Just in. Guide to the phantom dark ages. Did the Early Middle Ages Really Exist? Phantom time thread. Phantom time hypothesis. How could I have written a whole book about conspiracy theories without once encountering Heribert Illig?
I just stumbled over a reference to his “phantom time hypothesis” and now I’m finding him everywhere. A prolific crank in the grand tradition of Ignatius L. Donnelley and Immanuel Velikovsky, Illig has spent many years elaborating and defending his proposition that the years 614-911 CE were invented and inserted into histories ex post facto at the behest of Otto III. The present year is not 2010, but 1713; Charlemagne and Alfred the Great were fictional characters; the Viking raids never happened; etc.