A closer look
Imagine being so contrarian you delete 300 years of history. Heribert Illig’s Phantom Time Hypothesis—which argued the years 614 to 911 AD were entirely fabricated by the Pope—found its perfect petri dish in early Web 1.0 forums and GeoCities pages. Before we had social media algorithms pushing flat-earth theories, dial-up internet users were meticulously archiving HTML pages claiming Charlemagne was basically a medieval deepfake. The Internet Archive still holds these pristine, beautifully deranged 90s websites, proving humans have always used revolutionary technology to spread absolute nonsense.
