Joseph Scaliger'sDe emendatione temporum (1583) began the modern science of chronology[1]
Chronology (fromLatinchronologia, fromAncient Greekχρόνος,chrónos,'time'; and-λογία,-logia)[2] is thescience of arranging events in their order of occurrence intime. Consider, for example, the use of atimeline orsequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".[3]
Chronology is the science of locating historical events in time. It relies mostly uponchronometry, which is also known as timekeeping, andhistoriography, which examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods.Radiocarbon dating estimates the age of formerly living things by measuring the proportion ofcarbon-14isotope in theircarbon content.Dendrochronology estimates the age of trees bycorrelation of the variousgrowth rings in their wood to known year-by-year reference sequences in the region to reflect year-to-year climatic variation. Dendrochronology is used in turn as acalibration reference forradiocarbon dating curves.
The familiar termscalendar andera (within the meaning of a coherent system of numbered calendar years) concern two complementary fundamental concepts of chronology. For example, during eight centuries the calendar belonging to theChristian era, which era was taken in use in the 8th century byBede, was the Julian calendar, but after the year 1582 it was the Gregorian calendar.Dionysius Exiguus (about the year 500) was the founder of that era, which is nowadays the most widespread dating system on earth. Anepoch is the date (year usually) when an era begins.
Ab Urbe condita isLatin for "fromthe founding of the City (Rome)",[4] traditionally set in 753 BC. It was used to identify the Roman year by a few Roman historians. Modern historians use it much more frequently than the Romans themselves did; the dominant method of identifying Roman years was to name the twoconsuls who held office that year. Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was.
It was used systematically for the first time only about the year 400, by the Iberian historianOrosius.Pope Boniface IV, in about the year 600, seems to have been the first who made a connection between this era andAnno Domini. (AD 1 = AUC 754.)
Dionysius Exiguus' Anno Domini era (which contains only calendar yearsAD) was extended byBede to the completeChristian era (which contains, in addition all calendar yearsBC, but noyear zero). Ten centuries after Bede, the French astronomersPhilippe de la Hire (in the year 1702) andJacques Cassini (in the year 1740), purely to simplify certain calculations, put theJulian Dating System (proposed in the year 1583 byJoseph Scaliger) and with it an astronomical era into use, which contains aleap year zero, which precedes the year 1 (AD).[5]
While of critical importance to the historian, methods of determining chronology are used in most disciplines of science, especiallyastronomy,geology,paleontology andarchaeology.
In the absence ofwritten history, with itschronicles andking lists, late 19th century archaeologists found that they could develop relative chronologies based on pottery techniques and styles. In the field ofEgyptology,William Flinders Petrie pioneered sequence dating to penetrate pre-dynasticNeolithic times, using groups of contemporary artefacts deposited together at a single time in graves and working backwards methodically from the earliest historical phases of Egypt. This method of dating is known asseriation.
Known wares discovered at strata in sometimes quite distant sites, the product of trade, helped extend the network of chronologies. Some cultures have retained the name applied to them in reference to characteristic forms, for lack of an idea of what they called themselves: "TheBeaker People" in northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BCE, for example. The study of the means of placing pottery and other cultural artifacts into some kind of order proceeds in two phases, classification and typology: Classification creates categories for the purposes of description, and typology seeks to identify and analyse changes that allow artifacts to be placed into sequences.[6]
Laboratory techniques developed particularly after mid-20th century helped constantly revise and refine the chronologies developed for specific cultural areas. Unrelated dating methods help reinforce a chronology, an axiom of corroborativeevidence. Ideally, archaeological materials used for dating a site should complement each other and provide a means of cross-checking. Conclusions drawn from just one unsupported technique are usually regarded as unreliable.
The fundamental problem of chronology is to synchronize events. By synchronizing an event it becomes possible to relate it to the current time and to compare the event to other events. Among historians, a typical need is to synchronize the reigns of kings and leaders in order to relate the history of one country or region to that of another. For example, theChronicon of Eusebius (325 A.D.) is one of the major works of historical synchronism. This work has two sections. The first contains narrative chronicles of nine different kingdoms: Chaldean, Assyrian, Median, Lydian, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Peloponnesian, Asian, and Roman. The second part is a long table synchronizing the events from each of the nine kingdoms in parallel columns.
By comparing the parallel columns, the reader can determine which events were contemporaneous, or how many years separated two different events. To place all the events on the same time scale, Eusebius used anAnno Mundi (A.M.) era, meaning that events were dated from the supposed beginning of the world as computed from theBook of Genesis in the HebrewPentateuch. According to the computation Eusebius used, this occurred in 5199 B.C. The Chronicon of Eusebius was widely used in the medieval world to establish the dates and times of historical events. Subsequent chronographers, such asGeorge Syncellus (died circa 811), analyzed and elaborated on the Chronicon by comparing with other chronologies. The last great chronographer wasJoseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) who reconstructed the lost Chronicon and synchronized all of ancient history in his two major works,De emendatione temporum (1583) andThesaurus temporum (1606). Much of modern historical datings and chronology of the ancient world ultimately derives from these two works.[7] Scaliger invented the concept of theJulian Day which is still used as the standard unified scale of time for both historians and astronomers.[citation needed]
In addition to the literary methods of synchronism used by traditional chronographers such as Eusebius, Syncellus and Scaliger, it is possible to synchronize events by archaeological or astronomical means. For example, theEclipse of Thales, described in the first book ofHerodotus can potentially be used to date the Lydian War because the eclipse took place during the middle of an important battle in that war. Likewise, various eclipses and other astronomical events described in ancient records can be used to astronomically synchronize historical events.[8] Another method to synchronize events is the use of archaeological findings, such as pottery, to dosequence dating.
^Literally translated as "From the city having been founded".
^Richards 2013, pp. 591-592. (Incomplete reference).
^Greene, Kevin (November 2007).Archaeology : An Introduction. University of Newcastle Upon Tyne. Chapter 4. Archived fromthe original on 2005-03-29. Retrieved2008-01-04.
^Grafton, Anthony (1994).Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weeks, J. E. (1701).The gentleman's hour glass; or, An introduction to chronology; being a plain and compendious analysis of time. Dublin: James Hoey.
Hodgson, J., Hinton, J., & Wallis, J. (1747).An introduction to chronology:: containing an account of time; also of the most remarkable cycles, epoch's, era's, periods, and moveable feasts. To which is added, a brief account of the several methods proposed for the alteration of the style, the reforming the calendar, and fixing the true time of the celebration of Easter. London: Printed for J. Hinton, at the King's Arms in St Paul's Church-yard.
Smith, T. (1818).An introduction to chronology. New York: Samuel Wood.
Keller, H. R. (1934).The dictionary of dates. New York: The Macmillan company.
Poole, R. L., & Poole, A. L. (1934).Studies in chronology and history. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Langer, W. L., & Gatzke, H. W. (1963).An encyclopedia of world history, ancient, medieval and modern, chronologically arranged. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Momigliano, A. "Pagan and Christian historiography in the Fourth Century A.D." in A. Momigliano, ed.,The conflict between paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79–99
Williams, N., & Storey, R. L. (1966).Chronology of the modern world: 1763 to the present time. London: Barrie & Rockliffe.
Steinberg, S. H. (1967).Historical tables: 58 B.C.-A.D. 1965. London: Macmillan.
Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. (1975).Chronology of world history: a calendar of principal events from 3000 BC to AD 1973. London: Collings.
Neugebauer, O. (1975).A history of ancient mathematical astronomy Springer-Verlag.
Bickerman, E. J. (1980).The chronology of the ancient world. London: Thames and Hudson.
Whitrow, G. J. (1990).Time in history: views of time from prehistory to the present day. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Aitken, M. (1990).Science-based dating in archaeology. London: Thames and Hudson.
Richards, E. G. (1998).Mapping time: the calendar and history. Oxford University Press.
_Portrait_de_Joseph_Juste_Scaliger_-_Mus%25C3%25A9e_du_Louvre.jpg)
