Published or otherwise available European oak tree-ring chronologies archaeologically anchored in Roman time are all separated from early medieval chronologies by a severe timber depletion in late antiquity. Our recent dendrochronological study shows that this gap probably is unnecessarily wide because the Roman dendro complex as a whole appears dated too old by 218 years.

The subject of our astronomical study was to investigate if there is additional scientific support for such a mistake which would mean a large calendar error in the Christian era. Our results indicate that the Christian era was inflated with 232 years already when it was invented. This was done by back-dating West-Roman and related history by means of astronomical retrocalculation after the western part of the Roman empire had declined.

A remarkable result of our astronomical study is that the postulated astronomical/historical error (232 years) appears to be offset by 14 years from the dendrochronological error (218 years). This means that, if we are right, then all current dendrochronological dates within the Roman time complex are given 14 years too young. According to our interpretation, the 14 years offset was caused by an improper synchronization of the Roman dendro complex towards Roman history done more than 30 years ago.

Read all about it in our new research paper.