behind it. I have always felt the accepted Gregorian calander to be somewhat off, though never to this extent, and given my interest in the history of the Catholic church, this is a great bit of research to follow.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

You might think it's 2005, but a maverick mathematician says it's actually 963

BRIAN BETHUNE

Time's arrow, historians like to say, flies in one direction only. Everything has its cause, rooted in what has come before. That makes chronology the spine of history, the plot line in the agreed-upon narrative that connects humanity with its past. Most historians don't believe that Jesus Christ was born 2,005 years ago this month, but they all accept that he lived around two millennia ago, and that his era was preceded by some ancient cultures and followed by others: the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages and successive modern eras. Just about everything we think we understand about how we got here from there is based on that sequence.

So scholars tend to sputter when confronted, as they are in The Lost Millennium: History's Timetables Under Siege (Knopf) by University of Victoria mathematician Florin Diacu, with the ideas of a maverick Russian mathematician named Anatoli Fomenko. Having reworked the astronomical calculations that underlie standard chronology, Fomenko argues that time is out of joint. History as commonly reckoned is about 1,000 years too long, contends the mathematician. Most of those centuries should be carved out of the Middle Ages, which barely existed as a bridge between the ancient and modern worlds: Christ, Greek warriors and medieval knights all lived at the same time. It's an understatement to call this idea revolutionary, although lunacy is the more common assessment from historians.

Fomenko's assault on standard chronology is based on his specialty, celestial mechanics, which allows scientists to track the movements of stars and planets over time. That, in turn, provides precise dates for ancient events associated with those movements, especially eclipses. There's nothing new in the method: for 500 years scholars have used astronomy to fix such dates as we do know -- but Fomenko's calculations have radically shifted some of them. None more so than in the case of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, one of the few events in Ancient Greek history that can be given an exact date. It thereby functions as the hook on which much Greek chronology hangs. The Athenian historian Thucydides mentions three eclipses in the first 18 years of the war, a sequence that scholars have traditionally placed from 431 to 413 BCE. But Fomenko shows that those eclipses could not have been as Thucydides describes them. According to the mathematician, the only 18-year span of eclipses matching the historian's account occurred from 1039 to 1057 CE, almost 15 centuries later.

Startling as that scenario is, Fomenko doesn't -- quite -- visualize pagan warriors, worshippers of Apollo and Zeus, slugging it out in Christian Greece 1,000 years after the birth of Jesus. That's because he also cast his eye over the three-hour eclipse that Gospel accounts place at the hour of Christ's death. Fomenko's conclusion? Jesus was crucified in 1075. Those two re-datings convinced Fomenko of his millennium shift hypothesis, and he began looking over the Middle Ages for proof the era never was. He found it, to his satisfaction at least, in lists of popes that he thinks include the same individuals repeatedly, and through equating medieval rulers like Charlemagne with their Roman predecessors.

Fomenko, a 50-year-old professor at Moscow State University, is clearly a driven man, and he and his followers are respectable mathematicians. But he's one crackpot historian. Consider a rhetorical question from Diacu, who makes a heroic effort in his book to tiptoe through this surreal minefield as a neutral. Since there was a brief eclipse in 33 CE, and another in 368 that was as lengthy as the Gospels claim (though otherwise different), as well as Fomenko's choice in 1075: which best provides a date for the Crucifixion?

Well, how about none of them? The mathematician, master of a sophisticated and precise science, demonstrates a jaw-dropping naïveté when it comes to the messy business of human history. That Fomenko can't find an eclipse to closely match the Gospels' before the 11th century may be a problem for those who take every word of Scripture literally. But it's not a difficulty for secular historians, who are more inclined to think the evangelists wrote about the sky darkening at the Crucifixion because that's what the sky ought to do when the Son of God dies. Similarly, when given two choices about Thucydides -- that he exaggerated in his description of the eclipses or that he was a contemporary of William the Conqueror -- historians of Ancient Greece will, every time, take option No. 1.

The time wars are dominated more by professional prejudice and plain ignorance than anything else. The mathematicians refuse to recognize that crunching the numbers correctly still won't make the Middle Ages disappear. There simply isn't enough time in a scenario that moves sharply from the ancient world to the modern age -- time for the present-day ethnicities and languages of Europe to emerge. That doesn't mean historians, who literally can't do Fomenko's math, should respond like one of Diacu's professors, who asks why established history should be overthrown simply to smooth out the wobbles in some geek's celestial calculations. It may well be that many supposedly fixed dates are not all that certain, and some sequences may need to be adjusted (if not by a millennium). A little humility might be less sensational, but it would look better on both sides: history's timetable is too vital to our understanding of ourselves to twist or ignore.

Comments?

[dj_venom]

Time is irrelevant. We made it up, you could base it on a hundred different things, and end up with one hundred different results. Whether the one we use is accurate or not, I really couldn't care.

I can see where he is coming from and understand that there could be reason for chance, but it's not worth it. We are all comfortable with what we have, why change?

At least, that's my opinion, but then again, it wouldn't be my decision .

[Phreddie]

Well, besides the influence of the commies that are obvioulsy behind it, they are just trying to prove that the greeks invented Communism, seeing as saying that has helped the Democracies of the world.

On a serious note, I dont pretend to know the complexities of his calculations, but there is another way we know of dates, in a more relative fashion. Carbon Dating, we have found artifacts from those periods, and used carbon dating (not that I know what it is, except that it uses carbon i think, please correct me if wrong) to establish what period it is from. I doubt he can get by the science that comes from beneath the Earth, even if it might look like its wrong from above. Besides, every one knows historians exagerate, the winners write the history books for a reason, to make them selves look good, and when the losers escape and write their own, they blame their loss on some phenomena they cante xplain, like Thucydides eclipse.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by dj_venom

Time is irrelevant. We made it up, you could base it on a hundred different things, and end up with one hundred different results. Whether the one we use is accurate or not, I really couldn't care.

I can see where he is coming from and understand that there could be reason for chance, but it's not worth it. We are all comfortable with what we have, why change?

At least, that's my opinion, but then again, it wouldn't be my decision .

Time is not irrelevant and we certainly didn't make it up. The universe does revolve, and the earth does revolves around the sun. It isn't something which humanity invented. (Unless Matrix is real or something )
What we did however, was simply define our standard for calculating it in the very same manner as everything else in this world is defined - we mearly set units and lables onto effects and elements already existing.


As for the article, then I have problems taking his results serious, but haven't read many other sources for this concept (and likely wont at the moment, cause I'm supposed to be working), the jist seems to be that he places emphasismes on subjective ancient writings compared to celestial factualities, and I fail to see that the two should/would match to the accuracy that he wants them to - for his theory to work.

[dj_venom]

No, what I mean is, we have simply given it a label.

We could have called it any year, and created justification for it.

As such, time isn't a big deal to me.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by dj_venom

No, what I mean is, we have simply given it a label.

We could have called it any year, and created justification for it.

As such, time isn't a big deal to me.

Time is not a big deal to you?

So you don't care when you should go to work, go home, how old food is and so on? - Time is most certainly a very integral part of humanity, proberly to the extent where most don't really think about how significant

Sure, time as in it is year 2005 compared to year 943, but time in essences is a big deal, also to you

[dj_venom]

So what if it's moldy, it's just more flavour .

Oh yeah, of course day to day time is important, as it has always been, way back in the ages... however the number of years that have passed since an event has very little bearing on life. Sure, it's nice to know certain things, but whether we say two thousand, or two million, there is very little effect on what we do.

And I'm way out of my depth, so I'm hoping that response is good .

[fable]

Xan, not meaning to jump in the middle of this--but I think Venom is saying that this measurement of time is arbitrarily human, therefore as relevant (or irrelevant) as any other. This is entirely separate from the matters time may represent.

[dj_venom]

Yeah, that and moldy cheese is good for you .

But with Xan's last statement, I think he understood what I meant.

It's always harder to understand online...

Anyway, thanks Fable :-).

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by fable

Xan, not meaning to jump in the middle of this--but I think Venom is saying that this measurement of time is arbitrarily human, therefore as relevant (or irrelevant) as any other. This is entirely separate from the matters time may represent.

The only abitraily about the meassurement of time, is the unit with which we use to meassure it. The flow and consequences of it is far beyond our means of control, and would continue to be there irregardless of how we meassure time (excluding the potential for future timetravel, and changing of physics of course )

Granted, as I said - and I also would think from his posts is what Venom means (at least that is my deduction ) - that the setting of year 0 to where it is, as based on birth of Christ combined with the other calendar systems which is existing on eart is largely irrelevant for most.

However, that is mearly the unit with which we meassure "time". So just like the lable kilogram is irrelevant and conceptual, the existing amount identified by said lable is not.

Originally Posted by dj_venom

<snip>
But with Xan's last statement, I think he understood what I meant.

It's always harder to understand online...
<snip>

Hehe - I understood you just fine, no worries there I'm just debating that time isn't irrelevant and insignificant (while messing with you at the same time .... win-win )

[dj_venom]

Yep, that's exactly what I mean.

*phew, no more argueing about things over my head*

(while messing with you at the same time .... win-win )

Well you succeed, you meanie, stop picking on those with less knowledge .

[fable]

Originally Posted by Xandax

The only abitraily about the meassurement of time, is the unit with which we use to meassure it.

Well, yeah. That's what I said. Maybe I wasn't clear enough? Different people use differing tools to measure what they conceive as a method of establishing the passage of time: the sun's progress, the filling of a basin with water, the span of human life, the the sounding of prayer bells, atomic decay. Other than atomic decay, I would say the rest are to varying extents subjective: a linear progression based on the mind's perception of reality. But the last, atomic decay, is an objective universal method of measuring the progress of time--as long as we agree on what time actually is. So I think we are in complete agreement.

(excluding the potential for future timetravel, and changing of physics of course )

I don't "do" science fiction.

[Kipi]

Originally Posted by Phreddie

On a serious note, I dont pretend to know the complexities of his calculations, but there is another way we know of dates, in a more relative fashion. Carbon Dating, we have found artifacts from those periods, and used carbon dating (not that I know what it is, except that it uses carbon i think, please correct me if wrong) to establish what period it is from. I doubt he can get by the science that comes from beneath the Earth, even if it might look like its wrong from above. Besides, every one knows historians exagerate, the winners write the history books for a reason, to make them selves look good, and when the losers escape and write their own, they blame their loss on some phenomena they cante xplain, like Thucydides eclipse.

First, Carbon-thing you were talking about is that the scientists take small part of the target under study, then find out how much it contains Carbon-atoms (it was a specific Carbon-atom, but can't currently remember which one it was), then by using the calculations how long it will take to be halved, they count when did that organ material "died", which also started the halving process.

And yes, I afree with you that the ancient writings can not be treated as accurate as it would be needed to the theory. First of all, during those times they didn't have that accurate ways to measure time as we do, and secondly, due the believes, many things and events were made bigger and longer than what they have been. So, to compare these things is not as good idea, because we just can not trust that those are accurate enough, even if those even happened.

[dragon wench]

I also believe that the way "time" is measured, is arbitrarily human. So, as such, I don't really think the amount of units, or type of units, changes much. To me, it is sort of like discussing time in French instead of English. The words are different, but the realities of 'time' progressing continue as they always have. Or as another analogy, it is like the difference between metric and imperial measurements; ultimately it really doesn't matter if you drive miles or kilometres, you still reach your destination, regardless.

But, I can see how this would have a tremendous impact on historians, since it has the potential to really shake the foundations of History as a discipline.

And, I admit, I have a lot of trouble with the notion that the Middle Ages, as a distinct period, essentially didn't exist. It completely turns upside down my sense of historical chronology, and it does not appear to make any sense at all. However, I don't know anything about the theories being presented, and mathematics are not exactly my forte to begin with.

Fascinating stuff really..

[epodl]

This is all good but I need to know . do I still cook my eggs for 3 minutes?