Emmet Sweeney is a high school teacher with many years' experience in the classroom. He holds a Masters Degree in Early Modern History from the University of Ulster and has had numerous articles published in historical journals such as the "Society for Interdisciplinary Studies Review" and "Ancient Warfare."

His interest in ancient history was kindled by his father who told him, at an early age, of the daring exploits of Percy Fawcett and Hiram Bingham as they searched for the "Lost Cities" of South America. This interest was rekindled as a student in Belfast, where he discovered the works of Immanuel Velikovsky. Since then, Sweeney has travelled extensively in pursuit of his researches, including journeys to Egypt, Greece, and other locations in the Near East.

Sweeney is the author of a series of books entitled "Ages in Alignment," which seeks to rewrite pre-classical history in its entirety. He describes the salient features of each volume in his "Ages in Alignment" series and points out the important consequences of the skewed historical record as it is usually taught in his website at Emmet Sweeney.net.

In parallel, following the research of German historian Heribert Illig, Sweeney pursues the astonishing theory that Europe never experienced a Dark Age. He demonstrates through archaeological, literary, and architectural evidence that the record actually supports this hypothesis which is fueling lively debates across Europe.

For over 35 years he has researched the questions raised by Velikovsky’s attempted reconstruction of Egyptian history. If what Sweeney and those scholars who agree with him say proves to be correct, all the textbooks will need to be rewritten.

Reconstructing the early period of Greek history upon new chronological lines, the reader will get to the bottom of a prolonged and rancorous debate among classical scholars about how various archeological finds should be dated. Based on physical...

Reconstructing the early period of Greek history upon new chronological lines, the reader will get to the bottom of a prolonged and rancorous debate among classical scholars about how various archeological finds should be dated. Based on physical evidence, the majority of classicists and Hellenic scholars were convinced that Schliemann's discoveries at Troy, Mycenae and Tiryns belonged primarily in the eighth century BC. The Egyptologists, however, won out, and the Mycenaean period was placed firmly in the second millennium. The immediate consequence of this was the insertion of a 'Dark Age'� into the Greek past: for little or no material remains existed which could fill the gap of many centuries between the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty and the beginning of Greek history in the eighth and seventh centuries.We shall then proceed to examine how the adoption of Egyptian dating caused problems in every area of Greek history. One of the most pressing of these related to the nature and interpretation of pottery sequences. Along with 'Mycenaean'� pottery, the early excavators found large quantities of a type they named 'Geometric.'� It was clear right from the beginning that Geometric culture was the direct ancestor of that of the Greeks of the Classical Age, and the sequence from Late Geometric to Archaic art in the seventh century could be easily traced. Yet everywhere, in almost every site of southern Greece, Geometric pottery was found inextricably mixed with Mycenaean. Indeed, on occasion it was found underneath Mycenaean ware. ...Eratosthenes and other ancient authors generally agreed that history, properly speaking, started with the foundation of the Olympic Games. Everything before that was mythikon, the age of myths. Yet the Olympiads, we have seen, were established long before the war against Troy and apparently before the great majority of the events normally described as 'Greek Myth.'� It is true that events surrounding the Trojan War and the lives of many of the characters who participated in it, have a distinctly mythic quality. Yet we have seen that characters who are undoubtedly historical and belong in the eighth and seventh centuries, such as Midas, have the same mythic qualities. Thus Midas met deities and had a Golden Touch and ass's ears.The generation which fought at Troy, as well as its immediate predecessors, belonged in the eighth century BC and was undoubtedly historical. Names of individuals known from Greek legend, including Agamemnon himself, even occur on the Boghaz-koi documents, documents we have identified as being the state archives of the Lydian kingdom.Greek history thus begins with the cosmic event which marked the establishment of the Olympiads, an event which, for a great variety of reasons, we place in the middle of the ninth century, probably within a decade of 850 BC....Much of Greek myth, in short, is about the natural events of 850 BC, and natural events which preceded them. This being the case, it seems reasonable to assume that the inhabitants of the region at the time were most probably ' at least in part ' ancestral Greeks. The culture of these Early Helladic folk was maritime and warlike. They raised great fortifications around many of their settlements ' settlements which tended to lie along the coast. They were already familiar with tin-bronze, which speaks of trading relations with Atlantic Europe; ...When considering the source of the military threat against which the Early Hellads raised their huge coastal fortifications, we need to think of Atlantic Europe and Atlantic North Africa, where a mighty seafaring culture, contemporary with Early Bronze Age Greece, is also attested. And this of course brings us into altogether deeper water, in more ways than one.    

In the book that follows I shall be arguing that early Greek history as found in the textbooks is seriously misdated. I am not the first to make such a proposal. That honor goes to Immanuel Velikovsky, whose series Ages in Chaos (1952) held that the whole of ancient Near Eastern history before the classical age was a fabrication. Velikovsky identified Egyptian chronology as the source of the problem; and indeed the chronology of early Greek history, during the so-called 'Mycenaean'� period, was constructed along the lines demanded by Egyptian history. Thus when it became clear, towards the end of the nineteenth century, that the great flowering of 'Mycenaean'� culture coincided with the Egyptian New Kingdom, especially the Eighteenth Dynasty, it was decreed that the Mycenaean Age belonged in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BC, where Egyptologists had already placed the Eighteenth Dynasty. There were many dissenting voices at the time, most notably from the ranks of the classicists, and that great curmudgeon Cecil Torr fought a prolonged and very public battle with Flinders Petrie over the issue. In a thousand ways, claimed Torr, the Mycenaean Age showed itself to belong in the eighth or even seventh century BC. With what justification then did Petrie and the Egyptologists force their timescales into the world of the Aegean? Still, such doubts were ultimately laid to rest. The Egyptologists, who by this time were claiming a scientific foundation for their chronology, stressed the numerous connections disclosed by archaeology between the Mycenaean Age and the Eighteenth Dynasty and thereby compelled a second millennium date for the former.Many of the objections raised by Torr were later resurrected by Velikovsky. Echoing his predecessor, Velikovsky demonstrated that Mycenaean art and culture seemed to find its closest parallels in art and culture of the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Furthermore, it was found that Mycenaean material occurred at no great depth beneath that of the classical period, whilst in many places it was apparently associated with Archaic ware of the seventh and even sixth centuries. This, for example, was the case at various sites throughout the Peloponnese and southern Greece and most especially on Crete and Cyprus. And, in a multitude of ways, legend and tradition agreed. So, for example, Homer's Iliad is full of references to the Phrygians, who were evidently close allies of the Trojans. Indeed, so intimate is the connection that we might suspect the Trojans themselves of being a branch of the Phrygian nation. Yet Phrygia, it is known, did not exist until the eighth century BC, when the Moschians, or Bryges, a Thracian people, migrated across the Bosphorus and settled in Asia Minor. Greek tradition is explicit that Priam, king of Troy during the famous siege, was a contemporary of Gordius, the first Phrygian king and founder of the capital city Gordion.

IntroductionChapter 1. An Age of HeroesWhere Does Greek History Begin?The Rediscovery of Homeric GreeceThe Early DebateA 'Dark Age'� IntrudesThe Dark Age in Asia MinorChapter 2. Archaeology and ArtAr

IntroductionChapter 1. An Age of HeroesWhere Does Greek History Begin?The Rediscovery of Homeric GreeceThe Early DebateA 'Dark Age'� IntrudesThe Dark Age in Asia MinorChapter 2. Archaeology and ArtArtistic AnomaliesA Bitter ControversyThe Emergence of Greek CultureThe Earliest Greek CultureContemporary CulturesChapter 3. The Question of LiteracyEpic PoetryThe Loss of LiteracyThe Linear B TabletsThe Language of Linear BCadmus and the Phoenician AlphabetChapter 4. Evidence from AbroadThrace and ScythiaMagna GraeciaEtruriaCyprus and the EastChapter 5. Links Across the SeasGreece and the EastAchaean Warriors Fight the AssyriansThe Shaft Graves of MycenaePelops and Chariot WarfareAgamemon in the Records of the HittitesMopsusChapter 6. The Course of HistoryMyth and HistoryA Dramatic BeginningGreeks and PelasgiansThe Rise of CreteMycenae before AgamemnonThe Story of ThebesChapter 7. Bridging the GapThe Dorian InvasionThe Age of the TyrantsThe Age of ColonizationIron Swords of TegeaFestivals and Legal CodesSome Genealogies and ChronologiesEpilogueAPPENDIXPhaeton's Fire and Heracles' LaborsTable 1. Bronze Aga and Iron Age ContemporariesBibliographyINDEX