Anno Domini: A Short History of the First Millennium AD

$14.00
by Laurent Guyénot

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We are so used to the idea that all major events in the histories of all nations can be fitted together on a single timeline, that we take this standard chronology for granted, as a simple representation of time itself. In reality, this universal chronology, the backbone of textbook historiography, is a cultural construct that was not completed before the late sixteenth century, by connecting ancient chronicles with widely different dating systems. Like other European norms, it was accepted by the rest of the world during the period of Western cultural domination. But is it correct? What confidence can we even have in the accepted European chronology of Roman Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and the Early Middle Ages, if the Anno Domini comput was not stabilized until the beginning of the second millennium? For the first four centuries AD, it is based on the canonical Church History of Eusebius of Caesarea and its continuation by saint Jerome, in other words, on a spurious autobiography of the Christian Church, as unreliable as the Donation of Constantine. And we have to wait till the end of the eleventh century to have continuators of Eusebius and Jerome such as Sigebert of Gembloux, who had religious and political agendas of their own. This left us with a few “dark ages”, periods lacking either historical records or archaeological evidence. Drawing from his own studies in medieval history, Laurent Guyénot highlights the many inconsistencies within the commonly accepted chronology of the first millennium AD, and provides explanations for the distortions that have crept into it. He underscores the need for a critical revision, even a paradigm shift, and examines several alternative theories, with a special focus on the stratigraphy-based chronology of the late Professor Gunnar Heinsohn. Laurent Guyénot was born in France in 1960. He earned an engineering degree from the École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées (Paris), then a Master in Biblical Studies and a PhD in Medieval History. He is the author of a dozen books, including From Yahweh to Zion.

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