Re: Historical Events Database
Approaching Infinity said:
I think there are a few issues that need to be sorted out first:
1) Confirming as best as possible that the recorded sightings actually ARE Halley. Your right column gives the dates that there SHOULD be sightings, so that should probably be used as a reference point.
2) If they ARE all Halley sightings, then we need to eliminate any possible duplicates. A duplicate would indicate ~76 years have been added into the chronology, so we should be on the lookout for any 76 year anomalies.
3) A hint as to roughly when any ghost years are added can be seen by comparing the middle column with the right column. For example, 5-6 years may have been added between the years 1151 and 1455. An additional 5 somewhere between 695 and 1151. 5-6 more between 391 and 695. And 5 more between 141 BC and 391 AD. The periods between 141 BC and 239 AD are pretty stable (i.e., the dates are consistently 21 or 22 years off, meaning the historical recorded shows a roughly 76 year period for Halley sightings). Same for the years 695-999 (10 or 11 years off). And same with 1455-1759, of course.
So, using the 'official history dates', the times to focus on, IMO, would be:
218-684 AD
989-1455 AD
Okay. So, here's what I was working through today. I copy/pasted the following into a doc so I could look at it closely; it's some of my entries and Zadig's:
Event 855 GoT:
Year: 585: While I was staying in Carignan, I twice during the night saw portents in the sky. These were rays of light towards the north, shining so brightly that I had never seen anything like them before: the clouds were blood-red on both sides, to the east and to the west. On a third night these rays appeared again, at about seven or eight o’clock. As I gazed in wonder at them others like them began to shine from all four quarters of the earth, so that as I watched they filled the entire sky. A cloud gleamed bright in the middle of the heavens, and these rays were all focused on it, as if it were a pavilion the colored stripes of which were broad at the bottom but became narrower as they rose, meeting in a hood at the top. In between the rays of light there were other clouds flashing vividly as if they were being struck by lightning. This extraordinary phenomenon filled me with foreboding, for it was clear that some disaster was about to be sent from heaven.
Note to entry 855:
VIII.24 {see below} refers back to this event so it is likely that this is Gregory's witness of the Tunguska-like event over Italy. It probably included tremendous plasma effects. I have assigned the day and month from Paul the Deacon's witness.
That Paul the Deacon had a month and day for this suggests 1) he had another source; 2) he just made it up.
Event 858: VIII.24: This same year two islands in the sea were consumed by fire which fell from the sky. They burned for seven whole days, so that they were completely destroyed, together with the inhabitants and their flocks. Those who sought refuge in the sea and hurled themselves headlong into the deep died an even worse death in the water into which they had thrown themselves, while those on land who did not die immediately were consumed by fire. All were reduced to ash and the sea covered everything.
Many maintained that all the portents which I have said earlier that I saw in the month of October, when the sky seemed to be on fire, were really the reflection of this conflagration.
Event 859: Tunguska like event: PtD
At this time there was a deluge of water in the territories of Venetia and Liguria, and in other regions of Italy such as is believed not to have existed since the time of Noah.
Ruins were made of estates and country seats, and at the same time a great destruction of men and animals. The paths were obliterated, the highways demolished, and the river Athesis (Adige) then rose so high that around the church of the blessed martyr Zeno, which is situated outside the walls of the city of Verona, the water reached the upper windows, although as St. Gregory, afterwards pope, also wrote, the water did not at all enter into that church. Likewise the walls of the city of Verona itself were partly demolished by the same inundation. And this inundation occurred on the 16th of the calends of November (Oct. 17th), ...yet there were so many flashes of lightning and peals of thunder as are hardly wont to occur even in the summer time. Also after two months this city of Verona was in great part consumed by fire.
In this outpouring of the flood the river Tiber at the city of Rome rose so much that its waters flowed in over the walls of the city and filled great regions in it. Then through the bed of the same stream a great multitude of serpents, and a dragon also of astonishing size passed by the city and descended to the sea.
Note to Entry 859:
The "16th of the Calends of November" equals October 17.
PtD notes that this inundation event was followed by a "grievous pestilence which killed Pope Pelagius." In the midst of the plague, Gregory was elected Pope. The traditional date for Gregory's election is 590. That is five years after the date at which I have placed this event in order to match it to the corresponding observations made by Gregory of Tours. This event is dated by Hodgkin to 589, however we cannot be certain of the year for any of these events. Nevertheless, they obviously belong together. Considering the nature of the event, it is not at all unlikely that it took several years for the peoples of Italy to dig themselves out of the mud and get over the shock.
That means that the "big event" certainly happened some time before the death of Pelagius and election of Gregory.
Note what the Book of the Popes says about the death of Pelagius and election of Gregory:
Entry 945: Book of Pontiffs:
Pelagius II 579-590.
Pelagius, by nationality a Roman, son of Unigild, occupied the see 10 years, 2 months and 10 days.
He was ordained without the emperor’s mandate because the Lombards were besieging Rome {569} and causing much devastation in Italy. At that time the rains were so great that everyone said the waters of the Flood had overflowed; so great was the disaster that no one could remember anything ever like it.
At that time Pelagius enclosed the body of blessed Peter, the apostle, in plates of gilded silver. He made of his own house an almshouse for aged poor. He constructed the cemetery of blessed Hermes, the martyr. He built from its foundations a basilica over the body of blessed Lawrence, the martyr, and beautified his sepulchre with silver plates. And he died and was buried in the church of blessed Peter, the apostle.
Now, here is an interesting bit right towards the end of GoT:
GoT X.1, p. 543:
In the fifteenth year of King Childebert's reign,
{590} on his return from the city of Rome with relics of the Saints, my deacon (Agiulf) told me that
the previous year, in the month of November, the River Tiber had covered Rome with such flood-water that a number of ancient churches had collapsed and the papal granaries had been destroyed, with the loss of several thousand bushels of wheat.
A great school of water-snakes swam down the course of the river to the sea, in their midst a tremendous dragon as big as a tree-trunk, but these monsters were drowned in the turbulent salt sea-waves and their bodies were washed up on the shore. As a result there followed
an epidemic, which caused swellings in the groin. This
started in January. The very first to catch it was Pope Pelagius, thus fulfilling what is written in the prophet Ezekiel: 'And begin at my sanctuary', for he died almost immediately. Once Pelagius was dead a great number of other folk perished from this disease. The people then unanimously chose as Pope the deacon Gregory... Thereupon Gregory exhorted his flock to do penance in the following words:
"Dearly beloved brethren, those scourges of God which we fear when they are still far off must terrify us all the more when they are come among us and we have already had our taste of them. Our present trial must open the way to our conversion. The afflictions which we suffer must soften the harness of our hearts... I see my entire flock being struck down by the sword of the wrath of God, as one after another they are visited by sudden destruction. Their death is preceded by no lingering illness, for, as you know, they die before they even have time to feel ill. The blow falls: each victim is snatched away from us before he can bewail his sins and repent. ... Our fellow-citizens are not, indeed, taken from us one at a time, for they are being bustled off in droves. Homes are left empty, parents are forced to attend the funerals of their children, their heirs march before them to the grave. ...A penance lasting only three days wiped away the long-lived sins of the man of Nineveh! The thief who repented won the reward of life at the very moment when he had received the sentence of death! ...we must then be the more importunate in our prayers. That very importunity which so often proves unwelcome to our fellow-men pleases the Judge of truth... let us come together, to concentrate our minds upon our troubles, in the order which I will explain... "
When he had finished speaking, Gregory assembled the different groups of churchmen, and ordered them to sing psalms for three days and to pray to our Lord for forgiveness. At three o'clock all the choirs singing psalms came into the church, chanting the Kyrie eleison, as they passed through the city streets. My deacon, who was present, said that while the people were making their supplication to the Lord, eighty individuals fell dead to the ground. The Pope never once stopped preaching to the people, nor did the people pause in their prayers.
Paul the Deacon MAY have gotten his version of this story from GoT, or, conversely, a redactor of GoT added the story from Paul the Deacon much later. The evidence that this latter is the case is in the remark: "my deacon (Agiulf) told me that
the previous year, in the month of November"
Notice that Paul the Deacon did NOT say that the event occurred IN the month of November, he said:
"the 16th of the Calends of November" which equates to October 17. (Roman dating system.) That means that whatever text PtD was using, used this system but Gregory's redactor didn't know that system and just wrote a jolly story about November.
Gregory's story also adds that the pestilence began in January which is an interesting detail, if true.
The other entries relating to this are:
860: geology tsunami Venetia
861: weather flood Liguria
862: geology tsunami Rome
863: Falling fire – serpents dragon
864: plasma event – lightning, thunder
866: water turned to blood
984: the 2 nights of Plasma event described in 855.
I left this text for awhile and went down to cook all the while mulling it over in my head. I was thinking about the whole mess and that maybe, what happened, was that a whole "generation" was added to the timeline as a buffer between the church and the disasters and a generation is something like 40 years. So, if I subtract 40 years from 585 I have 545 (I can do simple math!) That would put this disaster right after the "dust veil event" of Cassiodorus and Procopius.
Then I started thinking about what Gildas wrote about 540 and an item from the Chinese records.
Chinese historical records of AD 540 say : "Dragons fought in the pond of the K'uh o. They went westward....In the places they passed, all the trees were broken. " (Greg Bryant (1999) The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined?: Universe, September 1999 issue.)
Gildas about the island of Britain:
"In just punishment for the crimes that had gone before, a fire heaped up and nurtured by the hand of the impious easterners spread from sea to sea. It devastated town and country round about, and, once it was alight, it did not die down until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island and was licking the western ocean with its fierce red tongue ... All the major towns were laid low by the repeated battering of enemy rams; laid low, too, all the inhabitants - church leaders, priests and people alike ..."
Then, from my "Chronicle of the Fall"
Notice that it certainly does not appear that Gildas intends allegory. The “enemy” that may have wielded those battering rams could very well have been natural forces. The narrative seems to suggest a cause and effect relationship. This connects back to the scientific evidence cited above that 540 was the really big blow. It may have been a year in which multiple comet fragment air-burst events took place. The migration of multiple thousands of people from Southern Britain to Brittany gives weight to the idea of a sudden, devastating trauma particularly affecting Britain.
In 540, in Yemen, the Great Dam of Marib, dating from around the seventh century B.C., one of the engineering wonders of the ancient world and a central part of the south Arabian civilization, broke and began to collapse.
Prior to this event, Yemen was the most powerful political force among the Arabs controlling the trade from Eastern Africa. The city of Marib had formerly been the capital of the ancient kingdom of Saba (Sheba). The great dam was a marvel of engineering and said to have been one of the most amazing feats of human engineering of the pre-modern world. It fed hundreds of miles of irrigation canals, watering 24,000 acres. The collapse of the dam was a process that took place over time, but the final straw, after years of drought and famine, seems to have been a series of torrential rains, one of which produced such massive quantities of water that the dam gave way. The event was recorded in a royal inscription which said that a workforce had to be raised to repair it but a later inscription stated that the work had to be delayed because the availability of workers had been reduced by plague. This collapse of an irrigation system that fed tens of thousands of people forced migration and led to the collapse of Yemeni power in the region. The people of Yemen were fully half the population of the Arabian peninsula and the loss of many of them, along with the power infrastructure left a serious power gap that, within two generations, had shifted to Medina which was a town dominated by Jewish Arabs. We will come back to this point further on.
So, I was thinking about this when I came back upstairs and read what you wrote above. It seems to me that what you said about duplicates might very well be the problem here. I went back to look at the historical comets and there is something funny there that I noticed the other day: a gap from 539 to 560. And I noticed it because I noted that my hypothetical 545 event (subtracting 40 years from the date of GoT) comes very close to 543 which is when Halley should have been listed. But it wasn't there. Instead, it's listed in 530 and then again, with that odd date anomaly that was noted by Kronk, in 607.
I have a hard time believing that the Chinese did not observe a single comet from 539 until 560 - a period of 21 years! - UNLESS, they too, had been hit as is suggested by the above quote about dragons in the year 540 and it took them some time to recoup and get back to sky-observing.
A big part of the problem is, of course, the reconciliation of Chinese dates to Western dates. It is ASSUMED that a comet mentioned by a Western chronicler that is sorta close to a registered sighting of Halley by the Chinese, MUST be Halley... and so they are attached to that date. But what if the Western chroniclers were multiplying sightings and adding blocks of time?
What if the events described as happening in 585 belong to the sighting of Halley's of 543 (which is also attached to tree rings and ice cores retrocalculated I think)? Or, what if the 847 Halley's was wrongly assigned to 543 in Western dating because years were added? What if the events GoT and PtD write about were the parts of the Eastern chronicles that were truncated or edited out? Yeah, we know that barbarians were roaming around and doing stuff after Theoderic, but what if it was nothing like has been described? Leaders of small bands turned into "kings" and additions made to Eastern chronicles here and there or letters produced, to verify such things?
I sure hope somebody with math brains is gonna sort this out!
