What if I told you we are just living in the illusion of the past centuries, marking time now to cover up missing years and that we are in 1820 and not 2018, would you believe me? This is the claim held by Phantom Time Hypothesis proponents.

Well, as outlandish as that sounds, that was exactly what a German publisher turned historian and his adherent supporters tried to sell to the world through their conspiracy theory said to have been perpetuated by three key players. It states that the earth has about 297 years added to its existence with fake histories that never happened. How this could have happened is worth learning about. Find out more…

What Birthed The Phantom Time Hypothesis?

Phantom Time Hypothesis was birthed first by Heribert Illig, a German historian born in Bavaria in 1947. Later on, others like Dr. Hans Ultrich Niemitz substantiated the claims and theories of Heribert Illig.

Heribert Illig was a strong historian, a publisher and an editor who had actively revised and edited notable works for people like Egon Friedell. Some of his prehistorical documentation and revisions of chronological accounts had been flawed as highly controversial and widely rejected as faulty. He has received wide publicity for his work in the German media over the years, as his works had led to critical thinking for other historians and several open discussions. He has been publicizing the Phantom Time Hypothesis/Theory since 2013 up till 2017.

During one of his researches, he fell on a plausible theory then, put it into writing he called attention to what he termed “fabricated human history”. The most notable smoking gun were certain documents which he said were “forged” by the Roman Catholic Church during the middle ages (between the 5th to the 15th centuries), hundreds of years before the originals ever existed. Imagine that!

This led Mr. Illig and his associates to investigate further other discrepancies like in the building of Constantinople, evolution theory and the meaning of the term Purgatory, etc.

Components Of the Phantom Time Hypothesis

The key components of the Phantom Time Hypothesis as claimed by Heribert Illig is that there were conspirators who came together to alter the timing and makeup events that did not exist in the life of man, adding about 297 years which became middle age and as such, giving it existence.

According to the theory, the men alleged to have fabricated the error and the content of the Phantom Time Hypothesis were Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, Pope Sylvester II, Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, and Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII. They were said to have been implicated as the accomplices in the distortion of the actual dating and time of existence and their reason for this, according to Illig and his associates was to place them in the special year of 1000 AD in other to modify history and legitimize Emperor Otto’s claim of the Holy Roman Empire.

They were able to carry out this conspiracy by tampering with the Julian Calendar and Gregorian Calendar (the calendar we use today) dates. This action made the time of Otto’s reign to appear as though it was in the 2000 AD as that sounded more appealing and important than the 996 AD.

Read Also: What Exactly Is Project Blue Beam (Serge Monast’s Conspiracy Theory)?

Illig’s Proof Of The Hypothesis

Illig was able to pinpoint three main areas that supported his claim of the perceived conspiracy and the areas as stated by him in his writing are:

• The absence of artifacts and archaeological materials that supports the dates from 614 to 911 AD
• The wrong mathematical computations showing errors between the two types of calendars – Julian and Georgian and the lapses in about 10 days and 11 minutes differences in the two calendars – instead of 13 days.
• The erected architectural designs of the Romans in the 10th century of Western Europe suggested they were far more advanced than the time it was said to have been built.

Reactions and Criticisms

The Phantom Time Hypothesis has been widely criticized as circumstantial and misguided knowledge. If we are to question the time and assume that the events stated in history did not exist, then we question the solar eclipses recorded, the widely known Holy War fought by Islamic nations and the archaeological fossils which tell events of that age.