Most of the articles I have published on Hive (or Steemit before the Hive Hard Fork) have promoted what Lynn E Rose, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Buffalo University, dubbed the Short Chronology: a radical reconstruction of the chronology of ancient history. The roots of the Short Chronology lie in the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky, the maverick Russian scholar who is primarily remembered for reviving the theory of catastrophism. But in the four decades following the death of Velikovsky, a number of his disciples have pushed his theories on ancient history far beyond the limits to which he was prepared to go. The Short Chronology is such a radical restructuring of Velikovsky’s original vision that even he would probably denounce it.
One of the foremost Velikovskians responsible for this radical new chronology is Gunnar Heinsohn, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bremen in Germany. Although his qualifications are primarily in the disciplines of sociology and economics, he has also published widely in the fields of archaeology and ancient history, with particular focus on the chronology of the Ancient World.
If one were asked to encapsulate Heinsohn’s approach to the science of chronology in a single word, that word would be stratigraphy. Heinsohn has criticized the currently accepted chronology as one that is still largely based upon the Bible and at odds with what is actually found in the ground. There is remarkably little difference between the timeline of ancient history which is taught in universities today and the Fundamentalist timeline which James Ussher deduced from the Bible in the 17th century. By the time the archaeological science of stratigraphy had been developed—in the second half of the 19th century—the chronology of the ancient world had already been “set in stone”.
Heinsohn’s ideas were first brought to the attention of the English-speaking world when a letter of his entitled Catastrophism, Revisionism, and Velikovsky was published in the Velikovskian journal Kronos in 1985. Since then several more works in both German and English have appeared, defending his thesis that the history of Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization began around 1200 BCE, and not 3200 BCE, as the modern textbooks claim.
The Restoration of Ancient History
The Restoration of Ancient History is a paper Heinsohn delivered in November 1994 at a symposium in Portland, Oregon. It is an excellent introduction to the work of Gunnar Heinsohn in this field for a number of reasons:
It is in English.
It provides a comprehensive overview of the subject.
It is available online.
In this series of articles I hope to study this paper and take a closer look at the evidence which Heinsohn cites in favour of his revised chronology.
Heinsohn opens his lecture by baldly stating the case:
Did the historians of classical Greece merely leave us lies and fantasies about all the major empires, nations and events of antiquity?
Or: How to reconcile archaeologically-missing historical periods with historically-unexpected archaeological strata of the ancient world.
The lecture is divided into seven sections:
1: Summary.
2: The sequence of ancient empires with the centre in Assyria as it was taught by Greek historians since the time of Hekateios (-560/550 to -500/494).
3: Archaeologically-missing history and historically-unexpected archaeology in major areas of antiquity.
4: How could historical periods so well known from Greek authors be shown to be “elusive”, whereas in the very same territories modern archaeology revealed sensationally ancient civilizations unknown before the late 19th century?
5: Reconnecting occidental and oriental progress of civilization.
6: The restoration of ancient Israel by abandoning fundamentalist dates of historical biblical narratives and pseudo-scholarly dates of strata in the land of Israel.
7: Synchronization of ancient Eurasian chronology with the chronology of ancient China.
To be continued ...
References
- Gunnar Heinsohn, Catastrophism, Revisionism, and Velikovsky, in Lewis M Greenberg (editor), Kronos: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Synthesis, Volume 11, Number 1, Kronos Press, Deerfield Beach, FL (1985)
- Gunnar Heinsohn, The Restoration of Ancient History, Mikamar Publishing, Portland, OR (1994)
- Gunnar Heinsohn, Die Sumerer gab es nicht [The Sumerians Never Existed], Frankfurt (1988)
- Gunnar Heinsohn, Heribert Illig, Wann lebten die Pharaonen? [When Did the Pharaohs Live?], Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt (1990)
- Gunnar Heinsohn, M Eichborn, Wie alt ist das Menschengeschlecht? [How Old Is Mankind?], Mantis Verlag, Gräfelfing, Munich (1996)
Image Credits
- Gunnar Heinsohn: Wikimedia Commons, © Freud, Creative Commons License
- Conventional Chronology: © James G Ogg, Fair Use
- Kronos: © Kronos Press, Fair Use
- The Ancient East: The University of Texas at Austin, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, William Robert Shepherd, The Historical Atlas, Public Domain
Online Resources
