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bsbray
20th May 2016, 06:43
There's a pretty lengthy article from the Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) called "The Revision of Ancient History - A Perspective," which is an account of "revisionist" historiography (actually a lot of disagreements occurred before today's mainstream interpretations of history even existed) until the present day. The full article can be found here (http://www.sis-group.org.uk/ancient.htm).


Here's the introduction of the article:


1. INTRODUCTION
The Revision of Ancient History - A Perspective.

Ancient History as taught today is a disaster area. Nothing fits convincingly together. The development of the arts, cultures and technologies from earliest times shows inexplicable incongruities. Art historians and archaeologists are in disarray. Why? Because the chronology of the first and second millennium BC is badly wrong. How did this disaster happen? As accident investigators well know, the sequence of events leading up to major disasters is invariably a sequence of highly unlikely and unexpected happenings and coincidences. These conspire, often in chances of many millions to one against, to cause the disaster. Ancient history revisionists believe the cause of the disaster lies within the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt, referred to as the CC throughout the rest of this paper. This has been assumed correct, and used directly or indirectly to date nearly all the other early civilisations throughout Europe and the Near East. Such is the measure of control exerted by today's academic establishment that they would not tolerate a revisionist movement from within. So interested outsiders, including some brilliant scholars and innovative thinkers, who call themselves ancient history revisionists, are having to act as the accident investigators for this disaster. They are investigating all the relevant evidence, with painstaking thoroughness, to discover and expose all the events and unlucky coincidences that led to the adoption of the CC.

The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies (SIS) was founded in 1974 to promote discussion and further study of the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky. He was one of the first to make the public aware that Egypt's ancient chronology was, and still is, badly wrong. As a result, the pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty (D18), which most famously include Queen Hatshepsut and Tutankhamun, are made too ancient by around 500 years. He reached this conclusion after comparing the early histories of the Hebrews and the Egyptians. In the Old Testament (OT), the ancient Hebrews recorded such major events as their Descent into Egypt, the Sojourn, Oppression, and Exodus from Egypt, and later campaigns against them by the Egyptian rulers Shishak and Zerah. However, no clear reference to any of these events can be found in Egyptian history.

Since late Victorian times, ancient historians and archaeologists have assumed, from an amalgam of early sources, that their consensual version of Egyptian chronology is secure. So Egyptian artefacts, which were found in many places outside Egypt, were used to date the archaeology of other countries around the Mediterranean that had no ancient records of their own. For example, pottery from Mycenae in Greece was found in Egypt, depicted on the walls of tombs of kings of the eighteenth dynasty (D18), and among the ruins of their temples. So the start of the Mycenaean era was dated to around the beginning of D18, about 1400. The Mycenaean era is believed to have ended at the time the Dorian invasion of southern Greece, c1200. The objection that this was some 500 years earlier than believed by the early Greek and Roman historians, who lived some 2000 years nearer the period in question, was overruled. Archaeologists then began to find Mycenaean pottery in countries all round the Eastern Mediterranean. This led them to conclude that there were widespread occupation gaps in Greece and other countries after the end of the Mycenaean age, around 12th century BCE (12C). People then seemed mysteriously to reappear in their cities and carry on much as before around the 8th century, when continuity could be firmly established with the classical Greek period and with the more soundly dated Neo-Assyrian empire. These occupation gaps of 4 to 5 centuries were called 'Dark Ages', and they have provided scholars with a rich vein of confusion and controversy to this day.

Velikovsky, quoting from early archaeological reports, cited many disputes between famous archaeologists that were caused by the sudden requirement to interpret archaeology within a new timeframe imposed by these 'Dark Ages'. Many were bitter, and careers were irreparably damaged. Most disputes were swept under the carpet, and have not been satisfactorily resolved to this day. Archaeology, when interpreted with an open mind, has now actually proved beyond reasonable doubt that the Dark Ages did not exist, but the proof is ignored. Vested interest in the status quo has won the day. Huge amounts of public money are being spent on studying this Victorian invention, and hundreds of books written about the Dark Ages have failed to explain their cause with any conviction. Sadly, it seems no one in academia has had the courage publicly to challenge the basic assumptions upon which Egyptian chronology, the progenitor of the Dark Ages, is founded.

Sadly the response to innovative thinking in academia is often to try to drown both the innovator and his work in a tide of ridicule and misrepresentation. The dogma of the Establishment, which strictly controls what is taught to the next generation, has ever been fiercely defended. But it has often been wrong. To take a much quoted example, the Catholic Church burnt Bruno alive at the stake in 1600AD for refusing to believe that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, a dogma they had been teaching unchallenged for some 1300 years. Academia today is exerting an ever-tighter control on what is taught, and on the subjects suitable for research. The politically accepted, yet seriously flawed system of 'peer review' plays into the hands of the Guardians of the Dogma who control research publications, enabling them to stifle innovative theories which contradict their own. To the Establishment of the 1950's, Velikovsky was both a radical and an outsider, and they responded to him using the traditional mediaeval practices of vilification and suppression. However, outside academia he received considerable support, and the many obvious anomalies and problems caused by the faulty chronology have long been the subject of intense study and debate by ancient history revisionists.

By accepting that the theoretical foundation of today's Egyptian chronology is wrong, and by accepting instead the incontrovertible evidence of archaeology, all the problems of the Dark Ages could be resolved at a stroke. Millions of pounds of taxpayer's money could then be saved, along with the countless hours of talented scholars who waste their time and talents trying to resolve the irresolvable. The truth about ancient history and the development of culture and technologies could then at last be properly understood. The credibility of many of the wonderful records of ancient times, including those contained within the Old Testament, would also start to be restored.

The perspective of the history of ancient history revisionism offered here is drawn largely from the pages of SIS publications over the last 25 years. Other revisionist journals are referred to in places where gaps must be filled, and contributors to these have made a big contribution to the overall debate. However, the SIS is the longest running of these journals. Within its pages may be found the accumulated wisdom, sprinkled here and there with a little folly for good measure, of hundreds of contributors. Their collective arguments, a few of which are presented here will, I hope, convince the unbiased reader that a major downdating of Egyptian chronology should be seriously studied within the Establishment. This would be the most likely way to resolve the vast numbers of historical and archaeological anachronisms that have come to light over the last 150 years. It's time the revisionist came in from the cold.


http://www.sis-group.org.uk/ancient.htm#intro


I'm on section 2.2 so far and they just finished making a good argument about how ancient king lists are interpreted based on very poor assumptions:


The glamour of antiquity may be the reason for one of the key pieces of dogma that underpins the ancient chronologies of Egypt and Mesopotamia. This is the general assumption that all ancient king lists should be read as a sequential list of rulers who presided over the whole of their country. This assumption ignores the fact that we know in very early times kings often shared their inheritance equally with all their sons, so the country was subsequently ruled by many kings of small city states. It also ignores the real life problems of multiple 'queens', succession disputes, usurpers, and the need for co-regents when a king was too young or too old, unwell, or unsuited to carry out his many duties. So to take an old 'king list' passed down to us by ancient historians without any knowledge as to the authenticity of the sources or accompanying explanatory notes, and assume the kings were all sole rulers over the whole country, is bound to make such civilisations appear much too old. Archaeology, when interpreted with eyes unclouded by such dogma, consistently fails to support these early dates. Sir Isaac Newton, in the recently published 'The Original of Monarchies' [4] gives a convincing explanation of how many ancient monarchies were formed, that one day may help us towards a more sensible interpretation of the ancient king lists of Egypt and Mesopotamia.